The other story - “Tickets Please” is a post 1914 story.
Although the stories aren’t the same, there are certain similarities between the two main characters, and the almost off-hand manner in which they treat women. They both seem to have a lot of women and flirt with them a lot.
Tickets Please is based on his relationship with Annie Stone. Annie is described as being ‘shrewd’ with John. When she suggests a more permanent relationship, he quickly turns his attentions to other women. The two male characters are very different. One is looking for a wife, the other is looking for company without any commitment. This reflects the different attitudes at the time the stories were written. The concept of marriage was not as pressing in the 1920’s, as it was in the 1890’s; because of women’s new found independence.
Of course the other way in which the role of women is portrayed through these stories is through the way the female characters react to the situations they find themselves in. Unity, and Hannah’s attitudes towards Tony are that he is a very eligible bachelor, despite his engagement to Milly. In fact when all three women find out about the fact that he is interested in all three of them, it is only Hannah’s ‘hurt pride’ and Unity’s temper that make them turn down Tony’s offers of marriage. In fact, it is almost as if they only blame each other, not Tony for the situation. The story even comments that Hannah walks away from Tony ‘thinking and hoping he would ask her to marry him again’, which shows the shallowness of the emotions shown by the women, and the pressure on them to marry. The revenge that the women take on the traditional rogue character is quite different to the other stories, the women’s unity builds a strong force on to the male character.
When the women do this they look like cats together, hunting and attacking to achieve their ‘mission’. They are always active and ready for anything. This is a great contrast to how the women are portrayed in the other stories.
‘Their faces were flushed, their hair wild, their eyes were all glittering strangely.’
‘He lay at last quite still, with face averted, as an animal lies when it is defeated at the mercy of the captor.’
The first quote above shows that they are attacking, working together like a pack of wild cats. The second quote is saying what they have done as a result of their unity. They are ultimately strong and whereas usually it is a male dominated society the women have shown their strengths in numbers and they can win.
The way the authors chose to portray their female characters also gives us a good indication of how they felt about women and their role in society. Hardy uses quite a humorous way to show the misfortunes of his female characters. It’s like he is putting them down through the use of irony and the comedy of their situation. The fact that Tony lives ‘happily ever after’ despite the fact he is unfaithful to not one, but three women, might anger some people. He empowered his female characters, and gave them the chance to humiliate the male lead, who was unfaithful to them. Ironically, it backfired, and instead of the power making them happy, it ended in them feeling sad and guilty for their rash actions. He was trying to show that ‘equality’ wouldn’t automatically make women happy, or maybe he was just showing what power sometimes does to people.
The themes of The Withered Arm are jealousy, superstition and love. The theme of jealousy in the story is shown by Rhoda Brook. She is very jealous after her past relationship with Farmer Lodge failed and Farmer Lodge has moved on.
The women fight because Rhoda’s jealousy creates the tragedy. The writer portrays that unmarried women are inferior this is how the story winds around her as she becomes bitter and causes the tragedy.
The Ice Palace was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald when he was twenty three which was about the time when he was married to a beautiful girl, like Sally Carrol. Being himself a northerner the writer was perhaps amusing himself and his girlfriend.
In the Ice Palace, Fitzgerald portrays women with an attractive appearance and interesting character. He describes Sally Carrol as laid back, charming, popular and ambitious. He describes her physical appearance as well as her inner personality. This reveals a different attitude than Hardy’s descriptions. This may be due to the time period difference as this was written later than Hardy’s story.
Female characters are important in the twentieth century stories because they define and control the action in the story.
In The Ice Palace the story revolves around how the women are portrayed. In the different scenes whatever the woman is to do, the other characters are set around this. This gives a powerful feel to the control the women have over the whole story.
For example, Sally Carrol is the central character and she moves from North to South and rejects her fiancées.
The writer tends to be concerned with the issue of gender as he refers to most men ‘canine’ and most women as ‘feline’.
In general the male characters are briefly mentioned and seem to be peripheral.
‘Harry Bellamy, tall, broad, and brisk, came..’
Sally Carrol leaves her husband as she feels suffocated and trapped by his cold, unemotional masculinity. This is shown by the ice in the story as this is cold as the symbolises their non-existent love for each other. The Ice Palace can be seen as a metaphor for a male dominated society as a whole.
Because of this male dominated society Sally Carrol feels trapped by this and cannot communicate her feeling
‘I’m feline. So are you. So are most of the Southern men an’ most of these girls here’
Womens’ relationships with each other have a strange idea in each of the stories that I have looked at in this essay. They all seem to have the competition and jealousy over men but still have female solidarity. They are fighting for men and have competition between each other so they can appear better, while still keeping the unity and solidarity between the female ‘community’. In Hardy’s story they are competitive but in D.H. Lawrences they are united. This is the type of contrast that can be seen when the two stories are compared.
Overall women are portrayed differently in each of the stories mainly because of the different eras they were written in. Some people portray women in a negative way to make them feel small and used. Others concentrate only on their looks and their physical appearance. F. Scott Fitzgerald tries to make them seem equal and make women look better by judging them by physical appearance and their inner personality. But in doing this he seems to be against the men by referring to them as canine, and describing them as animals and referring to women as feline and also describing them as animals. This is an unusual but effective technique.
There are not many similarities in the stories apart from the fact that in each they make the women the center of the story and try to build up a different point of view around them so their idea of women can be put across in the most effective way possible.
Although the women in the 20th century stories that marriage is now an option for them.
Now all the stories are concerned about the relationships with men. All the stories are concerned with women as central characters but in modern stories female characters are active and dictate the action of the story. In Withered Arm and in Tickets Please when the women are united it is more of a threat.
GCSE English Coursework MARCH/APRIL 2002
Oliver Maule
Miss Lilley
Year 10
Set 1
