Cousin Kate Literary Elements

First-person narration from the perspective of an unnamed woman addressing the titular character about their entwined personal lives.

Traditional ballad form with ABCB rhyme scheme and alternating iambic trimeter and tetrameter.

The speaker says that she, in her desolation, must “howl in dust," while her triumphant cousin can "sit in gold." When describing the lord's treatment, she uses the similes “He wore me like a silken knot / He changed me like a glove," while bemoaning that she might instead have "been a dove." The speaker denigrates Kate's love by saying that it was "writ in sand," and acknowledges her resilience by saying that she had "the stronger wing." She also describes the lord's marriage to Kate by saying that "he bound you with his ring."

Instances of alliteration include C sounds in “contented with my cottage mates” and CL clusters in "cling closer, closer yet." Instances of assonance include short O sounds in the phrases "won me with his love" and "have not got."

The speaker recounts that Kate was chosen as the lord's wife on the basis of her purity and goodness relative to the speaker. As a result, the speaker has been reduced to the denigrated status of an unwed mother, and is therefore ironically considered all the more impure and morally corrupt.

Literary ballad

The poem is set in a rural area within a loosely medieval, feudal society

Rueful, Indignant, Regretful

The protagonist is the mistreated speaker. The antagonist is the lord who ruins her life, but Cousin Kate is also something of an antagonist, and in fact receives most of the speaker's anger.

The poem's major conflict is between the speaker and her cousin. The speaker resents Kate and is angry at her for failing to intervene during the speaker's misfortunes.

The climax arrives when the speaker reveals that she has had a son by the lord, altering the dynamic between herself and Cousin Kate.

Early in the poem, the speaker wonders to herself why and how the lord was able to change her life, foreshadowing that he will create unforeseen difficulties for her.

The speaker initially understates her feelings of anger towards Kate, emphasizing her cousin's positive reputation while concealing her own skeptical feelings about that reputation.

The poem takes place in a gothic, medieval setting, but it alludes to Victorian attitudes towards femininity, sexuality, and chastity, critiquing the conditions that have created Kate's success at her cousin's expense.

The wedding ring is used as a metonym for marriage itself, while the term “coronet” is a metonym for the legacy and inheritance of the lord.

N/A

The speaker uses hyperbolic language, such as "fill my heart with care" and "I sit and howl in dust," to describe her own unhappiness.

The words "howl" and “moan” are onomatopoeia.