Cousin Kate Flashcards
praise my flaxen hair?
Regretful of giving herself away
Lamentful
lured me to his palace-home
Exploitation, coercion, trickery, manipulation, vulnerability
Paints speaker as vulnerable and having been taken advantage of
Palace-home is lucrative when compared to cottage
Contemporary audience sympathises
Victorian audience would estrange
shameless shameful life,
plaything and his love
Oxymoronic nature of the relationship
Fallen woman abhorred as it was seen as defiance against family to have intercourse out of marriage
Oxymoronic
Fallibility
Exhaustible
He wore me like a golden knot
He changed me like a glove:
Objectifying
Knots can be untied
Symbol of chastity ruined
So now I moan an unclean thing
Who might have been a dove.
Sexual impurity
Objectifying
Impurity
Lamenting what her son could have been
Because you were so good and pure,
He bound you with his ring:
Bound has connotations of restriction, entrapment, a lack of autonomy, corruption
Good and pure is repeated, showing envy of Kate’s chastity compared to her being tainted
The neighbours call you good and pure,
Call me an outcast thing
Pariah, refers to herself as a “thing”, sexually objectifying and dehumanising herself, pitying herself
sit and howl in dust
sit in gold and sing
You had the stronger wing.
Animalistic juxtaposition of ideas emphasises speaker’s envy for Kate’s position, despair from the connotations of howl - gold having connotations of luxury and purity and joy and comfort
Wing acts as a reference to a dove, showing the narrator’s jealousy as well as how cousin Kate embodies her own hopes that she had.
O Cousin kate, my love was true,
Your love was writ in sand.
Impermanance of the relationship
O = Echophonesis, emotional, exclamatory phrase highlighting her self pity.
spit into his face
And not have taken his hand.
Criticism of Kate for still marrying him
Virulent, intense agression
Yet I’ve a gift you have not got
And seem not like to get
Gift = Cherished
Active voice makes for confrontational and attacking tone
My fair-haired son, my shame, my pride
Cling closer, closer yet
Your sire would give broad lands for one
To wear his coronet.
Inherited her flaxen hair - Internal conflict about fallen woman VS her advantage
Possessive of her son
Highlights Kate owning him with possessive adjective
Crown -> Inheritance -> Male successor
