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Eve's Fallen Women

196 Words1 Pages
Just as Eve ate the fruit of the forbidden tree and doomed man, Laura gives into her curiosity and eats the fruit. Throughout the poem their fruit is described as forbidden and her sister warns her that ‘their evil gifts would harm [them]’ showing the words of the goblin men are the same as that of the serpent’s tongue in Eve’s ear: evil. Maureen Duffy argues that as a result of Laura exchanging her femininity for fruit it can be read as “sexual experience before marriage based on the warning Lizzie gives to her. This sinful act that Laura metaphorically commits would lead her in being given the title of ‘fallen woman’ in Victorian society. It has been argued that Rossetti’s time with ‘fallen women’ at the Highgate home influenced her characterisation
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