The second poem is very different. The young teenager thinks that she is just going to have her first kiss, after being at a party all night, and ends up three months later hating herself for the one night that went wrong. In these two poems the men, who cause the women to be pregnant, create a bad image of themselves, as they are seen to be the dishonourable people in the poems.
“As he bought her more drinks, so she fell in love.”
“He” is the man that was responsible for ruining the young girl’s life by making her pregnant. He bought the girl drinks because if she becomes drunk then her brain won’t function properly and therefore she will not know what she is doing when she sleeps with the man. It is also a nice way to bring people to like you, so you could say that he is buying her for the night, but this night will affect the rest of the teenagers life.
The mood of both the poems in general is quite unfortunate, depressing and heart-breaking. The poem written by Christina Rossetti is lamenting, you can tell this because of how some of the words or letters are used. The letter ‘O’ is used in front of a name (Lady Kate), it expresses a sigh, that shows she is mourning for her cousin, that took the one she loved away from her. This letter also shows that she is depressed and that she cannot do anything about it, except feel sorry for herself, unlike the poem written by Eileen McAuley, which shows anger, sadness and regret. The poet explains this by telling us the terrified young woman’s actions and how the woman felt. “She sobbed”This tells us that the young woman was upset, and in other words, she cried because she became pregnant at a very young age which ruined her whole life. She had nothing to do but let her sad feelings out.
The poet used the word “sobbed” because it emphasises her crying for long because the situation she was in. It is written in third person narrative. In the first poem, the lady who gets pregnant is much older than the lady in the second poem is, and although she is depressed she is not as much depressed as the teenager in the second poem is. So therefore the first poem is more grievous than the second poem.
The language of the poems in general is Standard English. The poem called “Cousin Kate” is more old-fashioned by the way that syntax is used.
“You grew more fair than I”
This line shows a good example of the way syntax is used, so that the words can show rhyming couplets can be used in the poem. This phrase tells us that her cousin became more pretty than her in the lord’s eyes, so therefore he left the woman that he got pregnant for her cousin. This is not very responsible and shows that he is not very clever. In “The seduction” poem there is not much complex language used, there are simple words because it is a long poem and the people who read it would get tired as they would not understand it, but there is more complex and compound sentences used.
“And sat in the dark, her head rolling forward
Towards the frightening scum on the water”
Notice how enjambment is used to make the reader want to read on some more and the second line makes a totally new meaning for the first line. There is a complex sentence used. The quote tells us that it was night time and her head was moving towards the face of the man that she did not know. The second line shows that there is a line shows that there is a river or a pond there, with the reflections of the man that made the girl pregnant. The word “scum” is not very formal and it is used to describe horrible, rude and dishonourable people like the man that got the teenager pregnant then left her.
The voice of the poem called “Cousin Kate” is in second person narrative, this means that two people are talking to each other using “You”, this is quite similar to “The Seduction” poem. Then near the end it changes to third person narrative, which means that they are using “I” instead of “You”.
In both the poems the two females who become pregnant are at very different ages and have had very different background lifestyles.
“I was a cottage maiden” “Talked about school, in a disjointed way”
The first line was taken from the poem called “Cousin Kate” and the second line was taken from the poem called “The Seduction”. The first line, tells us that the woman, who attains pregnancy, did not have a very good education when she was younger, this is quite obvious because of the sort of job she has now, which does not have very good pay. The lady’s family must have been quite poor because the woman did not achieve an education; this is maybe where the problem of the woman becoming pregnant starts in the first place. The line from “The Seduction” poem also tells us about the teenage girl that turns pregnant. The line tells us that she is young, she is having her education but is also spoilt, and this is noticeable because she was talking about school in an unattached way. Her family may have money because the girl is taking her education, but does not appreciate that she is achieving one while other people are dreaming of getting one in other countries.
The meaning of the poems show how pregnancy can be a bad thing, because most people who get pregnant are really happy and joyful. These poems show the bad points and how they can happen, with the end results.
