Essay --

cousin-german Kate is a poem about a young woman who is seduced by a Lord. He soon ensnares her and marries her cousin-german Kate instead, leaving behind a broken-hearted cottage maiden. The maiden is soon classed as a fallen woman and is treated like an outcast in society. She is bitterness and jealous of her cousin but soon reveals that she has the one thing her cousin does not and desperately wants a son and replacement to the Lord.The poem begins by byword I was a cottage maiden. It is a simple beginning, talking in the past tense. She tells us she is lower class person. It later says she is Hardened by sun and air this shows that the cottage maiden is strong and worked outside on land and it in addition suggests by the use of the words contented with my cottage dyad that she was happy and a sense of community .Then it says why did a great lord find me out, this tells us that the lord has been chasing after her and she has been caught by him.In this stanza there is a questio n asked to the question reveals that the girl is puzzled about the lord is after her. This suggests that she is aware that he has different motives rather than love and romance. This also shows that she knows the compliment is false and plainly if a way of seducing her into bed. The second stanza is where the great lord isnt so great anymore. He lured and tricked her into going to his palace home. She so saw another life. Life without working and cleaning however, the lord doesnt take her seriously. He doesnt feel like he has too as they are not unite. He wore me like a silken knot is a simile which defines how he used her in his own way. He just wanted her as an accessory. He changed me like a glove this quote is also a simile which outlines h... ...fair haired son, my shame, my pride We are told she has a son, and that not only is it a memory of her shame but he is her pride. Hes all she has. Then the last three lines on stanza six are switched. The storyteller i s now talking to her son, her pride. Your father would give lands for one she is telling her son that if his father really wanted to, he would take him and would leave her (the narrator) with nothing.In conclusion, Cousin Kate is an extremely complicated poem, and even though theres hate and heartbreak throughout, she ends up with pride. The narrator let the lord control her, power over her and make her what he wanted however, Cousin Kate didnt. She would only let him have sex with her if she could still be pure this means that she would have to be married to do so. This probably made the lord have massive respect for Kate and not the narrator.