Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market is often described as a subversive poem. Do you agree?

University Degree Linguistics, Classics and related subjects

200703824 Introduction to Literary Studies 1st year

“Goblin Market” is often described as a subversive poem. Do you agree?

The definition of the word subversive means “in opposition to a civil authority or government” ( website 2009) and Christina Rossetti shows us how she does this in the poem Goblin Market in a lot of different ways.

For a woman to be heard of in this era was hardly ever heard of in arts or literature. Her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was widely known for his art collection and for the poems he wrote, and for been a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The art they produced had a lot of religious aspects mixed with modern day issues of the time. Their art was true to nature, and very detailed. The women they painted all looked very similar; Christina Rossetti was one of the models for her brother, as well as his wife Elizabeth Siddall. A lot of the PRB art had this idea of sin and redemption, the women in the pictures can easily be seen as fallen women, and some are trying to redeem themselves; but none seem to be able to do this. In the Victorian era there were lots of prostitutes or fallen women but once they had fallen they were very unlikely to ever regain the respect they had previously. I think one of the main ideas that Christina Rossetti put across in her poem is that if a perfect god is willing to give us a second chance why is an imperfect society not willing with regard to fallen women.

I think the poem Goblin Market has a lot of issues that Christina Rossetti was dealing with or had dealt with at the time it was written. Including love, how fallen women were treated, where she worked, her brother; and his treatment of his wife. Some researchers have come up with the idea that the poem is about the market trade and industry at the time, with the fact that advertising for businesses had just come on to the scene. Stern 2003 and Tucker 2003 show us that in there essays. They believe that most intellects have read too much into the notion of Christianity and sisterhood. This idea of market trade or the idea that Laura got food poisoning is a more likely reason for her illness, but then why would it be seen as though the fruit cured her? Plus why was the money not accepted by the Goblins in lines 368-390. therefore this reason it seems an unlikely stance that Rossetti’s poem was making remarks at the way the economy was with advertising and using jingles or with “ostensibly nutritious food”(Stern 2003). If this poem had anything to do with the economy and businesses it would be to say that men did not like women been involved in the business side of things, as this was shown when the Goblins did not accept Lizzie’s coin. This may be because Rossetti believed that most males believed that you could only do business with men, and the only business you do with women for money is when you pay for a prostitute. Lizzie offering them the coin instead of them offering her something for her wares means she is turning the status around and as we see the Goblin men did not like that.

I think one of the reasons why this poem seems subversive for its time is that Laura is eventually redeemed. Many people have linked her to Eve in the story of Genesis, in the fact that she is tempted by the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and is then classed as a fallen woman. Like Eve Laura is tempted by the fruits of the Goblin men. Before she tastes the fruit, she is described as a “maid”, “swan” and “lily” all imagery of a virgin. After she has tasted the fruit she is not described ...

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Then sucked their fruit globes fair or red:
Sweeter than honey from the rock,
Stronger than man-rejoicing wine,
Clearer than water flowed that juice;
She never tasted such before,
How should it cloy with length of use?
She sucked and sucked and sucked the more
Fruits which that unknown orchard bore,
She sucked until her lips were sore;

Lines 128-136

When the Goblins are describing the fruit that Laura eats lines 5-14 they are very aural and you find yourself making sexual indications with your tongue and lips. “The listing of the various fruits promises and provides pleasure, then, as the list is both framed with the phrase assuring consumer enjoyment (again, "Come buy") and is itself visually alluring and poetically seductive” (Mendoza 2006).

Obviously Laura is not married to the Goblin men and by the language used; it suggests that Laura has had sex with the Goblin men. She went to the market with no money “to buy” these fruits, yet the goblins did not ask for her money but a lock of hair. Hair is a symbol of virginity, and by cutting a piece of hair off could mean in this situation that she has given her virginity away. Yet she does this willingly, they do not cut it off for her which could then be seen as rape like what they later try to do to Lizzie. Therefore Laura is seen as fallen women here, and even worse that she pines for more. “For a woman to cut her hair is to defile herself in the eyes of her religious community. Specifically, gold hair in Victorian society represented innocence. The single tear Laura sheds betrays her knowledge that she is literally selling herself in order to experience the fruit” (Victorian Web Website 2008)Therefore when Rossetti decides that her character is redeemed, later in the poem and goes on to have a husband and children this would be seen as very subversive. As women would never in this era be redeemed by society as “sexual pleasure was forbidden to Victorian women” (Victorian Web Website 2009) What I think Rossetti is trying to say here is that prostitution is bad, but once the women have learnt that and redeemed herself that she should then not be judged as a bad person; that she should gain her respectability back. Like “D Amico suggests that Rossetti did not see much difference between the woman who sells herself in marriage, who does not marry for genuine love, and a woman who has sexual experience before marriage because she is fooled by the promises of human love”. (Victorian Web Website 2009). I think the Goblin men in this poem are in fact men that make promises to young girls to give them all their love, hence there fruit to get what they want, which is sex. Once they have been given what they want I don’t think they want to know the women no more, and this is why Laura can’t hear the goblin men the second time but Lizzie can “Laura turned cold as stone
to find her sister heard that cry alone” (253-254). I don’t actually think Rossetti is making Laura out as a prostitute, just a naive “maid”.

