After the night the boy disowns the girl. This leaves her alone, betrayed and pregnant. Stanza nine is the first time we realise the girl is pregnant. In the stanza it says “she ripped up all her My Guy and her Jackie photo-comics.” These words build up a meaning of betrayal by the stereotypical image the magazines disseminated. Next, the poem continues with the words “like confetti.” I would argue that this is symbolic of marriage, used in an ironic manner in this case. The idea of marriage when or before you have a baby is another one of the happy endings she feels let down by. Further on in the poem she begins to question her perception of reality with quotes like “where, now, was the summer of her sixteenth year.” As well as complex lexis the poet uses other building blocks in language to emphasize how the girl is feeling. When the poet says “glamour with a stammer” she is using rhyming in the wrong place to show how the young girl’s life is suddenly falling to pieces, leaving her confused. Another example of use of language might be “stupid, stupid, promises.” This indicates that the repetition of the word “stupid” reinforces her mistakes. The poet is trying to show that the girl can’t believe she has been gullible enough to be deceived in this way.
The last couple of stanzas really do go on about the reaction the girl gives to her pregnancy. Most of the quotes show how she is picking at every single thing that will come from the pregnancy. To her none of them are in the slightest bit good. She even begins to feel discriminated by her own gender. The fourteenth stanza consists of the words “despicable, feminine void.” The adjective “despicable” creates a powerful impression of condemnation about being feminine. She blames her gender and believes if she wasn’t a girl then she wouldn’t be left with the burden of a child. She then goes on to say, “better to starve yourself.” This shows that she is comparing her situation to other even more dire situations. In her mind her situation is far worse and she would give anything to have something else in return. In the final stanza another important piece of evidence is used, “you always looked the type.” This represents the girl’s ultimate fear that others will pass judgement on her without actually ever knowing her. Another example of that might be when the poet states, “turn away, move away, fade away…” This shows me that the tripling of the word “away” is very dramatic to emphasize her wanting to cut herself from society.
I am now going to discuss “Cousin Kate” by Christina Rosetti. This poem tells the tale of a cottage maiden who lives a simple life, at least until she meets a powerful lord. He takes her away to his palace home, full of materialistic items and values. The cottage maiden is soon cast aside in favour of her cousin. Obviously she feels betrayed and used but finds hope in the fact she has conceived a child as a result of this relationship. She must now face life as a single mother which was frowned upon at the time.
In the first stanza of the poem we find out about he female narrator. She describes herself as a “Cottage maiden” which indicates that she is in a rural setting and is “hardened by the sun and air.” This quote could mean that she spends a lot of time with nature and has worked hard for what little she has. This recalls the romantic tradition with poets like William Wodsworth who often wrote about poor people who have worked hard with nature all around them – The Romantic period (1789 – 1730). The quotations “contented” and “not mindful” seem to suggest she was happy with her rural life and didn’t even know she was beautiful. As a result of this she fell into the relationship not aware of what was ahead. The repetition of the statement “Why did a great lord find me out?” tells me she is confused and is trying to make sense of what has happened.
The cottage maiden has been treated poorly by the Lord. The contradiction “shameless shameful” is and interesting technique used to show the reader the huge contrast between the two ex-lovers. The Lord is “shameless” in the way he treats women, whereas the cottage maiden is “shameful” about the way he has treated her. We know that the lord has no respect for the cottage maiden because of the quotations “silken knot” and “changed me like a glove.” This would seem to imply that she had been treated like a possession. The Great Lord regards her not as a human being but as an item of property which has no feelings. This is re-alliterated in stanza four with the lexis “howl in dust.” She no longer feels human and is left to howl like a mere beast. The image of her “in dust” reinforces the fact that she has lost her sense of value and self respect. Another important piece of evidence is “might have been a dove”. These words build up a sense of loss and waste. The female narrator feels she had the potential to be as pure as a dove but is not to be regarded as “shameful” by the society she lives in.
Also in the poem there are some very important words which explain to us what the Lord was like. He is portrayed as a sexual predator who preys upon vulnerable women. I would use the quotations “he saw you at your fathers gate” and “he walked your steps” to prove this. The words describe how the “Great Lord” has watched carefully and chosen Cousin Kate to be his next sexual conquest. The words “saw” and “watched” are visual and have been used in a stalker like context. The poet goes on to say “lifted you from mean estate” which reminds us of what the lord did to the cottage maiden. He was chosen two women of poor backgrounds to us as “playthings.” He has the power to lift someone from poverty to “sit with him on high” until he gets bored and “cast me by.” He is exploitive and takes advantage of his apparent power and wealth. He enjoys imposing it on is un-knowing victims.
Just like the differences between the “cottage maiden” and the “Great Lord” have been analysed in the poem, so have the differences between the narrator and “Lady Kate”. At the beginning of stanza five the female narrator states “Your love was writ in sand”. This creates the memorable impression of bitterness. The cottage maiden doesn’t want to believe that “Cousin Kate” loves the Lord like she did. She claims her love was “true” and Kate’s is as inconstant as the sands which can easily be washed away by the tides. She then goes on to say “If you stood where I stand” and “I would have spat into his face.” These are used to show the contrast between the two girls loyalty to their family. The narrator suggests if she was in Kate’s position she would have fiercely resisted the lord’s advances. The extent of the maidens anger is apparent from the way in which she seems to put all the blame on the Lord’s and Kate’s shoulders. It looks like she is setting up these differences to make herself feel better, but are they really true?
