Cousin Kate and The Seduction

            The two poems are set nearly a century and half apart. Despite this, the poems have very similar occurrences. The poems are both about the differences of commitment between boys and girl in relationships, and the abuse they receive from neighbours and local people. The reader must note that the poet who wrote "Cousin Kate" was a wealthy lady, and so could not have encountered the situation in her poem, whereas the poet for "The Seduction" could quite easily have experienced a teenage pregnancy. "Cousin Kate" was written for the pleasure of writing a poem, but "The Seduction" was written for a children's poetry competition with the subject of "water", these facts must also be taken into consideration.
             The narrator in "Cousin Kate" is enticed by a Lord into his home. They have a relationship and the narrator becomes pregnant. We are not told whether the lord is aware of the pregnancy, but he swaps the narrator "like a glove" for her younger, more fair cousin, Kate. .
             The girl in "The Seduction" goes to a friend's party and meets a boy. The girl gets drunk on vodka as she "knocked it back like water," and the boy takes advantage of her. She also becomes pregnant and tears up her comics that had "cheated" and lied to her. .
             The girls in both the poems lose their virginity and become pregnant, the narrator in "Cousin Kate" was a "cottage maiden", showing the reader that she was a female virgin. The narrator in "The Seduction" does not tell the reader directly that she was a virgin, but from the way she acted about her pregnancy and how drunk and "nervous" she was, it is implied. Both of the girls in some way regret what happened, they cry and feel "unclean". The men by whom they were seduced used tools, the lord used his money and the boy used alcohol. This shows the reader that the narrators were not in love with the boys for the person they were at first. Neither of the poems tell us the name of the narrator, which could be to increase the sense of privacy or shame.