A Comparison Between Tony Kytes, The Arch Deceiver by Thomas Hardy and The Seduction by Eileen McAuly

A Comparison Between Tony Kytes, The Arch Deceiver by Thomas Hardy

and The Seduction by Eileen McAuly

"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...

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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.