In this essay, I will be comparing the poems 'Cousin Kate' by Christina Rossetti and 'The Seduction' by Eileen McAuley and also asking the question, "How do the two main female protagonists of the poem feel betrayed?"

Cousin Kate and The Seduction

In this essay, I will be comparing the poems ‘Cousin Kate’ by Christina Rossetti and ‘The Seduction’ by Eileen McAuley and also asking the question, “How do the two main female protagonists of the poem feel betrayed?” ‘The Seduction’, was written as part of a competition and was based on a water theme. Eileen McAuley’s poem starts down on the banks of the River Mersey, with a young boy and girl. They have met at a party the night before and the girl becomes so enchanted by him that she agrees to follow him down to the Birkenhead docks. They then proceed to have sex and the poem ends with the young girl becoming pregnant and inevitably questioning and regretting her actions. Christina Rossetti’s poem begins with the narrator describing herself and introducing a “great lord”. She then talks of how he “lured” her to his palace home and took away her virginity only to discard her “like a glove”, once he had what he wanted. The poem then goes on to tell how the lord fell in love with the narrators Cousin Kate and in turn married her. The narrator then goes on to say that had she been in her Cousin’s position she would never have accepted the offered hand and she also questions her Cousin Kate’s love for the lord and claims that her hand in marriage was bought. ‘Cousin Kate’ ends with a change in mood and the narrator seems almost to be childishly mocking her Cousin as she can give the lord what her cousin cannot, a heir.

The two poems have many similarities but also many differences. The structures of the two poems are quite different as ‘The Seduction’ has 16 verses each with four lines, whilst ‘Cousin Kate’ has only 4 verses but these vary with from 8 to 18 lines. On the other hand both poems have distinct rhyme schemes. In ‘Cousin Kate’ and in ‘The Seduction’ the alternate line ending rhyme. The most obvious difference is the gap in eras. ‘Cousin Kate’ is a pre-twentieth century poem whilst ‘The Seduction’ is a more modern piece; these differences in time are obvious as a result of the actions and descriptions of the characters. No woman from the 1800’s would have attended parties without a chaperone nor would they have drunk vodka and worn “high white shoes.” Neither would a man from that time have called a woman, “little slag.” This time difference creates differences in views and values. The poems are contemporary versus traditional. The contemporary setting of Liverpool and the industrial Birkenhead Docks versus the traditional agricultural background of the countryside. The Birkenhead Docks are an ideal setting, as they are just as seedy and unromantic as the boy. “frightening scum on the water” and “The Mersey, green as a septic wound” both establish the Docks as a part of a sleazy setting. Liverpool at the time was a city in industrial decline, an urban wasteland that was bleak and depressing for those who lived there. This is in direct contrast to the more romantic countryside setting of ‘Cousin Kate’, which is created by the sentence, “Hardened by sun and air.” Eileen McAuley begins her poem by setting the scene, “After the party, early Sunday morning, He led her to the quiet bricks of Birkenhead docks. Far past the silver stream of traffic through the city, Far from the blind windows of the tower blocks.” Already we can see that they were at a party and the inference to the Birkenhead Docks immediately informs us of their location. The next two lines set the unromantic and sleazy mood of the poem. As the poet writes, “He led her” we can also see that the boy was very much in the lead from the start of the poem. The next verse writes, “He sat down in the darkness, leather jacket creaking madly. He spat into the river, fumbled in a bag. He handed her vodka, and she knocked it back like water, She giggled, drunk and nervous, he muttered ‘little slag’.” Once again the boy is very much calm and in control, whilst the girl is nervous and so perhaps drinks even more in an attempt to become more at ease, this just magnifies her naivety, to us. His usage of the derogatory term, “little slag,” gives us an insight into his view on women and informs us that he sees them as commodities which he can use and discard at will. His attitude towards the girl and his actions, “He spat into the river,” show just how uncivilised and unsophisticated the boy is. On the other hand the Lord from ‘Cousin Kate’ is sophisticated and gentlemanly as would have been expected from a lord in the 1800s. The fact that the Lord acts so gentlemanly perhaps makes his deceit and seduction even worse. That he chooses to seduce the naïve innocent cottage maiden who is so different from him is shocking.

