“The Chaser” shows the struggle that some men go through when looking for love. We start our story in an old man’s potion shop. He talks to our male lead character about his many potions for sale. He mentions a “life cleaner” potion that his older customers purchase for a great sum of money. Our lead man however does not want that and cannot afford that anyways. He is looking for a love potion. The old man tells him all these great things this love potion can do but when he asked the price, he says it is only one dollar. This peculiar story is one best analyzed using feminist criticism.
It is interesting how the story begins in the way that it is describing our lead man Alan Austen. The very first sentence starts with “Alan Austen, as nervous …show more content…
Why would this be considered love? We can only assume Alan is very lonely and believes this is love because he wants affection of some kind, or he is somewhat sexist and thinks this is the role all loving women play. In the tale, women are seen almost as animals that you can pay to have trained to be obedient. However men who in the beginning are seen as feeble, are then given this great power once they have the benefits of using these potions on women. For example we see Alan begin to get a little bit of an ego towards the end of the story. The one intriguing thing about this tale however, is that roles are somewhat switched. For example in Cinderella, it is the girl who is viewed as weak, seeking love. The man in Cinderella wanted nothing to do with her until he noticed her at the ball because she looked so pretty. We could say the magic used on her to make the dress and carriage, is similar to the potion. Her beauty enchanted the prince, and the potion in the tale is used to enchant the women. So technically, your average gender roles are switched around and it is the man trying to achieve true love instead of the woman. However in “The Chaser” there is a dark life cleaning potion to kill the girl once you are sick of her and I don't believe Cinderella had any dark cleaning tricks up her ball gown to kill off prince charming. Then again, she was good at cleaning the house, and how long can happily ever after really
It is interesting how the story begins in the way that it is describing our lead man Alan Austen. The very first sentence starts with “Alan Austen, as nervous …show more content…
Why would this be considered love? We can only assume Alan is very lonely and believes this is love because he wants affection of some kind, or he is somewhat sexist and thinks this is the role all loving women play. In the tale, women are seen almost as animals that you can pay to have trained to be obedient. However men who in the beginning are seen as feeble, are then given this great power once they have the benefits of using these potions on women. For example we see Alan begin to get a little bit of an ego towards the end of the story. The one intriguing thing about this tale however, is that roles are somewhat switched. For example in Cinderella, it is the girl who is viewed as weak, seeking love. The man in Cinderella wanted nothing to do with her until he noticed her at the ball because she looked so pretty. We could say the magic used on her to make the dress and carriage, is similar to the potion. Her beauty enchanted the prince, and the potion in the tale is used to enchant the women. So technically, your average gender roles are switched around and it is the man trying to achieve true love instead of the woman. However in “The Chaser” there is a dark life cleaning potion to kill the girl once you are sick of her and I don't believe Cinderella had any dark cleaning tricks up her ball gown to kill off prince charming. Then again, she was good at cleaning the house, and how long can happily ever after really