How is the relationship between the narrator and the lord presented in the poem ‘Cousin Kate’?

The story that is being told during the poem is told in the first person, affecting the reader by letting them see all from the narrator’s point of view which automatically influences them to feel empathy for her. It’s interesting for me to think of whether the reader would empathise for Kate, rather than the narrator, if she was the one whose emotions were focused on in the poem.
Throughout the poem, the narrator reveals the attitudes to love, marriage and unmarried mothers in the time in which the poem was written (over 100 years ago). She uses the similes ‘He wore me like a silken knot’ and ‘He changed me like a glove’ to describe how quickly the lord moved on after seducing and leaving her. This implies that, in this time, men could cast away a woman as they pleased. She also shows that people married for money, rather than love, by using quotes such as ‘bought me with his land’ and ‘palace home’- this wording also contrasts with the description of the narrator’s ‘cottage’ at the beginning of the poem, showing the reader the clear difference between the lives and wealth of the narrator and the lord. The narrator then shows the attitude towards unmarried mothers in this time period using quotes such as ‘outcast’ and ‘my fair-haired son, my shame’ (describing the child that was bounded on her by the lord). This tells the reader that mothers were frowned upon if they had no husband.
At the beginning of the poem, it is said that the narrator was ‘a cottage maiden’, using words such as ‘contented’ and ‘Not mindful I was fair’ to emphasise her innocence before the lord seduced her and to show that she wasn’t aware of her beauty. In my opinion, this emphasis is used to display how much the lord changed both the narrator’s life and her attitude to life by seducing and rejecting her in a short space of time.
The powerful language throughout the poem describes how the narrator was treated and the way in which she reacted to it, for example, ‘unclean’ is used to emphasise that she was a virgin until after she met the lord and that she is now frowned upon because she gave him her virginity. ‘Outcast’ tells us that she is no longer accepted as part of the community and that she is looked down on by others. The narrator then uses ‘howl’ to describe the emotional and exaggerated crying that she had little control of and implies that she thinks extremely little of the lord when she later uses the quote ‘I would have spit into his face’. Both this aggressive language and and the monosyllabic tone add to the angry tone that is used in the poem and helps the reader to really understand the narrator’s emotions and the effect these events have had on her.
Also adding to the confused and angry state of mind that we pick up from the narrator are oxymorons, which are used many times throughout the poem. For example she describes their love as a ‘shameless, shameful life’ which tells us that, although this was a happy and harmless relationship, it was not real love and she also became pregnant from it. At the end of the poem, the narrator’s son is described as ‘my shame, my pride’ declaring that, although he is her shame in other’s eyes as she is unmarried, she loves her child and is proud of him.
Finally, the last stanza introduces a different kind of love as the narrator begins talking about her son. The change of mood here makes her seem to have picked up quite a smug tone and she then describes her son as ‘fair-haired’, implying that he is pure. Also, referring back the the beginning of the poem, the narrator describes her own hair as fair, and so I believe that she is possibly saying this to show that he is more similar to her rather than his father.