cousin kate

• Cousin Kate - Christina Rossetti
• cousin kate-context

  • Rossetti was deeply religious
  • anglo-catholic movement
  • Never married
  • Volunteered at St Mary Magdalane House at Charity for fallen women
• Comment

  Of unfair social expectation of women
• Cousin Kate- languge, structure and form

  • Monologue directed at "Cousin Kate" - intensify emotions
  • Iambic meter - maintain fast pace
  • ABAC rhyming here - stable pace
  • Alternating imabic trimeter and tetrameter
  • images of nature
  • oxymorons
  • passive verbs - emphaise powerlessness of women
• "why did great lord find me out"

  • predatorial language
  • line is repeated to empahsis how confused she was by the situation
  • speaker had no choice but to fall in love and sleep with the noble man
  • passive verbs to narrate her - powerlessnes
  • active verbs to describe him - powerful
• "his plaything and his love"

  • plaything - informal and meaningless
  • toy for his enetertainment
  • disposable
  • love - much more serious relationship
  • meant to last
  • realises what she actually meant to him
• "o lady kate, my cousin kate"

  • mocking her cousin
  • suggests she married for status and not love
  • possesive pronoun
  • women have to belong to someone
  • addresses her cousin rather than the reader
• "you had the stronger wing"

  • kate is not more moral but only succeeded due to her strength
  • bird imagery
  • shows jealousy
  • speaker suggests her cousin was able to climb higher socially because of her marriage
• summary

  poet - Christina Rossetti

  conflict between speakers and her cousin over a man they have both been with