'Cousin Kate' by Christina Rossetti-Characters

Today we continued to look at the poem 'Cousin Kate' by Christina Rossetti. In this entry I'm going to look at the way Rossetti presents the characters in the poem.

The Speaker
The speaker in the poem is the one who has become an "outcast" in society due to her brief love affair with a lord she wasn't married to. The way the speaker talks about the events that unfold, it's obvious we are supposed to be on the speaker's side, rather than the lord's and cousin Kate's.
For example the description the speaker gives of herself at the beginning suggests to me she was innocent and very happy with her life before she made the mistake of mistaking sex for love with the lord. "cottage maiden" suggests to me virginity and innocence. Plus she obviously isn't from the city so she could be seen to be vulnerable-she is being set up as the victim already. Also we are told she was "contented with my cottage mates"- Rossetti/the speaker is illustrating how everything in the girl's life was good before, until the lord tricked her and messed it all up. We are also told that the speaker doesn't know she's beautiful, "not mindful I was fair". This suggests to me that she was virtuos, humble and pure.

Then when the speaker starts to tell us what happened we see that she was indeed the victim. She says that the lord "lured" her to his home. The word "lured" again suggests he is leading her, and she is merely following him, taken in by his influence and her own love for him. We see how he cruelly used her for sex and she bares the consequences of this because she is a woman and has no power. So again this links to feminism and the idea of 'fallen women'. The speaker achknowledges that she was merely his "plaything" and he has made her an "unclean thing" in the eyes of society. There is also an injustice in that she actually loved the lord, "my love was true".

So we are already sympathising with the speaker. Then she introduces cousin Kate, the woman who the lord left her for. In a way cousin Kate was in the exact same position as the speaker, the only difference is the lord "bound" her with his ring. The use of the word "bound" also suggests he trapped her in a way simular to the speaker. So all this makes us feel sorry for the speaker as we see she is the same as Kate, yet Kate is called "good and pure" because she is married, and the speaker is called "an outcast thing" as she isn't-thing, not person. We also side with the speaker as she acknowledges she was naive to have been tricked by him, this is shown where she says "fooled".

Finally we prefer the speaker to any of the other characters as she is shown to have good morals. She ensures cousin Kate that were their places reversed, the lord "would not have won her with his love" or "bought her with his land". So the speaker is presented as good as she would have stuck to her morals and not given in to the lord for want of fortune.

The lord
The lord is made out to be a very seedy, horrible man. He "lures" the speaker into sleeping with him out of wedlock and then he goes in living his life without regret or prejudice against him.  We are told he "changed me (the speaker) like a glove"-after he used her for sex he easily discarded her. We are also told he "sits up high"-so we can infer he's very rich and high up in the social hierarchy. This also makes him sound almost godlike, perhaps to show man's power over women. The lord also seems arrogant as he "chose you (Kate0 and cast me by (speaker)"- he feels he can just pick and choose women when he feels like it. So we see the lord isn't a nice man at all.

Cousin Kate
Cousin Kate is made out by the speaker to be very weak for agreeing to marry the lord, despite the fact she presumably knew about what he did to the speaker. The speaker says "He lifted to from mean estate"-So the lord took Kate from rags to riches, and this may have been why she married him. We are also told Kate "sits in gold and sings"- she is enjoying the good life and having a "pure" reputation. The speaker also says that Kate's "love was writ in sand"- this shows how Kate never really loved the lord like the speaker did, her love for him was very imperminant like writing in sand. We also dislike Kate because she is respected by everyone in society just because she's married. She seems to have got away very lightly compared to the speaker.
We also see from the speakers description of Kate that she seems to have only married the lord for want of material things, like land and "clothes and wedding ring". So she is living this false life of virtuosness and happiness, whilst the speaker is looked down upon and considered a fallen woman living a "shameful life".

Ooh look I wrote a lot.