Peter Howard says:
Nevertheless, it seems to me that it's
indicative of someone who regards women and men very
differently, with
the former having a primarily decorative function. I
interpreted the
Gentleman's remark as suggesting that it was for the
man's benefit that
the woman was 18. I suppose it could be that he was
suggesting that men
hold their truthfulness above their beauty, and women
vice versa. But
that would make it worse, wouldn't it?
I think the Gentleman's voice is more complex than
that because, like the all the best narrators, he's
lying most of the time. His answers get more and more
perfunctory and conventional; when he says the most
important thing for a man is truth he is saying not
what he thinks but what he knows he ought to think. In
his final wistful two-word paean to youth he is
totally honest and behind that I can read a
repudiation of his previous answers. Mandy Dalton has
a good exercise in which she makes people adopt a
persona and write what he feels about something. Then
she says "Now write what he really feels". If I did
that with the Gentleman, I should conclude that his
true answer to "what's the most important thing for a
man to be?" is "sexually attractive to 18-year-old
women". And I am moved by the honesty of that, because
plenty of us go on about the virtues of maturity,
experience etc while secretly feeling they're no
substitute for youth and beauty. That's why Michael
Douglas marries Catherine Anodyne Dimwit, not some
wise, characterful woman his own age, because if you
can't hang on to your own youth it's consoling to hang
on to someone else's. It isn't about gender but the
fear of aging and death. (And before someone objects
that it isn't PC to assume gorgeous young things are
thick, of course I know that, but nature has provided
very few weapons for the plain and aging to use
against the young and beautiful). At the end, the
Gentleman's momentary honesty makes him very
vulnerable, and human.
=====
Sheenagh Pugh
http://x-stream.fortunecity.com/sonicst/68
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