Cousin Kate Christina Rossetti Analysis

Christina Rossetti
Key Concerns
Temptation to indulge in the corporeal
Social consequence of this indulgence
Deceptiveness of men
Female solidarity is it possible: Rossetti’s poetry, there is a constant tension between female solidarity, and societal and masculine pressures which often destroy that solidarity. This constant tension perhaps suggests Rossetti’s hope for the salvation found in female solidarity, alongside her awareness that women in the Victorian era faced certain pressures that perhaps prompted them to turn away from one another.
Need for self-deferral
Preference for external over corporeal
Zeitgeist
Cousin Kate
Key concerns incorporated
Temptation to indulge in the corporeal
Failure of female solidarity
Deceptiveness of
Throughout Rossetti’s poetry, there is a constant tension between female solidarity, and societal and masculine pressures which often destroy that solidarity. This constant tension perhaps suggests Rossetti’s hope for the salvation found in female solidarity, alongside her awareness that women in the Victorian era faced certain pressures that perhaps prompted them to turn away from one another.
In Cousin Kate, there is no such bond. There is, however, the same temptation, and the same masculine pressure, deceptiveness, and eventual inconstancy, which forces the breakdown of any relationship that might have existed between the women in the poem
The speaker, in contrast, is inactive and passive, in allowing the man to act upon her. Finally, he “casts” her off, a verb that suggests apathy and lack of concern for her welfare. This treatment incites a bitter and condemning tone in the speaker’s accusation that if Kate “stood where I stand, He’d not have won me with his hand.” Ultimately, it is the man’s intrusion, pressure, and inconstancy that incite the speaker’s rancor toward another woman, making any solidarity between them impossible.

“Cling closer, closer yet,” the repetition of “closer” drawing emphasis to the speaker’s desire to create an unbreakable solidarity between herself and her son in the face of his father’s desires and aspirations. She continues, “your father would give lands for one to wear his coronet,” declaring that she, as the bearer of a son and heir, will be triumphant over both the man and her cousin Kate, who is apparently unable to conceive. The speaker takes comfort in the prospect of this triumph over her adversaries, including Kate, with whom she feels no unity or solidarity.
Goblin