Treatment of the Fallen Women in "Jenny" and "The Goblin Market"

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Loresa D. Matarazzo                                                         Victorian Literature 309

Final Paper                                                                Prof. Sarah Alexander

Treatment of the Fallen Women in “Jenny” and “The Goblin Market”

        D.G. Rosetti’s poem “Jenny” sets out, in large part, the problem of the separate categories of the “fallen” and the “pure” woman.  Although espoused through a view of male liberalism, the poem was obviously informed by the social mores of the time, including separate domestic/public spheres, the male/female double standard as well as the Madonna/Magdalene categories allotted to nineteenth century women. “Jenny” does not escape the prevailing mid-nineteenth century notions of transgressive female sexuality and its “predictably” tragic end, despite its supposedly “enlightened” view of the subject and brief allusions to compassion.  As one reads “Jenny”, there are moments where one feels that the performative speech of will serve to displace contemporary discourses and agendas about women; instead it ends up confirming them.  E. Warwick Slinn suggests that the poem may simply be a dramatization of male consciousness, but it is clearly a disclosure (intentional or otherwise) of Victorian patriarchal perceptions of women.

        Christina Rosetti also addressed this issue in her poem “The Goblin Market”.  Although she too was somewhat influenced by the hegemonic view of the time, “Goblin Market”, for the most part, rejects this view.  The poem employs a vastly different mode of dealing with this socially constructed binary with a view toward understanding and reconciling this issue.  This is attributed to the fact that Christina Rosetti’s work was produced through a female, rather than a male, gaze, but, equally as important, that it was largely informed by Christian sensibilities of compassion and good works.  D.G. Rosetti’s “Jenny”, on the other hand, lacks any resolution to the issue because not only is it steeped in the patriarchal view, but it is also devoid of the concepts of true compassion and Christian moral duty found “Goblin Market” (and in many of the mid-Victorian female writers’ works).  Conversely, the intellectual view takes center stage, despite the sometimes flowery and idealistic language employed.

        In “Jenny”, a male speaker reflects on the life of a prostitute he has procured for the night.  While she sleeps, he reviews many of the stereotypes associated with the prostitute.  Line 65 refers to Jenny’s “desecrated mind,” conjuring images of impurity.   Line 7 reads “Fair Jenny mine, the thoughtless queen,” the word “thoughtless” intimating her carefree as well as unintelligent nature.  The speaker further degrades Jenny as one who sells herself in lines 18 through 21:  “Poor shameful Jenny, full of grace / Thus with your head upon my knee;-- / Whose person or whose purse may be / The lodestar of your reverie?”  Jenny’s grace is seen as only physical; she “shamelessly” sells herself, and the speaker thus laments over her lost virtue, and anticipates her eventual fate:

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        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, ...

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