This is a preview of the whole essay

The following verse introduces the party from her point of view and describes in detail how she becomes gradually infatuated. “Her eyes were wide and bright,” reveals just how naïve and innocent the girl is, thus making her plight at the end of the poem even more tragic. The fourth verse starts with, “As he brought her more drinks, so she fell in love With his eyes as blue as iodine.” Enforcing the idea of his seducing her with alcohol and his control of the situation. The metaphor “eyes as blue as iodine,” also appears to be an inference towards the effect of alcohol as iodine is brown until a chemical is added and then it turns blue. The idea of love induced by alcohol is just as unromantic as the next two lines, “With fingers that stroked her neck and thighs And the kisses that tasted of nicotine.” The very first sense that Eileen McAuley decides to incorporate into the poem is the rather acrid taste of cigarettes. The next stanza is just as distasteful as the above, however this is the boy’s truth rather than the girl’s description. The lines, “When I should be at school, or eating me dinner. Where I go, by meself, with me dad’s magazines And a bag filled with shimmering, sweet paint thinner,” all underline the boy’s working-class background and the fact that he spends most of his time down at the docks rather than at school shows that he does not wish to succeed in life. We can also infer that his “dad’s magazines’ are of explicit, adult material and so we can once again suggest that he thinks about sex at length. This is only natural with teenage boys, however from this we can presume that he did go to the party in order to find a girl, as people do tend lose their inhibitions and become vulnerable at parties. The mention of “sweet paint thinner,” shows solvent abuse and only adds to the boy’s dubious image. The following stanza takes us back to the Birkenhead Docks and back to the present. The first line, “all high white shoes,” is a contradiction as high shoes were normally attributed with the more unsavoury types of women, whilst white is a symbol of purity. The last line of the quatrain “frightening scum on the water,” resets the squalid scene of the Birkenhead docks. The next verse shows the contrast between the boy and the girl, where the girl instead of talking about pornographic material, talks “about school, in a disjointed way:” due to the effects of the vodka and also of exams, “she’d be sitting in June.” Thus showing us that she does want to succeed and do something with her life, unlike the boy who would prefer to just sit around and sniff paint thinner. The last line of the quatrain, “The Mersey, green as a septic wound,” only accentuates the difference between the girl and her surroundings. The last stanza before the caesura begins with, “when he swiftly contrived to kiss her,” once again showing that the boy is slowly but surely entrapping and seducing the girl. “And she stifled a giggle, reminded of numerous Stories from teenage magazines…” her giggle shows her naivety and innocence again, it is also ironic that she remembers stories from her magazines at such a pivotal point as she later goes on to blame the very same stories for her pregnancy.

The caesura then takes the poem from the day after the party to a few months later. The fact that the poem skips straight from his kiss to, “When she discovered she was three months gone,” shows that the girl was either so drunk that she could hardly remember the sexual act she performs or that she finds it so humiliating and embarrassing that she eradicates it from her mind. The next line, “She sobbed in the cool, locked darkness of her room” creates a sense of imprisonment and confinement suggesting that she trapped by her dilemma. The girl then proceeds in trying to find a scapegoat, “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. And on that day she broke the heels Of her high white shoes (as she flung them at wall).” She blames the magazines, that were the last thing she thought of before she slept with the boy, and so destroys them. They end up looking like confetti and this may show that she believes that any chances of her having the romantic marriage that the magazines promote, is now destroyed, because of the magazines. She also throws her white shoes, which were a connotation of her purity against a wall, and so breaks them. The girl now becomes, “truly, truly frightened,” and feels, “cheated by the promise of it all.” She sees that her life will be never be the same again and begins to regret and question her actions, “For where, now, was the summer of her sixteenth year? However her questions are much too late. The girl feels betrayed by the media and the boy and tries to pass the blame on to them, by talking of, “glamour with a stammer; Full of fresh fruit diets-how did she feel betrayed? Now with a softly rounded belly, she was sickened every morning. By stupid stupid promises, only tacitly made.” She is saying that although magazines appear to be fashionable and correct they are actually printed lies, made up to indoctrinate girls with false ideas and all in order to increase their sales. Magazines promote going to parties and silly fantasies about relationships and promise that everyone will find their one true partner, however these promises are made in order to create sales and so money, they are tacitly made. The next 2 stanzas comprise of more events in her life that she misses and knows that she will never get to experience again. Simple things such as, “Day trips to Blackpool, jumping all the rides,” and “Where you walk hand in hand in an acne’d wonderland.” In the last two stanzas the girl becomes sarcastic and even bitterer. She hates the, “despicable, feminine void,” that she has fallen into so much that she would rather, “smoke scented drugs,” and “destroy your life in modern, man-made ways.” The girl would prefer to, “turn away, move away, fade away. Than to have the neighbours whisper that you always looked the type.” The girl fears the malicious rumours and whispers from her neighbours and so claims that she would rather waste away in an unnoticeable manner than be pregnant with a huge noticeable belly.

Eileen McAuley’s poem is a story of betrayal and a cautionary tale. Christina Rossetti’s poem also concerns betrayal however unlike the story tale of ‘The Seduction’, ‘Cousin Kate’ is in the style of a letter written for Cousin Kate, by the narrator and appears to be more for the narrator to chastise her cousin and later gloat.

