Comparing and Contrasting the poems The Seduction and Cousin Kate

Comparing and Contrasting the poems The Seduction and Cousin Kate.

In this Essay I am going to be comparing and contrasting the poems

“The Seduction” by Eileen McAuley and “Cousin Kate” by Christina

Rosetti. I will also be analysing them using quotations to support

what I’ve been saying. One poem was written in the nineteenth century

and the other was written near the end of the 1900’s. This is just

one of the differences I will be discussing in the following essay.

I am going to begin with “The Seduction.” This poem is about a

teenage girl who goes to a party. She meets a boy and starts falling

head over heals in love with him because she is unable to see he is

misleading her. She can’t understand that when he takes her to the

docks he is only interested in sex and not her. He departs after he

has got what wanted, leaving her pregnant. She is then left to face

the scorn of her neighbourhood and realise she has been betrayed by

the fake reality of her teenage magazines.

In the first stanza of the poem, there are quotations such as “quiet

bricks” and “Far past the silver stream of traffic” which show us a

quiet place where people won’t see what the couple are about to do.

“Blind Windows” is and example of personification which tells us

about the neighbourhood’s view. They don’t want to see the problem of

underage sex which the word “Blind” articulates. In general this

paragraph is using beautiful words like “silver”, “morning” and

“quiet” to contrast with the dull and bleak events about to unfold.

Stanza two and three show how the boy is pushing the girl into this

while she is unawares. An important quotation is “fumbled in a bag”.

This shows that the boy is an inexpert lover. “His leather jacket

creaked madly” could be connected with the last quotation. This shows

that maybe he is seen as a bad boy and is only sleeping with the girl

to uphold his reputation. Even if this is not the case, you can tell

that he has no feelings for the girl when the poem goes onto say “he

muttered little slag”. Next the poem tells us about the circumstances

on which the couple met – at a party. It is at this point that the

vital words “quite enchanted” and “her eyes were wide and bright” show

us just how naïve the girl is. She is easily guided. Another

important piece of evidence is when the boy states “eating me dinner”.

The boy’s words tell us he is of a local working class background