Comparing Cousin Kate and The Seduction Essay -- Christina Rossetti Ei

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 son of the lord. The poem ends with the cottage maiden being an outcast because she has got pregnant before getting married but also with her feeling triumphant because here son will one day be the heir to the Lord’s lands. The Seduction is about a 16 year old girl who has a one night stand with a boy whom she meets at a party. The boy is into bad habits like drinking and taking drugs. He offers the girls some drinks and once she is very drunk he takes her to the docks near a river where he sleeps with her. After that night the girl never sees the boy again and realises 3 months later that she is pregnant. Her life is completely destroyed by her pregnancy. She has no more friends and nobody will ever speak to her again. She feels very bitter as to how her life has been ruined due to one mistake and how she has become an outcast. She ends the poem extremely disillusioned with life and how it has treated her. There are many differences between the two poems. The two poems took ... ...drinks and fallen into the boys trap. I prefer the poem Cousin Kate because in this poem the maiden has some hope for her future in the end because her son will be the heir to the lord’s estates. She has something to look forward too. She can also feel triumphant because her Cousin Kate will not have nay children. The ending of the seduction though is much bleaker with the girl having no hope for her future and even feeling like committing suicide. I think the attitude to teenage pregnancy was almost the same in both these poems even though they were set in different times. Even today the attitude to teenage pregnancy is very bad and girls who get pregnant in their teen years are treated as outcasts by society which is very wrong. Even if a girl does get pregnant society has to accept the fact that she has made a mistake and give her another chance.