Controlled Conditions 19th Century Love Poetry
‘Cousin Kate’ by Christina Rossetti is about the persona and her Cousin Kate who have both met the
same Lord. She initially met the persona, and the Lord:
“Lured me to his palace home.”
He seduced her, and after a while discards her for her Cousin Kate. Cousin Kate and the Lord get
married. The poem is about the persona’s feelings towards what happened. Everyone has now also
judged the persona because she didn’t marry him before sleeping with him, unlike Kate who insisted
upon it.
When the Lord met the persona, he had no intention of true love with her, she was always supposed to
be a bit of fun only to be discarded:
“His plaything and his love,
He wore me like a silken knot,
He changed me like a glove.”
‘Plaything’ suggests the fact that it was only a bit of fun, and ‘changed me like a glove’ shows the way
in which he discarded her so easily.
However the persona wishes they had never met and been even together for the short time that they
were:
“Contented with my cottage mates,”…
…“Why did a great lord find me out.”
She is saying how she was happy with the way things were going already, and wonders why the Lord
couldn’t have just passed her by. There is also mention of how he used his flattery on her to seduce her
by ‘praising my flaxen hair”.
The persona then goes on to say how her cousin grew to be more beautiful than she is:
“O Lady Kate, my cousin Kate,
you grew more fair than I.”
This explains why the persona also writes:
“…he saw you at your father’s gate,
chose you and cast me by.”
It is because he preferred the way Cousin Kate had grown up to look, that he was able to discard the
persona with ease.
The persona describes the way the Lord gave Kate so many benefits that she never received herself:
“He watched your steps along the lane,
Your work among the rye,
He lifted you from mean estate,
To sit with him on high.”
This quote shows that after the Lord observed Kate working, he decided to bring her from her bad
housing, to sit with him in his palace. He did this to Kate even though the persona did the same work
as her, and was never given the privilege that her cousin was.
Now everyone believes that Cousin Kate is a much better person than the persona, because Kate
insisted upon marriage before going any further:
“Because you were so good and pure,
He bound you with his ring,
The neighbours call you good and pure,
Call me an outcast thing.”
This shows the way in which Kate was ‘good and pure’, because she wouldn’t sleep with the Lord until
he had married her. The neighbours also thought that Kate was much better than the persona for doing
this, and therefore call the persona an ‘outcast thing’.
The persona then claims that her love was real, and Kate’s love was only there to get the Lord’s
money:
“O cousin Kate, my love was true,
Your love was writ in sand.”
She says how her love for the Lord is true love, unlike Kate’s whose love is ‘writ in sand’, as if it could
be blown away easily.
The persona continues to say that:
“If he had fooled not me but you,
If you stood where I stand,
He’d not have won me with his love,
Nor bought me with his land.”
By this she means that if she and Kate had switched places, the persona would not have fallen for his
tricks, and let him take her in place of Kate. She says she would have ‘spit into his face, and not taken
his hand’. She is pointing out what she thinks Kate should have done to defend her cousin’s honour
and support her.
In the final stanza of the poem, the persona tells of the one thing she has got out of all that has
happened:
“Yet I’ve a gift you have not got,
And seem not like to get,
For all your clothes and wedding-ring,
I’ve little doubt you fret.
My fair-haired son, my shame, my pride,
Cling closer, close yet.”
The persona announces that she in fact has the Lord’s son, and is also suggesting that Kate is unable to
have any children of her own. This way she could be getting back at Kate for taking her lover,
however she also has something that the Lord, and Kate’s father would do anything to get, because:
“Your father would give his lands for one,
To wear his coronet.”
The Lord would give all his lands to get someone to hand his riches down to, but it is something the
persona will always have, and no one else that has done anything bad to her, will get. However,
despite these advantages she still half describes her son as ‘her shame’, although not forgetting ‘her
pride’. She knows it shows her shame, but as the son is all she has, she has pride in him all the same.
