comparisan
The poem “Cousin Kate” by Christina Rossetti tells the story of a young maiden who is attracted to a lord who tempts her with his riches and then uses her. The lord is then attracted to another women Kate. He abandons the pregnant girl for Kate. But Kate refuses to have anything to do with the lord unless they are married and so the lord marries her. They then try for a child but are unsuccessful because Kate is infertile. By this time the maiden’s son has grown and so when she hears of the couples news she boasts of her son. The poem “The Seduction” by Eileen McCauley describes how a girl meets a boy at a party where they dance and talk all night. He then takes her to a riverbank where he takes advantage of her drunken state and sleeps with her. They do not speak with each other again after that night and three months later the girl discovers she is pregnant. She loses her friend sand is rejected by society as a result of her actions that night. “Cousin Kate” is set in the countryside where the maiden grew up and was hardened by the sun and air. She was contented with her cottage mates, which showed her youth and innocence. The scene then changes when the lord lures her to his “palace home”. Because she is plucked from her poor life to live in luxury this gives the story a fairy tale feel to it. Although the story has quite a sad theme the settings for this story reflect the fairytale ending. “The Seduction” is set in the city late at night to start with it’s silver stream of traffic, it then moves to Birkenhead docks and the Mersey, green as a septic wound. The descriptions of these places are not pleasant or nice to imagine which encourages people to expect a sad or at least unpleasant story. The settings are quite depressing to imagine and they help to emphasize the despair that the girl is feeling in her dilemma. The fact that everything appears to have gone wrong for the girl matches perfectly to the idea of a filthy city. Both the girls are young although we do not know exactly how old the cottage maiden is, we do know that the girl in “The Seduction” will miss the summer of her sixteenth year. The girls are so young because it encourages the audience to feel more sympathetic towards the girls and their dilemmas that have occurred. “Cousin Kate” is written in the first person, which gives the effect that the maiden herself is telling the story, which makes the story feel more personal to the listener, they feel more involved. Because the poem is written in the first person it seems more like a story and so people will not necessarily take on board the message behind it. Where as “The Seduction” is written in the third person because the author hasn’t personally experienced the event, but wants to relay the event to the audience.