Cousin Kate Poem Analysis

From the beginning of the poem you can see the cottage maiden was in love with the Lord she calls him ‘a great Lord’ and asks herself ‘Why did a great Lord find me out to fill my heart with care?’ She’s admitting he filled her heart with care, but by asking why, she’s saying he hurt her. She also says ‘O cousin Kate my love was true.’ Here she’s expressing her sadness and the feeling of betrayal she has for her cousin she also says ‘If you stood where I stand, I would have spat into his face, and not taken his hand’ She’s telling her cousin she’d never have done it to her, she’d have told him to go away regardless of his money and status. I believe she’s trying to tell her cousin she would have loved her enough not do gone with
him and her love for her was more than that of riches and wealth. The cottage maiden portrays the Lord as a horrible man who picks her up and drops her when he feels like, she uses the similes ‘He wore me like a silken knot’ and ‘He changed me like a glove’ this represents her feeling of a disregarded item of clothing.
In my opinion I think the cottage maiden feels as though she has been tricked by the Lord by his wealth and title and that he has abused the privileges he has to get her into bed. The cottage maiden also expresses sadness at what she might have been had he not disgraced her ‘might have been a dove.’ She uses the image of a dove in order to emphasize her
innocence. The last two verses of the poem change in mood, the beginning of the poem she is bitter about the way her cousin Kate and the Lord treated her, the last two verses however focus on the one thing that she has that he can never have with her cousin Kate a child, and how proud she is of it. ‘Your father would give all his lands for one’ In those times a son and heir was probably the most important thing to a man, especially a Lord. She also says of her son ‘My fair-haired son, my shame, my pride.’ This contrast represents the social shame she has faced for being an unmarried mother and the motherly love and pride she feels for her son. At the beginning of the poem you see the way she is hurt by the way the Lord has manipulated and used her, but towards the end of the poem you see that her child has given her strength and made her feel as though she has one up on the Lord, she has a son and he does not. He may have chosen the better looking option with her cousin Kate ‘You grew more fair than I, He saw you at your fathers gate, chose you, and cast me by.’ But the one ‘he cast away’ had the son he always wanted.
In ‘Cousin Kate’ there is a rhetorical question, it shows how her life was uprooted, how she came to lead a “shameful” life in the eyes of society. For instance, “Why did a great lord find me out, and praise my flaxen hair? Why did a great lord find me out to fill my heart with care?” This shows how she was lured from her cottage home by a great lord, who had managed to seduce her with an enormous amount of flattery. The speaker also seems as if she’s demanding to know why the great lord found her. These are interrogatives which could mean many different possibilities of things but could be a premonition of what is to come. The poem also uses imagery such as “flaxen hair” which makes her the ideal women as back then it was the pale blonde colour which made her beautiful and ideal. The rhetorical question is then repeated again to emphasise her regret and misjudgement over the lord. ‘To fill my heart with care’ is ambiguous: the first is that she loves him; the second is that the lord brings the maiden worries. The speaker describes how the lord mistreated her and how he used her when she says ‘he changed me like a glove’ which suggests how she lost her virginity to him in the time the poem was written it was meant to be a traditional relationship and no sex before marriage but the lord ‘changed’ her, because of what he did.
He put her on when he needed her and when he was finished he threw her away, he treated her like an ‘object’ he wore here then threw her away. The use of the simile changed me like a glove shows how thoughtless the lord is. In the Victorian times, when this poem was wrote, men wore white glove, which can become dirty very quickly, so they got changed regularly. When you change a pair of gloves you do not put thought into how they feel, meaning the lord did not care how the Maiden was
feeling.
The maiden shows how unfaithful Kate was towards her and shows a gesture of disrespect towards the lord where ‘I would have spit into his face’ showing no remorse, no respect this is the peak of her anger in this poem. She says she would’ve shrugged off his marriage proposal. The word ‘spit’ is a strong word and reflects how strongly she feels. She’s saying that if she was in Kate’s place she wouldn’t have married the lord, the unnamed maiden is trying to get sympathy for herself and saying how she’s the good person and how she is better that Kate, it shows female oppression as women should support each other and be there for each other and for the relationship of being cousins.
The beginning of the last stanza continues to be addressed to Kate, but the tone seems very smug, as if the maiden is gloating: ‘yet I’ve a gift you have not got’ the use of the word ‘gift’ shows it was given to her and that it is good. The fact Kate may not be able to ‘not’ one suggests she may not be able to have children. Despite being cast aside, she has a treasure, or something special that Kate will never have. In “Cousin Kate” she is control of her life despite everything. “Yet” shows the turning point in the poem and one of the reasons the maiden is so upbeat is also made clear in the above quote, she has a child but Cousin Kate does not and also seems to imply that she cannot conceive. The unnamed maiden still loves the lord, but it is non-requited love as he does not share the feelings back.