‘The Ruined Maid’ by Thomas Hardy is a poem about a conversation between a ruined maid and her
old friend from before she was ruined. A ruined maid was a woman who was shunned by society for
having a sexual relationship with somebody before marriage. The maid was seduced by a man who
then left, but due to the money gained from the man she can now afford to live in a higher class of
society.
The first stanza tells us about the way the ruined maid meets her old friend:
“O’melia, my dear, this does everything crown!
Who could have supposed I should meet you in town?
And whence such fair garments a prosperti-ty?”
Her old friend seems surprised to see her, questioning her fine new clothing, seemingly uninformed
about the maids ‘ruining’. The maid informs her “O didn’t you know I’d been ruined?” in a ‘matter of
fact’ tone of voice. This suggests that the ruined maid has grown used to accepting her new life, acting
as if her former self never existed.
Her friend complains of the way she left them:
“You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks,
Tired of digging potatoes and spudding up docks.”
She is jealous of her friend’s new-found riches and the fact that she herself is still poor. She points out
that they are still working hard, whilst the maid has such a fine life:
“You’ve gay bracelets and bright feathers three!”
The maid replies:
“Yes that’d how we dress when we’re ruined.”
The maid is almost trying to claim that being ruined is a good thing, she needs to do this though she
knows secretly that it isn’t, as she justifies the behaviour of her new lifestyle.
Her friend goes on to comment on the effect her ruining has had on her use of language:
“At home in the barton you said ‘thee’ and ‘thou’,
And ‘thik oon’ and ‘theäs oon’ and ‘t’other’, but now
Your talking quite fits ‘ee for high company!”
The maid can only comment with “Some polish is gained with one’s ruin”. This is almost gloating at
the fact that now she appears more refined than before, although the maid knows it is all superficial and
for show.
Another change that the maid’s friend picks up on is that:
“Your hands were like paws then,
your face blue and bleak.”
Now she is:
“Bewitched by your delicate cheek,
And your little gloves fit as on any la-dy!”
The maid responds by informing her that “We never do work when we’re ruined”, she still feels the
need to stress the point that she is far superior to her old friends. The expression ‘ruined’ is used in an
unusual way in the poem to mean both a ruined reputation and coming into money and moving up in
society.
Her friend recalls that the maid used to complain how home life was really boring, but now she seems
to have changed her mind now she’s tried it:
“You used to call homelife a hag-ridden dream,
And you’d sigh, and you’d sock; but at present you seem
To know not of megrims or melancho-ly!”
She is saying that now the maid has experienced what she used to call a ‘hag-ridden dream’, she now
knows that it is not displeasing after all. The maid responds ironically - “True. One’s pretty lively
when ruined.”
Up until this point in the poem, the maid has always had the upper-hand in relation to how the other is
feeling, however in this final stanza things begin to change:
“I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown,
And a delicate face, and could strut about town!”
The raw country girl seems jealous here, yet the ruined maid replies:
“‘My dear – a raw country girl such as you be,
Cannot quite expect that. You ain’t ruined,’ said she.”
Here the ruined maid reveals that she isn’t really the upper class person she falsely claims to be – her
superficial outer shell is destroyed by her sudden change in use of language with words like “ain’t”.
By using that word she is forgetting to use upper class language, and reverts back to the language she
was brought up with.
We see now that ‘The Ruined Maid’ takes a more light hearted view on the Victorian morality issue,
this is due to the way it deals purely with the jealousy of a couple of friends.
‘Cousin Kate’, on the other hand, has a more serious theme to it, because it actually deals with things
like how the persona became an outcast in society because of what had happened to her.
Both poems however show that Victorian morality did have a hypocritical effect on how other people
view the ‘ruined’ women.
I think that ‘Cousin Kate’ gives a better insight into the plight of women who found themselves ruined
in Victorian times. This is because of its more realistic and serious attitude toward what happened.