Rossetti had a lot of understanding of how women were treated and were believed to be sinners as she worked in St Mary Magdalene house of charity. It was a refuge for fallen women and the women that worked there helped the fallen women become members of the Church of England, and to become domesticated women. By helping these women “she must have believed a fallen woman need not forever be a social outcast” (Victorian Web Website 2009). “The forlorn and forsaken female, damned by her love for a man, appears elsewhere in Rossetti's poetry, suggesting that perhaps Rossetti, who never married, felt jilted in love.” (Helium Website 2008)

The other character in this poem is that of Lizzie. Lizzie’s character would be seen to be subversive as she is likened to Christ. For one Christ is a male, and it is probably one of the first times in literature was a female likened to Christ. Lizzie does not fall for temptation like her sister does, but she does go to try and buy the fruit form the goblin men lines 336-368. the goblin men do not want her money, they want her to taste there fruit, and because Lizzie tries to gain power in the situation by declining there offer she is going against the patriarchal norms for the society in that era, and the goblins do not like this. They start “calling her names reserved for women who step outside the bounds of propriety and traditionally prescribed gender roles,” (Victorian Web Website 2008) “One called her proud, Cross-grained, uncivil” and they violently attack her lines 400-437. what is described in these lines sound an awful lot like an attempt of rape, yet the goblin men do not achieve what they want because Lizzie is stronger in mind and fed up with her resistance finally leave her alone. She has self sacrificed herself for the sake of her sister, just like Christ did. She still keeps her virginity unlike Laura, the lines after the experience with the Goblins still describer her like a “lily” meaning she is a virgin still. Grass describes her like Virgin Mary “the colour blue and her comparison to a virgin certainly indicate a reference to the virgin Mary” (Grass 1996) another Christian reference. When she goes home she asks her sister to:

Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me:

Lines 467-473

This sounds very similar to what Jesus said “"Take, eat, this is my Body which is given for you.... Drink ye all of this; for this is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you" are Christ's words in the Prayer of Consecration in the Communion liturgy.

I think also Rossetti is been subversive towards her brother and the brotherhood, I think she is making sly comments on how they treat women and prostitutes and also his wife. Rossetti describes the Goblins “Brother with queer brother”, and “brother with sly brother” lines 94 and 96.

By using fruit to tempt the fall of the women it is automatically linked to Eve. Yet what we have to remember is that Eve ate an apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. I think that also Rossetti is trying to say that women in this era was not educated enough, not because of their own choice but because it was a patriarchal society, and if females did try and want to better themselves they were seen as wrong and unfeminine. I think that is also the reason why at first this poem was seen as a mere fairy tale for children. It was easier for women to make the men believe that there literature was aimed at children then it was for adults. The education that women were supposed to have was not of “academic education available to men, but moral education”. (Victorian Web Website 2009).

By lines 563-568 I think Rossetti is trying to put across as though females don’t need males to survive, you only need your sisters love, not just your biological sister but sisters as in all females. Once Lizzie had sacrificed herself to the Goblins and went home to Laura and let Laura feast upon the Goblins juices that was on her body she became better, her hair came back to its natural colour and she became well again 538-543. It makes you believe that it is the fruits juice that remedies her, but it could well be seen as though it is her sister’s love and affection that makes her well. There is no mention about males after the Lizzie and the Goblins inclining that you don’t need males to make you whole and to save you.

Christina Rossetti shows by a number of ways which I have illustrated in ways in which this poem can be seen as subversive. I think that she did not believe that fallen women should be scorned if they redeem themselves, as god himself still accepts sinners. For Rossetti to even write a poem like this and for it to be popular would be subversive as women writers were not in the literary canon, but by this influential poem and many others she eventually made it into the literary canon under Christina Rossetti, and not Ellen Alleyne.

Bibliography

Grass, Sean C 1996. “Natures Perilios Variety in Rossetti’s “Goblin Market””. Nineteenth-century literature, vol 51, no. 3, pp 356-376.

Mendoza, Victor Roman 2006. “”Come Buy” The crossing of sexual and consumer desire in Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market”. ELH Baltimore: Winter, vol 73, iss 4, pp 913-948.

Rossetti, Christina (ed.) 1994. Goblin Market and other poems, Dover Publications.

Stern, Rebecca F 2003. ““Adulterations dectected” : Food and Fraud in Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market””. Nineteenth-century literature, vol 57, no 4, pp 477-511.

Tucker, Herbert F 2003. Rossetti’s Goblin Marketing: Sweet to Tongue and Sound to Eye. Representations, No 82, pp 117-133.

[Accessed 10 January 2009]

[Accessed 10 January 2008]

[Accessed 18 December 2008]