Tony Kytes the Arch Deceiver

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"Tony Kytes the Arch Deceiver" is a hilarious story of an afternoon when Tony was driving home from the market in his wagon. A pretty girl called Unity to whom he was quite close before he met his present fiancé stopped him and asked him to give her a lift home. They were riding along, having a flirtatious conversation, when Tony saw Milly, his fiancé. Fearing her displeasure on seeing Unity riding with him on the wagon, he manages to persuade Unity to hide at the back of the wagon. Extraordinarily, later in the journey Tony manages to persuade Milly to do the same thing when he sees yet another young lady, this time called Hannah. Inevitably, at the end of the journey the three young ladies discover each other's presence. After a brief period of mayhem, Milly and Tony are alone again, planning their wedding.

"The Seduction" tells a story of a boy and a girl, who after a party, go to sit by the river in the early hours of the morning. They talk a little and giggle while drinking vodka. He then quickly began his seduction of her with a kiss. As a result of this encounter, she becomes pregnant. She is very angry, afraid and ashamed as she realises that her life has changed forever.

Both pieces of writing show how young women can be misled by somewhat more experienced men. This is shown by their innocence and tendency to follow the male initiatives, to the extent that the young ladies in the Tony Kytes story are even willing to suspend common sense and ludicrously conceal themselves beneath tarpaulin. The differences between the two pieces of text lie inherently in the period in which they were written, in that the consequences of the gullibility of the girl in the seduction poem are devastating, whilst the girls in the Tony Kytes story merely suffer some injury to their dignity. This is, in my opinion, entirely due to the period in which the story is written and this would not be the case today.

In the Tony Kytes story there were six characters, the four main ones being Tony and the three young ladies. The one we get to know best of all is Tony. Through his conversation with the girls, he reveals himself as being an indecisive, weak but well meaning character. He finds it difficult to refuse any of the women a lift, and seems beguiled by the beauty of each of them when the others were out of sight as when he says to Unity "I never knowed you was so pretty before!" The female characters are not very diverse, and they are described very superficially as stereotypes of manipulative feminine whiles as when Unity says "and-can you say I'm not pretty, Tony? Now look at me!"
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The poem has only two characters, a boy and a girl, who are never named. In this poem, it is the girl whose character is brought most to life. The boy seems almost a shadowy background figure. The poem is about her dreams and romantic idealism and the boy could be almost anybody. He is just a focus for her fantasies. As the poem progresses, we are drawn to a feeling of deep compassion for this young girl as the real world bursts in upon her dreams. Particularly poignant is when after discovering her pregnancy, she breaks the ...

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