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Cousin Kate. Christina Rossetti. The poem is a dramatic monologue, directly addressed to the eponymous Cousin Kate, who is called “you” throughout, although she is clearly not present. As...
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The speaker in ‘Cousin Kate’was lured away by a lord. His magnificence and place in life probably made her feel intimidated. Her whole life, she was taught that a woman’s role was to obey men, especially a man in a position of authority. Thus, when the lord sought her out, it was natural for her to obey. Her cousin, Kate, watched the whole thing. T...
Stanza One
‘Cousin Kate’ begins with the description of a beautiful young maiden who spent her days out in the sun and the air. This young maiden was content to be with her cottage mates. She had no thought for a man and no desire for anything that she did not already have. She claims that she did not even know that she was a beautiful girl until a great lord found her out. She asks, “Why did a great lord find me out,/ And praise my flaxen hair?” The toneof this question suggests that the affair with th...
Stanza Two
The speaker uses the word “lured” to suggest further that the great lord did not have pure intentions in his praise of her. The speaker says that when he took her into his home, he “woe[ed her] for joy thereof.” Here, the readers can see that what the great lord did for his own joy was the woe of the young maiden. She says that he took her “to lead a shameless shameful life” and to make her “his plaything and his love.” The way the speaker describes her life as the mistress of the great lord...
Stanza Three
There is a shift with this stanza so that the speaker is not talking to the readers anymore but to her cousin, Kate. It is possible that she has been talking to Kate all along. When she calls her “Lady Kate,” she makes it clear that her cousin has risen in social status to become a Lady. The speaker reveals that her little cousin grew to be more beautiful than she was herself. And the great lord saw her at her father’s gate, chose her, and cast aside the speaker.
Given the author’s background, ‘Cousin Kate’ is somewhat ironic. One might expect to find that Rossetti had once been in the same position as the speaker, but it does not appear so. From what is known about Rossetti, she was a highly religious woman who never married and even broke off an engagement because her fiance had become a Roman Catholic. S...
Cousin Kate is a poem that explores the contrast between two women's fates in the Victorian era. One is a maiden who is seduced by a lord and becomes his mistress, while the other is her cousin who marries the lord and becomes his wife.
Cousin Kate is a dramatic monologue by Rossetti, who was a volunteer at a home for "fallen women". The poem contrasts the speaker's fate as a mistress of a lord with her cousin's marriage to the same lord.
When young and beautiful governess Kate Malvern finds herself unemployed in Regency England, she is surprised and grateful to receive an invitation to live with a distant aunt. She has never met her Aunt Minerva Broome, and hardly knows what to expect at majestic country home of Staplewood.
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Analysis (ai): The poem "Cousin Kate" by Christina Georgina Rossetti uses a simple and direct language to narrate the story of a woman who was seduced and abandoned by a wealthy lord. The poem is a lament of a woman who feels she has been wronged and is now an outcast.
Kate, flushing, found herself confronting a stranger, who looked her over rather contemptuously, and then transferred his gaze to Torquil. He seemed but just to have arrived at Staplewood, and to have come from some distance, for he was wearing a long, caped driving-coat, which brushed the heels of his top-boots, and he was carrying his hat and ...
So now I moan, an unclean thing, Who might have been a dove. O Lady kate, my cousin Kate, You grew more fair than I: He saw you at your father’s gate, Chose you, and cast me by. He watched your steps along the lane, Your work among the rye; He lifted you from mean estate.
