Both poems portray images of innocence. In “The Seduction” McAuley shows the girl’s innocence by using her facial features, “All wide blue eyes”. This suggests that she is innocent just like babies and children. In “Cousin Kate” Rossetti writes, “Who could have been a dove”. A dove is white and white signifies purity. If she had not had sex then she would still be pure and might have been a dove. Now she has had sex she will never become a dove because she will never be pure. Although we get the impression of innocence we also get the impression both girls are naive and are looking for romance. The girl in “The Seduction” believes the tales told in the magazines she reads, that she will live happily ever after. “in an acne’d wonderland” and “she nodded quite enchanted”. These quotes show that she wants to live in a magical world where everything is perfect. She expects everything to happen magically for her and although at the beginning she thinks that when she is with the boy, “she nodded quite enchanted” by the end she thinks she everything is false and not as it seems. In a wonderland everything is meant to be perfect but if some one has acne then all cannot be perfect, as people do not like spots.
In the poems both girls feel betrayed. In “The Seduction” she feels betrayed by the boy and the magazines, “by stupid, stupid promises, only tacitly made”. In “Cousin Kate” the cottage maiden felt betrayed by her cousin Kate, “If you stood where I stand, he’d not have won me with his love; nor bought me with his land”. The girl in “The Seduction” feels betrayed by the boy for making her pregnant and making promises he did not keep. She also feels deceived by the magazines, “And she ripped up all her My Guy and her Jackie photo-comics/Until they were just bright paper, like confetti, strewn/On the carpet.” The quote shows that she is angry with the magazines for telling her she will have romance. It might also be interpreted that when you get married you are no longer a child but a grown person. She is no longer a child because she is pregnant and it shows her childhood has left her and she should welcome womanhood. It could also mean she is now too old to read these comics. It is not the happy ending the magazines have promised and it also shows her that her dreams are destroyed. Now she believes she will never have the happy ending.
The girl in “Cousin Kate” feels betrayed by her cousin who marries the Lord that the cottage maiden loved, the man who made her pregnant. The quote above shows that she would not have married him but would have rejected him instead if it was the other way around. The cottage maiden believes that Cousin Kate’s has married for mercenary reasons, not love. “Even so I sit and howl in dust/You sit in gold and sing.” This shows the contrast between Cousin Kate and the cottage maiden. The cottage maiden was rejected because of her child and her affair with the Lord whereas Cousin Kate was accepted and became the Lord’s wife.
In both poems, the poets use clothing imagery. 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).” In “Cousin Kate” Rosetti writes “he wore me like a silken knot/he changed me like a glove.” The white in “the high white shoes” represents purity and virginity and as they are broken it shows she has lost her virginity, that she is no longer pure. It also shows that she is angry, she wore them on the night of the conception of her child and she does not want them any more like she does not want her child. In “Cousin Kate” the “silken knot” imagery illustrates the Lord used her as a “trophy” girl showing that he was in control. He used her to make him look and feel better. The “glove” imagery is suggesting that he did not care about her and that he had a lot of affairs. He got rid of her as quickly as he got rid of his gloves as many men in that time period did. Earlier in the stanza Rosetti writes “his plaything and his love” which indicates that he is just toying with her until something better came along.
Although there are a lot of similarities there are also a lot of differences. The poems are set in different places. In “Cousin Kate” the poem is set in the country, “I was a cottage maiden”. In “The Seduction” the poem is set in the city, “far past the silver stream of traffic through the city”. Rosetti set the poem in the country to shock the reader. The countryside is usually associated with romance and it shows that this, pregnancy, can happen anywhere. McAuley set the poem in the city to emphasise the
unromantic story. Although both poems are set in different places it shows that things like this can happen anywhere.
The two poems are written from a different perspective. “Cousin Kate” is written in the first person, “not mindful I was fair” whereas “The Seduction” was written in the third person, “when she discovered she was three months gone”. Usually the reader feels more sympathy for the person in the poem (story) if it is written in the first person but in this case we do not. In “Cousin Kate” the maiden does not mind having a son or being rejected and we know less about the night the child was conceived. In “The Seduction” although it is written in the third person we feel more compassion towards her. The reader feels like they want to help her because she is very depressed whereas the girl in “Cousin Kate” is simply looking back on events. In “The Seduction” it is written as if it is happening at the time, present tense, and you feel you can help her.
The poems have contrasting endings. “The Seduction” is very negative, “turn away, move away, fade away”. “Cousin Kate” is more positive and triumphant, “yet I’ve a gift you have not got, and seem not like to get”. “The Seduction” is suggesting that it is better to leave the place where you grew up, be forgotten or even kill yourself than to be gossiped about. “Away” is repeated to show how much the girl wants to leave, how she does not want to carry on, to just walk away and leave her problems behind. The girl is filled with self-loathing. In “Cousin Kate” she is control of her life despite everything. “Yet” shows the turning point in the poem and one of the reasons the maiden is so upbeat is also made clear in the above quote, she has a child but Cousin Kate does not and also seems to imply that she cannot conceive. In the last stanza the maiden tenderly talks about her son, “my fair-haired son, my shame, my pride/cling closer, closer yet”. “My shame, my pride” is an oxymoron and shows that although he is the reason she is an outcast she is also very proud of him and does not blame him. He is her son and no-one else’s. “Cling closer, closer” shows the strong bond between mother and son, that they do not want to be separated.
The girls have sex because of different types of love. In “The Seduction” the girl fell in love with him because she drank so much, “as he bought her more drinks, so she fell in love”. But in “Cousin Kate” she felt her love was true. “O Cousin Kate, my love was true/your love was writ in sand”. In “The Seduction” she was blinded by the drink. As she got more and more drunk so she became convinced that she would encounter the love and the happy ending the magazines had promised her. In “Cousin Kate” the maiden believes her love to be the real thing while Cousin Kate’s love was temporary, it could washed away as easily as writing on the sand. The maiden has sex before marriage because she was in love and she thought he felt the same way but the girl in “The Seduction” was drunk and made a stupid decision because she was not thinking clearly.
I quite like both poems. I like “The Seduction” because it is closer to the time period I live in. I can relate to different parts of the poem. I also enjoyed some of the imagery like the “confetti” imagery and “eyes blue as iodine”. Although I like “The Seduction” I prefer the writing technique in “Cousin Kate”. The rhyming scheme is much better and the use of poetic terms throughout the poem gives a clear view on the maiden’s thoughts and feelings.