Write your response to 'Cousin Kate' and 'The Seduction', making clear the similarities and differences between the two poems.

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English coursework:

Write your response to ‘Cousin Kate‘ and ‘The Seduction‘, making clear the similarities and differences between the two poems.

In the poem Cousin Kate, Christina Rossetti describes a cottage maiden who has a lower class status. She falls in love with a great lord who is of a higher class than the maiden does and then is then left for her cousin Kate. Now she has become a single women depressed and lonely, regretting ever falling in love with the lord and envying her cousin Kate who has won the lord’s heart. The maiden is described as pure and wholesome a happy women not aware of her beauty in the first stanza.

”I was a cottage maiden, hardened by sun and air, contented with my cottage mates, not mindful I was fair.“

In the poem The Seduction, Eileen McAuley describes a teenage girl who has been forced into having a sexual experience with an older boy, who has encouraged her under the influence of alcohol. She does not have any experience due to her young age. The poem is that of teenage angst!

In Cousin Kate a sense of pastoral life is given.

“I was a cottage maiden”

Cottage maiden symbolizes pastoral life. Cottages are usually found in the outer suburbs of towns and villages so we take it that she is on about the country. A life she has dreamed of comes true when she falls in love with the lord. The poem stresses the tension between the cousins, fighting for the lord’s love, which is offered to Kate.

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In the seduction the setting is described as being dark, deserted and silent.

“He sat in the darkness… where I go by myself,”

This describes an ideal place where the man can seduce the girl. From the 8th stanza onwards Eileen McAuley emphasizes the girls age and the regret she has for the one nightstand.

Both settings are in contrast with each other ”Cousin Kate“ is described as pastoral life, with a gentle almost perfect environment, ”The Seduction “ describes the nightlife of a town perhaps, where a girl meets a man in a club or pub perhaps and then is ...

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