The first story, 'Tony Kytes, the Arch Deceiver', by Thomas Hardy, is a pre 19th century piece of literature. The story features Mr. Tony Kytes, a young, eligible and attractive gentleman. Who has, after a long string of relationships and attractions to various women of his town, has decided to settle down, and is currently engaged to Milly Richards. However, he has a reputation for being a bit of a ladies man, and his promiscuous past has left him with rather a large group of female admirers, to which he is not completely detached from.

The story opens with Tony Kytes driving along in his wagon one Saturday, and he happens to come across Unity Sallet, a young woman to whom he was previously involved with. Unity approaches him, asking for a lift, this proposal leaves him in quite a quandary, which gives the reader the first sign of the etiquette and customs of that time, and how they differ from our own in the present day. His problem was weather or not to give Unity a lift, now, to us in present day, the obvious choice would of course be to offer the lady a lift. However, in the times when this story was written, it

After the women discover each other, Tony rushes back to the wagon to separate the women, who are by this time busy quarrelling amongst themselves after overhearing each other's conversations with Tony. After breaking them up, Tony then proposes to each one in turn, the first two refuse, but his current fiance agrees to his proposal. This is very revealing about the character of the other two women and that of his fiance, is shows how the other two women are much stronger and prouder than his fiance, which could also been seen as an indication to Tony character, as he chose to marry a weak women who was easy to push around.

would be seen as improper for a young man to be seen with a young lady un-chaperoned, especially when the man in question was engaged to be married. However, it would also be impolite to refuse this lady a lift, and consign her to making the same journey as him, on foot. In the end he decides to give her a lift, and she joins him in the wagon. As they are travelling, talk turns to their previous relationship, and Tony begins to think about weather he made the right decision in choosing Milly, his current fiance. This is very revealing about Tony, as it shows to the reader that Tony is not at all mature enough and emotionally developed enough to actually 'settle down', it becomes apparent that Tony quite enjoyed his promiscuous lifestyle, constantly being chased by attractive young women.

Both the stories, though written in completely different times, have some remarking similarities, especially in the way they portray the men. In both stories, the men are portrayed as lying deceitful, unfeeling people. In the first story we can see this by the way Tony Kytes tries to deceive all the women, playing them for fools and trying to get his own way, not thinking about how his actions may hurt his fiance. In the second story, Mr. Marroner is thinking only about himself when he takes advantage of Gerta. Who is clearly described as 'innocent and docile' so the readers can clearly see that none of this is Gertas' fault, and that she was an easy target for Mr. Marroners' advances. Both men are also shown to be unrealistic, only thinking about themselves. For example in the first story, it is clear that Tony Kytes is not thinking about his current situation when he is engaged in romantic conversation with the two women who were not to be his wife, he was only thinking about himself. As was Mr. Marroner, when he sent Gerta a cheque for $50, a small sacrifice when compared to the life that was stolen away from Gerta the moment Mr Marroner impregnated her with his child. The $50 was also a very u

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Approximate Word count = 1771
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)