“So now I moan, an unclean thing”
This line shows how unhappy the woman who got pregnant is I can tell this because there are words used like “moan” and this shows how things cannot be changed, you have to stick with what you have. This goes for the woman; she cannot change being pregnant. Also a bad point about being pregnant, when you are in the same situation as the woman is that you are seen to be not clean as you have slept with another man before. This means that people will talk behind the unclean woman’s back, not many other men will like to marry her as she has a baby of someone else’s. The poem also shows how easily men can use women and ruin their lives, especially in the first poem; it shows how men have the power to do whatever they want. This is why in the olden days men were more important than women were and only they could go out to work and meetings with friends, while the women stayed at home to look after the children. This is quite understandable for the poem written by “Christina Rossetti” because it is set in the past, but not for the other poem as t is more modern. So this kind of thing would not be regular for “The Seduction” poem.
Both the poems have a different ending,. The poem called “Cousin Kate” finds herself lucky and is happy with what she had, and what she has achieved.
“Yet I’ve a gift you have not got”
This quote from the poem has a turn in it and explains a good point. It means that although all the bad things have happened to the woman, she still thinks positive and lets all her feelings out, She still thinks that she has ended up better than her cousin has. This is very different to “The seduction” poem where the teenager feels upset, ashamed of herself and does not think positive, because she is young and does not know what to do with the rest of her life. She thinks that she has ruined her life and feels sorry and anger for herself.
The title of the first poem is called “Cousin Kate” it is quite calm and it doesn’t emphasise how emotional and horrible the poem is.
The first stanza describes and tells the reader about the woman’s childhood. When the poet asks the woman two rhetorical questions it tell the reader that no-one has praised the lady’s hair before and no-one has loved her like the lord did. This is why maybe she fell in love with him. In the second stanza the woman who gained
Pregnancy is saying how the lord changed her life. This following line is very important, as it is how she feels throughout the poem.
“To lead a shameless shameful life”
This quote tells us how the woman feels now, how she will feel later, and doesn’t feel shameless now, as she is with a man and will feel shameful later when she is pregnant and not married. This quote is made powerful by use of sibilance, as it gives an ‘S’ sound. In the third stanza, it explains how he left the woman for her cousin, even though she was poor. The fourth stanza explains the good things that the lord has done for her cousin, like gives her money, get her married. He is only using her because she is pretty and Kate only wants to be with him because he has money and she doesn’t so there is no true love.
“He lifted you from mean estate”
The line is basically saying ‘He took you from the poor’. They use the words ‘mean estate’ because it represents a place where poor people live. They use the word ‘lifted’ because it shows that nobody got taken from the mean estate; and if you lift something you are bringing it higher, that is what the lord is doing to the pretty woman, bringing her from poor to rich. The lord only lifted the woman from the poor because she had a pretty face. The lord spotted her out of all those people so she must have meant something to the lord, but not when he left her for Cousin Kate. The lord gave his first woman a chance for having a better lifestyle. He must have had a heart to do this because most rich men look for a rich woman to be with whereas the lord picked a poor woman up. But only because she was pretty. The last two stanzas explain how the pregnant woman felt sorry herself.
The next poem called ‘the seduction’ was named that because a girl ends up hating herself and ruining her life. In the beginning of the poem, the poet introduces the people, she sets the setting, she describe the situation and the people that are involved in the poem (characters). The ninth stanza describes how the young pregnant teenager feels, about the situation she is in. The teenager feels regret, scared and sorry for herself. The second half of the poem, explains what she misses out on being a teenager and how she now has to turn into a woman quickly. The last stanza describes strategies in how she wants to kill herself she’s saying that everybody hates her now and people are talking about her.
“And better, now to turn away, move away, fade away”
This evidence explains what the pregnant girl feels like doing, and tells us what she thinks of herself. ‘Fade away’ these two words basically mean to die, because nobody can fade away in reality almost like a metaphor. The girl thinks that it is better to ‘fade away’ than have people talking about you behind your back for the rest of your life. As the sentence goes on the ways in which she wants to be alone gets worse every time. Until it reaches ‘fade away’. She wants to fade away ‘now’ because after she has her baby it may be too late.
I conclude by saying that both the poems are different and similar to each other in their own ways, but one thing they both definitely have in common is, how they explain that pregnancy is a bad thing and how it can cause lots of problems. This is quite good because most people see pregnancy as a good thing and not many people see the bad points of it.
