When, wealth and health slipped past, you stare
Along the streets alone, and there,
Round the long park, across the bridge,
The cold lamps at the pavement’s edge
Wind on together and apart,
A fiery serpent for your heart. (149-54)
In lines 177-84, the speaker seems to be rejecting the notion that women are inherently “pure” or “fallen” by seeing the similarities of Jenny to his “pure” cousin Nell. The poem acknowledges the potential for “honour” in Jenny and sees the capacity for “dishonour” in Nell: she is “fond of fun, / And fond of dress, and change, and praise, / So mere a woman in her ways”. (185-7) But this does not appear to sit well with the speaker, as he immediately reverts back to conventional binary thinking by envisioning the “pure” woman as finding her rightful end in marriage (as opposed to Jenny, the prostitute, who is envisioned as meeting her proper end in death “at the pavement’s edge.”) The love of a man has the power to transform Nell’s dangerous potential: “For Love himself shall ripen these / In a kind soil to just increase / Through years of fertilizing peace.” (200-2) Immediately following this, the speaker repeats lines 182-5 which reinforces his horror in seeing the possibility of similarity between Jenny and Nell: “Of the same lump (as it is said) / For honour and dishonour made / Two sister vessels. Here is one. / It makes a goblin of the sun.” (203-6; emphasis mine)
The speaker then briefly imagines that Jenny might be saved: He questions, “How atone, / Great God, for this which man has done?” (241-2), and speculates, “If but a woman’s heart might see / Such erring heart unerringly / For once! But that can never be.” (250-2) He, thus, eliminates the possibility of the “pure” woman’s ability to help Jenny, muses some more over her condition, and then indifferently departs, leaving Jenny to negotiate her own salvation. But Jenny has remained sleeping and is not afforded a voice in which to tell her own story or to contribute to a discourse on improving her condition. The speaker never opens that “volume seldom read” (158), instead opting to write his own. He sees Jenny through his own story of male sexuality. Although the speaker purportedly “reads” Jenny, he is most fixated on his own corrupt nature: “It was a careless life I led / When rooms like this were scarce so strange / Not long ago” (37-9), and confessing his guilt in line 384, “Ashamed of my own shame”. Despite this, the speaker tells Jenny that, “I must mock you to the last” (383); therefore, although there are glimpses of his own complicity in and guilt regarding the situation, he dismisses these, and ultimately acts as any of Jenny’s other customers, paying her for services and leaving her to ruin. It is as if the “golden coins” he leaves in her hair exonerate him from any further responsibility.
While “Jenny’s” speaker raises questions about the condition of the prostitute, and briefly considers what can be done to save her, he nevertheless keeps her in a stereotypical box while intellectually ruminating. Jenny’s own story is never told, and the speaker never commits to addressing the issue at hand. Christina Rosetti’s “Goblin Market”, however, does address the issues that “Jenny’s” speaker raises and ultimately dismisses. The poem refutes the idea that the ”fallen woman” lies beyond the assistance of her “pure” sister. “Goblin Market” successfully challenges the notion that the “vile text” (“Jenny” 259) of sexual transgression cannot be read or revised.
In “Goblin Market”, Laura, the fallen sister, is seduced by goblin men into exchanging her golden “curl” for their delectable, but finally life-threatening fruit. (Elisabeth G. Gitter has shown that for the Victorians golden women's hair had "powers both magical and symbolic," connected to both "wealth and female sexuality".) They leave her at death’s door, but her virginal, compassionate sister, Laura, unquestioningly supports and assists Lizzie, making her whole again. Laura faces Lizzie’s seducers in order to procure the antidote that makes Lizzie well. She, thus, interrupts the “harlot’s progress”, and Lizzie and Laura go on to marry and have children, whom they caution to avoid the deceptive delights of goblin fruits. Although the poem ends with the one of the conventional types of reclamation afforded nineteenth century prostitutes (marriage—the other being death), it stands in complete opposition to the manner in which D.G. Rosetti’s poem stereotypes “Jenny” and ultimately considers her irredeemable.
It is clear that “Goblin Market” considers compassion between women to be a powerful, healing force. The poem ends as follows:
For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands.
In the 1850’s there was much public discussion regarding the dissatisfaction with the prevailing method being used to “reclaim fallen women”—the penitentiary system. W.R. Greg and, later, William Acton called for regulation which led to the Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860’s. The Acts subjected prostitutes to periodical medical examinations and hospital lock-down if they were found to be infected with venereal disease. This practice did nothing to address the cause of prostitution or to improve the lives of the women involved. It did, however, serve to propagate ideas such as those reflected in “Jenny”—the misogynistic rhetoric of the polluted female body. The speaker in “Jenny” reveals this view using a repulsive image of female genitals: “New magic on the magic purse,-- / Grim web, how clogged with shriveled flies” (344-5) Conversely, “Goblin Market” by no means views the “fallen woman” as dirty or unredeemable. Indeed, the “contagion” spoken about in “Goblin Market” is the contagion of male desire. Further, the “fallen” Laura does return to the domestic sphere, although not initially through the marriage market as convention would prescribe, but through sisterly devotion. Acton, and many other male social reformers, believed that “anything but the most restrained and limited sexual activity was damaging to men and women alike.” He implies, however, that male sexuality must be accepted, and he lays the burden of sin on women.
