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The Chaser, By John Collier

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John Collier’s ‘The Chaser’, a short story that follows Alan Austen, a character who shows typically feminine or androgynous traits, displaying Alan being timid, easily manipulated, cowardly, and inevitably, the harbinger of his own destruction. ‘The Chaser’ features Alan seeking out an old man for a love potion to make Diana fall in love with him. From a sophisticated gender perspective, ‘the Chaser’ is shown to be patriarchal to start, with androgynous areas that end with the story being heavily androgynous. Based on text in the story and underlying themes, ‘The Chaser’ is Feminine and Androgynous, and Austen displays Feminine androgynous traits heavily by the end of the story.
Alan shied away from the old man from the beginning, and …show more content…

The old man knows that mentioning the glove cleaner shows no immediate purpose, other than serving as a seed planted in Alan 's mind for later, as he says himself, “If I did not sell love potions,’ said the old man, ‘I should not have mentioned the other matter to you.’’’(18) He knows that inevitably, someone will come to buy the poison, whether it be Diana to kill Alan, or Alan to rid himself of the obsessive woman he made of Diana. “She will forgive you, in the end...but she will forgive you-In the end” the subtext presents itself, Alan chose not to see the old man 's true meaning- Diana will forgive him. Once she kills him.

The old man punishes Alan in this story and he provides the means for the punishment, yes, but it 's Alan who brings it to himself by his obsession with Diana and his own selfishness. He wants Diana because he can 't obtain her love and interest, and when he gets what he wants he 's going to realize that it 's not what he hoped. Having an obsessed admirer that will never leave you- this is what the old man promises Alan. “She will never allow you to sit in draught (unpleasantness), to neglect your food. If you 're an hour late, she will be

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