GCSE Coursework : Poetry comparison.
My Box By Gillian Clarke and
Cousin Kate By Christina Rossetti.
Compare the way poets write about the experience of love, explaining how they make you feel about the stories told in each poem.
By Charlotte Pearson 10d
In this essay I will be comparing the poems but also describing how each one makes you feel. 'Cousin Kate' by Christina Rossetti is about a cottage maiden being betrayed and used for a lord's pleasure. She falls pregnant and gets cast away because she is not pure, is not virginal. The poem is set in Victorian times and embodies the values of the day. It was set in a time when women were thought of as sinners and condemned for having sex before marriage. 'My Box' by Gillian Clarke is a completely different poem. It is set in modern times, in Wales. It is about the poets lover giving her a gift, a box, which is crafted with hard work,care and effort. We will look at the similarities and differences between the authors portrayal of love and the consequences of that on the reader. Both poems are very different but both have something in common. They both describe love in some way. But the love is portrayed very differently. In 'Cousin Kate' the love she represents has been stripped away. She is very angry that she loved the lord in the poem I think. 'My Box' describes how she has had to work hard on the relationship and the poem is very mushy and all about her lover giving this incredible gift to her.
'Cousin Kate' is a very emotional poem that expresses the anger and pain that the cottage maiden feels. I think that Christina Rossetti was trying to get that emotion across. Christina Rossetti had worked with girls like this and had seen the consequences. It seems that she wrote the poem to show people the truth of these girls situations and to express her own anger at their treatment by society. She saw that it was not their fault. Men took advantage of the girls. They were used for their lord's...