In ‘The Seduction’, there are also only a few similes. “Better to starve yourself, like a sick precocious child”. This simile demonstrates how the girl in the poem is reacting in a childlike manner, when ironically, she herself is about to become a mother, being forced to leave her adolescent behaviour and her childhood behind. The theme of the girl only being a child herself is continued throughout the poem. Imagery is used by McAuley, to show how the girl is angry that she has lost her childhood, and is missing out on all the things that her friends, and other teenagers, are doing. “Where were the glossy photographs of summer, Day trips to Blackpool, jumping all the rides?” This question demonstrates too, the jealousy the girl feels towards her friends, and the despair she feels at missing out. “So she cried as she missed all the innocence around her.” The images are very definite and unchangeable, demonstrating the devastation and loss around her. It is this devastation and loss which causes the reaction, also seen in ‘Cousin Kate’. “The neighbours call me an outcast thing.” What happens to both women in each of the poems leads to them being branded by the people around them. “Than to have neighbours whisper that, ‘you always looked the type’”.
This theme of alienation from their community plays a pivotal role in both poems, even though they are written so many years apart. Perhaps what both poems show is, regrettably, how little progress has been made in terms of people’s attitudes towards women, despite the fact that in both cases it is the women that have been abused.
The imagery used in ‘The Seduction’, is not the typical romantic image we would expect to see in a seduction, it is far from it. “Where I go by meself, with me dad’s magazines And a bag filled with shimmering, sweet paint thinner.” Here, again, we see the insensitivity of the man; he is only considering his own desires and is entirely ignorant of hers. Similarly, ‘Cousin Kate’ does lack typical romance, and words such as ‘lured’ show how the Lord hunted her down like an animal and made her his ‘plaything’. Where they differ is in the fact that the images created in ‘The Seduction’ are far more provocative. There is the suggestion in ‘Cousin Kate’, that is absent from the ‘The Seduction’ that the Lord at least pretended to love her. ‘His plaything and his love.’
Both poems are very structured and both have exactly the same amount of lines in each stanza. In ‘Cousin Kate’, the second and fourth, and sixth and eighth line of every stanza rhyme. ‘The Seduction’ has a similar structure, with every other line in the poem rhyming. The rhyming pattern and the organisation are perhaps an attempt to find meaning and purpose. However, ironically, this only serves to emphasise the confusion and loss they suffer.
The common theme in both poems is of irreplaceable loss, betrayal, and shame. In ‘The Seduction’, this can be clearly seen in McAuley’s words, “So she cried that she had missed all the innocence around her”. The devastation at the loss can also be seen in ‘Cousin Kate’, though, the way she reacts to the loss is slightly differently. The tone Rossetti uses shows more of an anger which has built up over a period of time, in which she has had chance to reflect on what has happened. “I would have spit into his face”.
In ‘Cousin Kate’, “Chose you and cast me by”, depicts the sense of betrayal felt by the ‘cottage maiden’ at the Lord’s dismissal. However, in ‘The Seduction’, the betrayal is the young girl being disappointed by her expectations, “Cheated by the promise of it all”.
The biggest similarity in the poems though, is the shame both women feel after the birth of their child, a result of their betrayal. “Than to have neighbours whisper that ‘you always looked the type’”. Similarly, in ‘Cousin Kate’, “call me an outcast thing.”
‘Cousin Kate’ ends with a sense of bitterness towards not only the Lord, but also towards her Cousin. She is looking back on the betrayal with a more mature view. Despite this, however, she sees that, although her son has bought her shame, he is also the only positive result to come through the whole affair. “My fair-haired son, my shame, my pride.”
‘The Seduction’ ends with a view, written far more recently after the event, of loss, shame and regret. The girl in the poem feels worthless and alone, “And better, now, to turn away, move away, fade away”. This repetition emphasises the desire on one hand, to escape and by contrast, only serves to remind the reader of the impossibility of that escape.
The settings of both poems seem to reflect an emphasis the mood of the poem. McAuley uses the city to show the absence of romance, ‘Far past the silver stream of the traffic through the city, Far from the blind windows of the tower blocks.’ ‘Cousin Kate’ perhaps in terms of setting is more romantic, but the events that happen are obviously not.
The common message in both poems is that real love is part of the harshness of reality, and not like the perfect romance we see so often in films and magazines. It is only in ‘Cousin Kate’ however, that we see that there is a survival afterwards, and something positive can come from a bad experience of love. “..my pride”. ‘The Seduction” on the other hand, doesn’t have a positive ending, but maybe if it was written a few years later, after the writer has had time to move on and reflect, like in ‘Cousin Kate’, this may have been different.
