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How Rossetti Narrates the Story of 'Cousin Kate' Essay

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‘How does Rossetti tell the story in Cousin Kate’
In Cousin Kate the poet presents the reader with the idea that women have many expectations in life and are governed by men, giving them no real freedom, and that to become truly happy one must break away from social expectations. Personally I believe this poem presents Rossetti with a stage where she can speak of her resentment at the power men have and the weaknesses and few liberties that women have in the Victorian period; as in the end she takes sympathy for Cousin Kate who appears to have everything, because she must live under the order of her husband.
Rossetti chooses a first person narrative in this poem so the narrator can addresses her questions, laments and moans to Kate. She …show more content…

She is angry that he made her anxious instead of happy and took her away from her friends, her ‘cottage mates’ (line 3). The speaker later expresses her anger when she declares that, if she had been in her cousin’s place as the marriage choice of the lord, she would ‘have spit into his face and not have taken his hand’ (lines 39-40). Her emotions are incredibly strong and the violence of her anger is expressed through her imagination.
The first two stanzas in the poem offer an insight into the narrator’s past, showing the loss of her innocence the impact of the actions of the ‘great lord’ and an inner anger at her past actions, in the third and fourth stanzas the anger is directed at Kate for stealing the lord and sending her to her ruin, however in the fifth paragraph the direction of her anger is changed again and this time is directed at the lord himself. However the last stanza shows the narrator’s anger to be resolved for although she may have suffered an immense loss of reputation she can be happy now as she’s expressed her anger and knows within her heart that she has something neither the lord and lady Kate have: real love. This suggests that Rossetti doesn’t agree with confinement of the labels given by society, Kate is seen as ‘lovely and pure’ and she as ‘outcast’ but by presenting her as the one who is ultimately happy and proud it’s expressing that society values the wrong virtues, and has

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