Take a Girl Like You: Analysis of Major Characters
"Take a Girl Like You" explores the complexities of relationships through its major characters, primarily focusing on Jenny Bunn, a principled young schoolteacher navigating the challenges of romance and societal expectations. Strikingly beautiful yet morally resolute, Jenny grapples with her desire to remain a virgin until marriage, facing relentless sexual attention and her own conflicting emotions. Her journey leads her to a tumultuous relationship with Patrick Standish, a charming yet irresponsible teacher who embodies the allure of a playboy while struggling with his own deeper desires.
In contrast, Graham McClintoch, Patrick's roommate, represents the more conventional suitor who respects Jenny’s values but lacks the charisma and confidence to win her heart. The narrative also introduces Anna le Page, a French woman whose bold views on free love challenge Jenny's perspectives on morality and friendship. Julian Ormerod, an upper-class friend, serves as a moral foil, embodying a respectful yet non-committal male presence in Jenny's life. Through these characters, the novel delves into themes of desire, virtue, and the societal pressures shaping the choices of women in their romantic pursuits.
Take a Girl Like You: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Kingsley Amis
First published: 1960
Genre: Novel
Locale: A country town south of London, and London
Plot: Tragicomedy
Time: The late 1950's
Jenny Bunn, a twenty-one-year-old schoolteacher. She is, in most things, an ordinary young woman, pleasant, with average tastes and wants. She is better than average in the domestic virtues, disciplined and orderly in her habits, and accommodating of others. She has a resolute moral compass, and here her problem begins. She is strikingly beautiful, but, with the guidance of her dour, pedestrian, north-of-England morality, she has resolved to remain a virgin until she marries. Being sensible, she has learned to deal with the barrage of sexual attention that comes from almost every quarter, from even the most respectable or homely of men and, occasionally, from women. She has more difficulty with her own divided nature, however, which does and does not want to remain firm. She also surmounts this difficulty. She does want to be married, and here she falters. The men whom she finds who will naturally respect her morality do not interest her. They are the pathetic, homely, and absurd men of the town. The men who do interest her are impatient with her reserve. After Jenny has lived for a time in the company of women for whom virginity is no longer even a wistful memory, and after she has had difficulties with almost every character in the novel (those who have no direct designs on her are offended when Jenny attracts people close to them), she falls prey to the less-than-honorable actions of Patrick Standish, with whom she is in love, and whom she had hoped to marry. She becomes his mistress.
Patrick Standish, a master at a local boys' school. Handsome, intelligent, and cosmopolitan, he is a self-styled rake and playboy and devotes much of his energy to womanizing. He also is a conscientious and concerned teacher, in spite of himself, and he has another nature, less avaricious and more self-content. This other nature, hidden behind the playboy at adolescence, has rarely been seen since. In his adult persona, he has grasped what he thinks he ought to want, at the expense of what he does want. One look at Jenny is enough to bring out the wolf in him, and their first date establishes the pattern that continues through the novel. Patrick behaves badly and then tries to argue her out of her principles. Later, he regrets his boorishness and tries to make amends; Jenny, seeing no ready alternatives, forgives him. Their romance goes thus, up and down through the novel, the down moments being many, and the up moments including a long idyll when it looks as though they will marry, during which Patrick begins to feel something like his preadolescent contentment. Finally, Patrick gives in to his lesser self. In actions that, if not quite amounting to rape, are certainly more than seduction, he makes Jenny his mistress.
Graham McClintoch, a young chemistry instructor and Patrick's roommate. A would-be Patrick Standish, Graham is the prototype for the homely and pathetic men who would respect Jenny's morality but are quite unfit to be her husband. Although he devotes as much energy as Patrick to sexual misadventures and dotes on Patrick's advice, he has no success. His one date with Jenny falters when he becomes more interested in his own self-pitying fantasies than he is in Jenny. There are good sides to him, and he is not meant to be farcical, except perhaps as a romantic figure. During the crisis at the end of the novel, his natural chivalry proves insufficient to save Jenny from Patrick.
Anna le Page, a French girl who lives in Jenny's boardinghouse. She is a posturing and cosmopolitan woman, the most extreme of the many who appear in the novel. When Jenny makes a sincere try at friendship, Anna gives back only a large dose of polemics on the theme of free love and self-expression and makes a pass at her. By the end of the novel, she has revealed to Jenny that her public persona, by which she was, in her own eyes, a rebel and an outcast, is simple fabrication. Jenny thinks only that in revealing her true self she seems all the more false.
Julian Ormerod, an upper-class friend of the men. He is the master of ceremonies for most of the book's fun and mayhem. He has built up a real charm out of a supercilious manner. He has his own moral compass, and although his north is nowhere near Jenny's, these two are in a way meant for each other. He knows enough not to make an unwelcome proposition, and he knows not to let his desire for a woman run away with his better judgment. He is the prototype of the man who might respect women's virtue, at least in the woman he meant to marry, without being pathetic. As such, he is something of a missing link for the novel, considered a dying breed. At the time of the novel, he is simply not disposed to be married, and he and Jenny quickly establish a solid understanding. He and Jenny may be friends, and she gets some of the benefit of his natural chivalry, but their relations end there.