Tony Kytes the Arch Deceiver
"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!"
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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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 heels of her high white shoes; the same shoes in which she walked towards the fateful event, intoxicated with vodka and dreams.
The settings for the two pieces of writing are opposites of each other, in that the Tony Kytes story is set in the country and the Seduction poem in the city. I do not feel that the settings have any great relevance to the universal themes of the stories, which are the relationships between men and women.
Likewise with the Tony Kytes story, the countryside setting does not seem a crucial part of the events. The same scenario could just as well have taken place in a town of the period. What is crucial, however, is the period itself, because it is difficult to imagine such naivety in women of today. At the time in which it was written, all women were expected to marry. There was little opportunity for them to work and become financially independent and so a woman's father literally "gave her away" in the marriage service to become her husband's financial responsibility. Women, therefore, directed all their energies into finding a husband using whatever cunning was necessary. Today the situation is different and women are under no pressure to marry. In the case of the poem, the period in which it is written is highly relevant. It is only relatively recently that it has been acceptable for young girls of sixteen to go alone to parties and to have sexual encounters with strangers.
The theme running through both the story and the poem is one of the subtle and delicate balance of power in the relationships between men and women. In the Tony Kytes story, it is often difficult to decide who is being more manipulative, Tony or the girls. Tony seems to be in less command of the situation than any of the girls. As he is continually acting on impulse. The girls on the other hand are each acting with the clear intention of securing Tony for a husband. However, because of the nature of a woman's place in the society of the time, Tony ultimately has the upper hand. The women must wait to be chosen.
In the poem that is set in the current times, this balance of power would appear to be more equal. This is, however, not the case because of the fundamental differences in the way in which men and women review their relationships. For the boy the encounter appears to be very prosaic, as is shown by his conversation "I'll take you to the river where I spend the afternoons, when I should be at school or eating me dinner." He has set his sights on a brief sexual fling. The girl on the other hand, Sixteen years old and full of romantic dreams and fantasies feels she is being led into some enchanted magical place, as shown by her later reflections: "Where a stranger could bring you to bright new worlds." The women in both of the texts appear to want very much to believe what the men say to them, as when Milly in the story believes in the end that Tony has chosen to marry her rather than the other girls. The reality is, of course, is that she is the only one left willing to be his wife. And in the poem when the girl had convinced herself that the encounter was as of great importance to the boy as it was to her, as is shown by her reflections on "Stupid stupid promises, only tacitly made."
There is a great difference in length between the story and the poem. The story is full of conversation mainly between Tony and the other girls. There is very little description apart from the initial paragraph in which Tony's appearance is discussed. This use of conversation and dialect brings the events very vividly to life. For example " Now dearest Unity, will ye, to avoid all unpleasantness, which I know ye cant bear any more than I, will ye lie down in the back part of the wagon, and let me cover you over tarpaulin 'til Milly has passed?"
The poem makes use of description and metaphor such as "Silver stream of traffic" and "Blind windows of the tower blocks." Such lines are curiously and effectively mixed with prosaic detail, such as "He spat into the river." The two pieces of writing are attempting to do different things. The story is an account of events in all their humorous detail. The poem on the other hand is attempting to create an atmosphere over and above the actual physical details of its setting. "Bottles of vodka" and "The frightening scum on the water" serve as a shadowy background to the girl's enthralment with the boy's "eyes as blue as iodine" and kisses "scented by Listerine." Both pieces of writing are effective in their own way and succeed very well in what they set out to do.
The tone of the Tony Kytes story is humorous throughout. We find ourselves smiling in exasperation as Tony's antics descend further and further into farce for example ' "Of course you must come along wi me" says Tony, feeling a dim sort of sweat rising up inside his clothes.' There is a discrepancy between the understated mildness of the language and the wildly bizarre chain of events it is describing. Even at the climax of the story, when all the girls have discovered each other's existence Tony merely says "Don't ye quarrel my dears-don't ye!"
In contrast, the Seduction poem is full of drama and high emotion as in "But then again better to be smoking scented drugs or festering, invisibly, unemployed." The first half of the poem has a dream like quality, as in "and sat in the dark, her head rolling forward towards the frightening scum on the water." The second half begins abruptly with the intrusion of real life, as the girl discovers her pregnancy. "When she discovered she was three months gone, she sobbed in the cool locked darkness of her room". The rest of the poem portrays disintegration culminating in her total rejection of her pregnant state "And better, now, to turn away, move away, fade away, than to have the neighbours whisper that you always looked the type."
Both pieces of writing use language that is highly appropriate for its purpose. In the Tony Kytes story the conversations paint vivid picture of the scene as when Hannah refuses to marry Tony ' "I have spirit and I do refuse him" and then "What you wont have me Hannah?" says Tony, his jaw hanging open like a dead man's.' The writer pokes gentle fun at the girls: "and away walks Unity Sallet, though she looked back when she'd gone some way to see if he was following her." The final sentence in the story is a good example of the gentle irony that runs through the piece: regarding the wedding between Tony and Milly, "everybody in Long Puddle was there almost" the obvious exceptions were Unity and Hannah!
In the poem, there is no real humour. Even the clumsy way of speaking which the boy has, such us "Eating me dinner", which could be comical, come across only as pathos. The writer makes use of numerous adjectives such as "softly rounded belly", "pink smiling faces" and "grey and frothy tide." The phrase used to describe her ultimate feelings about the pregnancy is very powerful: "This despicable feminine void." These few words convey the situation in its entirety; its negative nature, that it is a purely female problem and that it is inescapable.
The women in both the story and the poem appear at first to be from different worlds with nothing in common. However they are, in fact, united by their femaleness; by the vulnerability that they share simply by being women, trying to have a relationship with a man.