Comparison of seduction and cousin kate
... The two poems I will be comparing are ‘Cousin Kate’ by Christina Rossetti, and the other one being ‘The Seduction’ by Eileen McAuley. ... The Seduction was written approximately in the nineteen eighties. Whereas Cousin Kate was written in approximately the pre nineteenth century, the two titles are very different as with The Seduction you can tell what it’s going to be about. But in Cousin Kate you have no idea what it’s going to be about, you never expect a woman, in late eighteen hundreds, to go against their Lord. ... The Seduction gives you the image of a person trying to seduce another person by using a type of object. By hearing the name Cousin Kate you think to yourself that it’s going to be about a person or their life. ... In The Seduction the narrative is that a young boy meets an innocent teenage girl, gets her drunk and seduces her and gets her pregnant. ... She is ashamed of being pregnant whereas the cottage maiden in Cousin Kate in proud of her ‘gift’ yet mortified of her child at the same time. The Story of ‘Cousin Kate’ is similar but very different in diverse ways; Cousin Kate ends with the Cottage Maiden being proud, strong and ready to take on her Lord that got her pregnant while the Seduction is with the girl being deeply mortified of the fact that she is pregnant. Cousin Kate is about a cottage maiden who is enchantingly in love with the Lord. The Lord then casts her by and chooses Cousin Kate; who might not be blood relative but at pre-ninetieth century ‘cousin’ meant a friend, or as such. The Lord married Cousin Kate; who now lives the luxurious life; however, the cottage maiden is more satisfied than Cousin Kate. ... She mentions in the poem “Yet I’ve a gift you have not got, and seem not like to get” possibly signifying that Kate is infertile or doesn’t yet have a son or daughter. ... “Better to destroy your life in modern, man-made ways” the narrator in ‘The Seduction’ feels that men are the destruction of their love. ... The young lady in "Cousin Kate" lived in the 19th Century, was in her early twenties, she was frowned upon because she had a child out of wedlock, "My fair-haired son, my shame. ... While the girl in ‘The Seduction’ lived in the later part of the eighties, she was only sixteen; society frowned upon her because she has had a teenage pregnancy not because she wasnt wedded. As well the girl in ‘The Seduction’ was under the influence of alcohol, she didnt have sex out of her own will, yet she did since she interpreted that “A stranger could lead you to bright new worlds, and how would you know, if you never took a chance”. The mood of "Cousin Kate" is initially depressing and bitter, “So now I moan, an unclean thing that might have been a dove. ... As well her ‘Cousin’ Kate cannot have children, so she thinks she has an advantage over her. The mood of "The Seduction" is painful and harsh all the way through the poem and even more so at the closing stages, "She sobbed in the cool, locked darkness of her room. ... In "The Seduction", McAuley uses "and on that day she broke the heels of her high white shoes (as she flung them at the wall),” showing that she wants to destroy any memory of that fateful night though she can’t because the remembrance of her child.