In “Tony Kytes, the Arch-Deceiver” by Thomas Hardy, Tony Kytes has a more sensitive attitude towards women than that of John Thomas in “Tickets, Please”, not a great deal more, but a tiny bit, he spends the whole story trying to hide his “lady friends” from each other, most of this is for his own good so that he could still secretly see all three of them, but a small part of it is because he doesn’t wish to upset any of them. I think that Tony Kytes has more decency than John Thomas because he thinks (to some extent) about what the women want as well as himself, he intends to get married to one of them and become an all round character to the “lucky” woman, which is more than John Thomas ever intended to do.
Both John Thomas and Tony Kytes have one thing in common, and that is a strong confidence of power over women, they both believe they are higher up than the women and that the women are willing to do what they command them to. At the end of the two stories when the men are forced to choose a woman they are both certain the one they choose will say yes, “All right, then, I choose Annie” – John Thomas thinks he will be making Annie happy by choosing her, he is confident she will want to be his girl, although John Thomas seems confident, Tony Kytes appears to be a lot more confident when it comes to women, “I’ve asked Hannah to be mine, and she is willing.”, “She’s as sound as a bell for me, that I’ll swear!”, he is so certain that Hannah will want to marry him, and she does want to but because of her fathers presence there she refuses, hoping he will ask her again but that never happens.
John Thomas doesn’t really get into “relationships”, he prefers “one night stands” where he will walk out with a woman one night and then move onto another girl the next night, although this suits him just fine, he doesn’t realise he is breaking the girls hearts. “She watched him vanquish one girl, then another, a fine cock of the wall he was.” – this is an outsider’s view of John Thomas’s attitude toward women. I think that John Thomas has a lot of control over the women he chooses to walk out with him, they always wait for him and never get angry when he doesn’t go back to them, hoping he will ask them to walk out with him again, they are fools for him, expect Annie who does get angry, I think at the end of the story she is in command of John Thomas, but she is the only woman who is. “Yet each of them waited for him to look at her, hoped he would look at her. All except Annie, and something was broken in her”, Annie is wise to his games through personal experience, but all the other women are still hoping he will choose them. I think that the women do prove to be stronger than the men in this story because Annie comes out on top.
Tony Kytes appears to have total control over women, all the women we meet in the story are under his spell, they all come back to him In the end whatever he may have done wrong. All of the women in “Tony Kytes, the Arch-Deceiver” are very stupid in the presence of Tony Kytes, they seem to be blind to his deceiving ways. He can wrap them round his finger with a few words, “And then he would have kissed them all round, as fair and square as a man could, but they were in too much of a taking to let him”. Tony Kytes knows he has power over the women, he is confidant he can get out of any situation involving women, but he comes unstuck at the end of the story, for a few minutes anyway. Even though all three women have caught him out at once they still hope he will choose them, even after they refuse him they hope he will call after them or follow them, but he thinks they don’t want him so he is left with Milly, and feels she is the only girl who wants to marry him. “With her heart in her throat, for she would not have refused Tony if he had asked her quietly, and her father had not been there”, “Away she walked upon her father’s arm, thinking and hoping he would ask her again”. – Hannah Jolliver’s thoughts after refusing Tony, he still has command over her. “Away walks Unity Sallet likewise, though she looked back when she’d gone some way, to see if he was following her.” This line shows that Tony also still had command over Unity Sallet. Milly appears to be the stupidest girl of all at the end of the story, “If you like Tony, you didn’t really mean what you said to them?”, “Not a word of it! Declares Tony, and then he kissed her, and their banns were put up the very next Sunday”, Milly is very gullible and is under Tony’s spell, he can tell her anything and she will believe it. Tony Kytes is very much in command in his relationships with women. In this story it is very clear that the men are stronger than the women.
The incidents at the end of the two stories leave both of the men in shock, though obviously John Thomas came out worse, he had been beaten, had no woman, he had also been embarrassed in front of all the woman he knew and worked with everyday. I think he was very scared of the women, and surprised beyond belief that the women were capable of such things, he thought he could do as he pleased and treat women however he wanted, he hadn’t known anything different all his life. He cannot even face the women afterwards, his reputation has been destroyed, “He, however, kept his face closed and averted from them all.” The downfall of Tony Kytes is a lot more subtle, the women don’t physically hurt him, they just hurt his ego and reputation, to be turned down is something he is not used to, but at least he has not lost everything, the woman he was originally meant to be marrying at the start of the story still wants to become his wife at the end of the story, even after everything that had happened, which shows just how much power he has over the women. I think the incident at the end helped Tony Kytes to become a better man, the other two women he was seeing refused him, leaving him with just one woman, therefore he has no one to cheat on her with in the future.
The language used in the stories also changes very much, in “Tickets, Please” John Thomas talks to the girls in a joking way, he always tries to sound jolly and happy around them, he doesn’t use formal language or expressions to try and sound sophisticated or to fool them, as Tony Kytes does in “Tony Kytes, the Arch-Deceiver”, Tony tries to keep the girls wrapped round his finger by saying a load of rubbish which is mutilated to sound good by using big words and smart expressions, “Now I shall catch it mightily if she sees ‘ee riding with me”, “Aye my dear, I did ask ye – to be sure I did, now I think of it- but I had quite forgot it. To ride back with me, did you say, dear Milly?”, if he has something to say which the girls wont like , or if he is in trouble and is explaining himself he uses sophisticated language to make it sound a lot better than it actually is, and the girls are stupid enough to believe him.