As “Jenny” reflects the prevailing nineteenth century male social reformist view of prostitution, so “Goblin Market” reflects the prevailing female social reformists view. One such theorist, Anna Jameson, argues that women can play a role in reforming “the fallen of [her] own sex”, and, while Acton focuses on the necessity of prostitution as “legitimate” women’s work, Jameson argues that the cure for prostitution lies in securing women more meaningful and respected “vocations” as well as equal protection (rather than more regulation) under the law.
Although many critiques dismiss the idea that “Goblin Market” is a moralistic tale and the view that it was informed by Christina Rosetti’s biography, there is strong evidence that this is the case. The ideology of “sisterhood” put forth in “Goblin Market” reflects a strong current of thought in British female social reform circles. At the time she wrote “Goblin Market”, Rosetti undoubtedly subscribed to the belief that one should minister to others and, using Christ’s example of compassion, carry out his earthly work. Indeed, in “What good shall my life do me?”, written in the same year as Goblin Market, Rosetti posits Christian charity as a proactive duty: “O ye who taste that Love is sweet, / Set waymarks for the doubtful feet / That stumble on in search of it” (46-8). No such sense of Christian compassion or moral duty can be found in “Jenny”.
Another convention used in “Jenny”, but refuted in “Goblin Market” is that of the rural woman being “pure”. “Goblin Market” makes no such distinction between city and country. In “Jenny”, the speaker imagines an idealized innocence in Jenny’s past: “When she would lie in fields and look / Along the ground through the blown grass, / And wonder where the city was” (130-33) In “Goblin Market”, however, Laura’s fall occurs in the country with fruits that are not available for purchase in the city: “Men sell not such in any town” (537)
In addition, “Goblin Market” does not adhere to the binary of “pure” versus “fallen” women as “Jenny” does. The speaker in “Jenny” states that to think of these women as similar is to make “a goblin of the sun” (206), and, the point is further emphasized by setting this line of the poem apart from the rest. Laura and Lizzie remain equal, however, even after the “goblin” seductions.
The destructive male sexuality that controls the “market” conditions in “Jenny” is rejected in “Goblin Market” Lizzie wants to pay for the goblin’s fruit with money because she does not want to compromise her sexuality in order to get it. She demands an equal economic relationship, and, although the goblins try to “rape” her, this is what saves her from falling.
Laura and Lizzie choose not only to read and reject the authorized text of the ”fallen woman” (Jeanie, whose fate was death when she ate the goblin’s fruit), but also to write their own. Together the two sisters have reclaimed their power and gone on to live happy, productive lives.
The social and moral blinders are quite evident in D.G. Rosetti’s poem, “Jenny”. “Jenny” epitomizes the view espoused by much of the writing of the time that dictated that, for a woman, marriage without sex leads to a swift downward path of living on the streets, drinking and death. In fact, the factory reports and annual summaries of Magdalene institutions made it obvious that the problem was not sex but dependency (due to poor employment and class and gender discrimination). “Goblin Market” insists that women can overcome this dependency by supporting and aiding one another. This view not only refutes the patriarchal ideas about the “fallen” women, but it adds that hearing these women’s true stories as well as compassion for these women is required in order to address the issue in an honest and productive way. The Christian doctrine of doing Christ’s work on earth, as above-mentioned, is also quite apparent in “Goblin Market” as much as it is absent in “Jenny”. J.C. Shairp says of D.G. Rosetti’s writing:
Till you have learned something better to tell us on man’s life and destiny,
had you not better be silent? […]
If, future poets wish to win the ear of their countrymen […], they would be wise to cultivate […] nobler sentiment, expressed in purer and fresher diction, and to make their appeal, not to the perfumed tastes of over-educated coteries, but to the broader and healthier sympathies of universal man.
The speaker in "Jenny" looks through a male gaze, propagating a narrow-minded, patriarchal, conjectured and erroneous view of the “fallen” woman. The speaker uses Jenny, intellectualizes about her sad condition, and then leaves her to negotiate her own reclamation. Despite “Jenny’s” high language, there is no noble sentiment; indeed no true affection is expressed in the poem. Among other things, we can look to “Goblin Market” for a nobler, more honest and productive sentiment regarding the “fallen” woman likely because it is informed through a compassionate, female gaze.
WORKS CITED
Slinn, E. Warwick; Victorian Poetry as Cultural Critique; University of Virginia Press 2003; p. 123
Gitter, Elisabeth G.; "The Power of Women's Hair in the Victorian Imagination"; PMLA Vol. 99, No. 5 (1984): 936-954.
Eberle, Roxanne; Chastity and Transgression in Women’s Writing, 1792-1897; Palgrave, New York 2002; p. 181
Calder, Jenni; Women and Marriage in Victorian Fiction New York, Oxford University Press 1976; p. 90
Jameson, Anna; “Sisters of Charity, Catholic and Protestant” and “The Communion of Labour”; 1857, Westport: Hyperion Press, 1976
Eberle, Roxanne; Chastity and Transgression in Women’s Writing, 1792-1897; Palgrave, New York 2002, p. 182
Rosetti, Christina; The Complete Poems of Christina Rosetti; Baton Rouge; Louisiana State University Press, 1986
Mitchell, Sally; The Fallen Angel—Chastity, Class and Women’s Reading, 1835-1880 Bowling Green University Popular Press; Bowling Green, Ohio; p. 53
Sharp, J.C.; “Aesthetic Poetry: Dante Gabriele Rosetti,” The Contemporary Review; 1882; p. 32