Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market

Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” depicts two sisters’ experiences with the goblins and their marketplace of fruits. Laura gives in to the temptation of curiosity and exchanges her “precious golden lock” (Rossetti 126) for a taste of the fruits, while Lizzie represents the conventional female who obeys gender roles, never making eye contact with the goblins. Rossetti criticises the unfairness of gender roles in the Victorian society, as well as how society is civil only to females who fit into the standard mould of what a woman should be - innocent, pure, and obedient. Beneath the mask of crafting a cautionary tale for females to avoid participating in the marketplace, Rossetti encourages females to break out of the restrictive societal

Laura represents the “archetypal female […] curiosity of Eve and Pandora” (Campbell 402), who gives in to her curiosity and eats the goblin fruits despite knowing that females “must not look at goblin men, / [they] must not buy their fruits” (Rossetti 42-3). After Laura eats the fruits, she realises that she can no longer hear the goblins’ cries. This shows that the consumption of the goblin fruits can only happen once in a woman’s life, symbolic of how a woman can only lose her innocence once in her life. Laura is then left to grow old on her own as “her hair grew thin and gray” (277). Here, the goblins are representative of the male-dominated Victorian society, where females are expected to be innocent, pure, and obedient. The moment she loses her purity, Laura is deemed useless and is abandoned by the goblins as well as the Victorian society. On the other hand, Lizzie is the obedient female who has “completely assimilated the female social code and sees the woman’s confined place and her domestic duty as sacred” (Campbell 403). She is well aware that females are not allowed to be involved in the marketplace and therefore tries to convince Laura to not be tempted by telling her that “Their offers should not charm [them], / Their evil gifts would harm [them]” (Rossetti 65-66). In an attempt to buy the goblin fruits to save Laura, Lizzie gets invited to eat with the goblins but she refuses. The moment she rejects their offer, the initially friendly goblins “Elbow’d and jostled her / […] Held her hands and squeez’d their fruits / Against her mouth to make her eat” (400-7). At Lizzie’s disobedience, the goblins get hostile and physically force her to eat. Even in a slight moment where the innocent and obedient Lizzie strays from the societal mould, she gets abused for it. Even though the sisters are vastly different, both of them still end up being tormented by the goblins. Rossetti points out