The last stanza goes on to talk about the good contrasts between the two relationships. The stanza opens with the words “a gift you have not got”. This is the point in the poem when the narrator finds some consolation in what has happened. She has got something out of the relationship that Kate has not – a son. “My shame, my pride” are the words the narrator used to describe her son. Again, this is a contradiction. Her son will bring her shame because in her society it is unacceptable to be a single mother, but on the other side of the coin he is her pride. This is because he is the only positive thing to come out of the relationship. At the end of the poem there is a sense of victory in the words “to wear his coronet”. She is pleased that she has something that Kate wants; a son, or to her a masculine heir for her father. Just like she and the Lord denied her of her dignity, she has denied Kate of the one thing she really wants.
In the above paragraphs I have looked at the poems individually, but now I am going to look at the poems together to find similarities and differences between them. I will do this using the information I have presented when I was looking at the poems on there own.
Similarities
Both poems are about how two women get mistreated by a man and are left with a child. A quote from “The Seduction” that I would use to show that the girl was used would be “he swiftly contrived to kiss her”. The word “contrived” is very important here. It means the boy intended to appear spontaneous or genuine but really it was planned and un-heartfelt. This tells us that he had no feelings for the girl much like the “Great Lord” in “Cousin Kate”. Lexis like “possession”, “Unclean thing” and “Howl in dust” were used in the poem “Cousin Kate” to show the reader that the narrator was little more than these things to the lord. One similarity that I find interesting is one that most will neglect to see; both poems were written by women. I would argue that this could mean the women thought that men would rarely be affected by the problems in these poems. Both were written in different times, but both show some feminism. For example in “The Seduction” one line was “fall into this despicable feminine void.” If you were just looking at the girls feelings and not the poets it could be said that this line is used to show the girls disgust at her own gender. I am also looking at what the poet is thinking so maybe this is a bit of the poets own opinions on being feminine. Maybe she believes we are cursed as women because the burden of a child always falls on our shoulders. I wouldn’t say feminism is quite as apparent in “Cousin Kate” but it is there. There isn’t one single quote I could use to truly back up this theory but if you were to read through the poem you would certainly get a sense of this. Other similarities are mostly about the plot. For instance, both have a reference to what society will think – “you always looked the type” and “Call me and outcast thing”. Another is that they both feel betrayed – “She ripped up all her My Guy and Jackie photo-comics” and “would have spat in his face”. The stanzas of the poems are set out differently but both still manage to rhyme in a very constant way with words a like “docks, blocks” and “air, fair” which I think shows how poems have almost always rhymed no matter what century you’re in.
Differences
Even though the plots of the poems are relatively similar there are also many differences. Although both women have children, they both feel differently about the child. At the end of “The Seduction” it is quite sad and the girl does not want her child, and it appears that no-one else will either. In “Cousin Kate” the poem ends on a cold, yet triumphant note because the narrator’s child is the only thing good that has come out of her being mistreated. It is not only her that wants the child either; her cousin’s father would also have loved a grandson. It is not just this that is different. The social spectrums of the two couples are also different. In “The Seduction” the two characters have the same social class. We can tell this from the quotation “eating me dinner”. They met at a party and you don’t tend to have people of totally different classes at a local party. In “Cousin Kate” on the other had, when the narrator meets the Lord she is only a “cottage maiden” who has been “hardened by sun and air”. We know the Lord is rich because of the quote “He lifted you from mean estate”. This suggests he would have had to have been a higher class to “lift” Kate in the way he did. It is not just the plot that has differences. The two poems are written in different times as I mentioned earlier on in this essay. “Cousin Kate” was written in the nineteenth century and “The Seduction” was written near the end of the twentieth century. Even if you weren’t aware of the time periods in which these poems were written you would be able to tell by the use of language. “The Seduction” uses more modern language whereas in “Cousin Kate” words like “flaxen”, “writ” and “coronet” are used. Even the settings and objects in the poems are different. Words like “magazines”, “iodine” and “traffic” wouldn’t have been used when “Cousin Kate” was written because it is set in a different time.
I would say that my favourite poem is “Cousin Kate”. Most of my class mates have chosen “The Seduction” but for some reason the way in which Christina Rossetti has wrote “Cousin Kate” appeals to me. Although “The Seduction” is very blunt and distressing it seems to be all doom and gloom whereas “Cousin Kate” has light at the end of the tunnel. It seems to have a moral; no matter what happens you can get through it. “The Seduction” has a very unsatisfying ending leaving the reader wondering what the girl will end up doing with the baby, but in “Cousin Kate” you know everything is going to be ok. Language like “fell in love” and “scum” in “The Seduction” pale in comparison to language like “Contented” and “doubt you fret” that seem to flow out of the verses of “Cousin Kate”. The bitterness you see in Eileen McAuley’s poem seems so two dimensional compared to the bitterness in “Cousin Kate” which you can take in so many other directions. I am not saying that “The Seduction” is a bad poem because it is a great piece of writing but when you compare it to the work of Christina Rossetti, you are left unsure.
