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Comparing Cousin Kate and The Seduction Essay

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Comparing Cousin Kate and The Seduction

In this coursework I will be comparing the two poems ‘Cousin Kate’ by
Christina Rossetti and ‘The Seduction’ by Eileen McAuley. The two poems have many similarities but there are also some differences between them. To begin I will give an introduction to both the poems.

Cousin Kate is about a cottage maiden that is tricked into having an affair with a rich Lord. She is then betrayed by the Lord who decides to dump her. He then marries her Cousin Kate who is much more beautiful than her and who has not yet lost her virginity. The Lord completely forgets about the maid after abandoning her and leaves her all alone. The maiden later realises that she is pregnant with a baby boy who is the …show more content…

In Cousin Kate the cottage maiden truly loves the lord and has an affair with him for a period of time –“Woe’s me for joy thereof” while in The Seduction the girl hardly knows anything about the boy and has a one night stand with him.

The other difference is the location of the two poems. Cousin Kate is set in the countryside –“I was a cottage maiden” while the Seduction is set in the city –“the silver stream of traffic through the city”.
Another difference between the two poems is the way the two women are seduced by the men. In Cousin Kate the lord seduces the women by using his wealth and treating her well –“lured me to his palace home” while in the seduction the girl is seduced without any romance or romantic feelings. She only sleeps with the boy because she is drunk. In the seduction the poet describes what happened that night in as almost dirty where the boy calls her things like “little slag,” The boy in the seduction is described as a very rough and unfriendly with the things he does- "…he spat into the river…".The events that take place in the seduction are also described in a dark with the use of phrases like “the frightening scum on the river”.

The women also have many different feelings towards their pregnancies at the end of the poems. At the end of Cousin

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