'Are Women Heroic...' Essay Plan and The Convent Threshold

Over the last few lessons various things have been discussed. One was the idea of whether the women in Cousin Kate are heroic. Our task was to write a plan for the essay question 'To What Extent Do You Agree That the Women in Cousin Kate Are Heroic?'. I was not there during that lesson, however, I have read other people's plans and copied up people's work so I do have some ideas.

Agree

• The narrator faces injustice from society yet comes out on top as she has her 'pride', which is her son, someone who will look after her. She stays strong and is not the traditional 'fallen woman'.
• Kate makes something of herself by marrying a Lord. She is a social climber and shows that poorer people can make something of themselves.
• The narrator recognises her wrongdoing and feels regret - 'shameful life'.
• Cousin Kate has moral high ground as she did not have sex before marriage, unlike the narrator.

Disagree

• Cousin Kate has material desires, abandoning her family for riches and property of the Lord.
• The narrator is fooled into sex.
• The narrator is bitter towards Cousin Kate.

The Convent Threshold was another Rossetti poem we looked at. After reading through, we were asked 'How Does Rossetti Tell the Story in the Convent Threshold?'. The poem is extremely confusing and hard to interpret but a few ideas did come out of our group's discussion.

The idea of heaven and earth was important. The imagery of heaven in lines 25 and 26 is unpleasant, with lines such as 'wrenched limb from limb', whereas the earthly imagery is beautiful, with phrases such as 'milk-white' showing purity, and 'golden windy hair' showing youth. Earth may seem so beautiful due to the narrator's lover being there and since he is not in heaven, heaven becomes the narrator's hell.

The narrator's conflict between religion and man is also noticeable. The narrator says 'my lips still turn to you', raising connotations of love and making the reader expect her to kiss the man, however, the next line is 'my livid lips that cry, Repent!', showing that she instead wishes him to repent his sins so he can be in heaven with her. She is struggling between him and religion.