Compare The Ruined Maid by Thomas Hardy and Cousin Kate by Christina Rosetti.

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The Ruined Maid by Thomas Hardy

Cousin Kate by Christina Rosetti

At the beginning of the Victorian period women’s lives were very limited: they could not own money; they were their husband’s property, and if they had no male relatives to support them they were destitute.  Among the few respectable jobs available were teaching and taking in embroidery, but these were poorly paid.  Until 1863 girls were barred from sitting public examinations because the professional journal of doctors proclaimed that ‘Higher Education will produce flat-chested women unable to have babies’.  One in four Victorian women never married, which led to huge numbers of women living on the streets, begging and prostituting themselves.  So, male Victorian writers and poets had two conflicting images of women: the pure, and the ruined.

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Imagery is a technique that is used frequently in ‘Cousin Kate’ and ‘The Ruined Maid’.  In ‘Cousin Kate’ the maid says “even so I sit and howl in dust, you sit in gold and sing”.  This creates an image of how bad Kate is feeling.  The use of the word ‘howl’ gives us an understanding of how upset the maid is, and how bad she feels.  It also makes us compare her crying to the sound of a wolf.  There is also a lot of imagery in ‘The Ruined Maid’.  Most of the imagery in ‘The Ruined Maid’ is about ...

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