Like ‘The Seduction’, ‘Cousin Kate’ also starts off by setting the scene, however it describes the narrator rather than the boy, as it does in ‘The Seduction’. We can immediately realise that the narrator is a young women who works in fields, farming, from the lines, “I was a cottage maiden Hardened by sun and air.” From this verse we can also see that before she met the Lord she was, “Contented with my cottage mates, Not mindful I was fair.” Unlike the girl from ‘The Seduction’ she was happy and not looking for a romance and so this makes us feel more sympathy her and her naivety in not knowing her own beauty only enhances that feeling of sympathy. Christina Rossetti has already brought the readers over to the narrator’s side and the next lines create even more pity for her and anger against the Lord. “Why did a great lord find me out, And praise my flaxen hair? Why did a great lord find me out To fill my heart with care?” The above lines are the first mention of blame and seduction. The narrator is immediately placing blame on the lord, chastising the lord for praising her fair hair and filling her heart with care. This shows a great contrast between the boy in ‘The Seduction’ and the Lord, who praises the narrator and romances her with words instead of with alcohol. The lord, “lured me to his palace home,” shows that although the Lord is high-class and supposed to be gentlemanly he still continues with his seduction and lures the naïve innocent narrator to his lair. Both males in the two poems take the women to places they call their own where they would probably feel more at ease and where they have total control over the two women. However the Lord does take his role slightly more seriously and takes her back to his house rather than to some seedy docks. Both men, though still take advantage of the women’s naivety and innocence. The Narrator then goes on to talk about her happiness, “Woe’s me for joy thereof,” which is still marred by sadness due to the fact that others would frown upon what she is doing. “To lead a shameless shameful life,” portrays the contradiction of emotions that she is going through. She knows that she should be feeling ashamed but because she is so happy she doesn’t. She is proud to be the Lord’s, “Plaything and his love.” Her happiness later turns completely to sadness as, “He changed me like a glove; So now I moan, an unclean thing. Who might have been a dove.” The narrator is discarded like she is a commodity, just as the girl in ‘The Seduction’ was. The Lord once he took her purity left her, just as the boy did, and so both women became undesirable. The narrator perhaps even more due to the period of time she lived in. Christina Rossetti uses the white dove to symbolise the Narrator’s purity and virginity just as Eileen McAuley uses the “high white shoes” to represent purity. The Lord and the boy take what they want and then discard both the women, the Lord moves straight onto the narrator’s Cousin Kate who worked, “among the rye,” just like she did and because she “was so good and pure,” he bound her, “with his ring.” After having seduced and taken away the girl’s virginity he dumps her precisely because she is not pure enough for him. The narrator is left stranded on her own, just as the girl in ‘The Seduction’ is and both have to deal with the not only the troubles of pregnancy but also with the society surrounding them. Both poets write about social comments and both show the women’s communities ostracising them. “The neighbours call you good and pure, Call me an outcast thing.” However the girl from ‘The Seduction’ cares more about the society around her than the narrator. The girl would rather “fester, invisibly, unemployed” than have the “neighbours whisper” that she “always looked the type.” The narrator obviously still cares about what people think of her, however not to the extreme where she would lose her child. The narrator revels in her “fair-haired son, my shame, my pride,” and uses him to gloat. She teases her Cousin, “Yet I’ve a gift you have not got, And seem not like to get:” and uses her son as a means of getting her Cousin back for stealing away her love. In the narrator’s male-orientated world, she glories in the heir that she has produced. The girl from ‘The Seduction’, on the other hand hates her pregnancy, she most probably wishes that she had never met the boy. Whilst the narrator, even though he discarded her and moved onto her cousin, still appears to love the Lord as she says, “my love was true Your love was writ in sand:” She accuses her Cousin of marrying only for money and land and claims that had she been in her position she “would have spit into his face And not have taken his hand.”

Just as the girl from ‘The Seduction’ blames the boy and the media, so the narrator blames the Lord and her Cousin Kate. They are both within their rights to feel betrayed as the two male protagonists do seduce and entrap them both. The boy from ‘The Seduction’ entraps the girl with the aid of alcohol and false dreams and ideas of romance created by the media. On the other hand the Lord uses actual romance and words of promise to get what he wants. The end product is still the same whatever method of seduction they use. Both women are left alone as outcasts to deal with their pregnancies and they are also left to deal with lost dreams of fictional romances. They feel betrayed; by the things they felt they could most trust. The narrator would feel that if she could trust anybody it would be her family and the girl from ‘The Seduction’ should have been able to trust the magazines, which promote trust as one of the key elements in any relationship. The title ‘The Seduction’ tells the story of the two poems by itself. The term seduction actually means to manipulate and persuade and to create false ideas, which is what the boy does indeed do to the girl in order to gain sexual gratification. However, had the girl had the strength of mind to refuse to go down to the docks with him, she would never have slept with him and become pregnant. Nor would the narrator have slept with the Lord and perhaps he might have then married her instead. Both of the two female protagonists do slightly bring things on themselves by agreeing to go with the men in the first place, however had they known what would happen, had they seen reality, instead of romance they might not have considered going to the docks or the Lord’s palace home. Both women’s lives are destroyed due to allowing themselves to be seduced by their own dreams and fancies so much that they lose sight of reality.

Bina –Rough Draft