The Chaser Essay

True love
Where there is love, there is life. This may not be true in some cases. In the short story “The Chaser” Alan Austen is in love with Diana but she does not feel the same way about him. He consults an old man who sells potions. The old man tells him about two potions, one is the love potion and the other one is the glove-cleaner. Alan wants Diana to become everything that the love potion makes her but her opinion is never presented. Through the characters Alan and the old man, John Collier suggests that women are marginalized and are manipulated by men to do what they want.
The love potion makes the women who drink it fall deeply in love with the man who gives it to her. The old man says “you will be her sole interest in life” and also “she will want to be everything to you”. The love potion will turn Diana into a woman she is not. She will be forced into loving Alan when she doesn’t truly feel that way. She will become very clingy and that is what Alan wants her to be. Alan does not care what Diana thinks about that idea.
Although the old man doesn’t say it, the glove-cleaner will kill the woman. The potion is “a liquid as colorless as water, almost tasteless, quite imperceptible... It is also quite imperceptible to any known method of autopsy.” The one who uses it can get away with murder. The old man says “If I did not sell love potions … I should not have mentioned the other matter to you. It is only when one is in a position to oblige that one can afford to be so confidential.” The old man warns Alan about the love potion so that’s why he mentions the glove