The perceived notions of masculinity and femininity are challenged in Dickens’ ‘Great expectations’, Barrett Browning’s ‘Aurora Leigh’, Pope’s ‘Rape of the lock’ and Rossetti’s ‘Goblin market’ through the subversion of stereotypical ideals of motherhood, sisterhood and open female relationships. In subverting the preconceived notions of female behaviour, it challenges the overall gender norms of male and female behaviour.
In Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market’ features women who succumb to temptations of the male’s present at the market within the poem. Through the men being described as animalistic it can be said that the men in the market are foreign and the fruit they are selling become more tempting to the Laura and Lizzie due to the fact they haven’t experience the ‘goblin fruits’ before. Arseneau see the poem as ‘exploration of sexual temptation and as an allegory of Eve’s temptation in the Garden of Eden’ with both women being tempted by males with
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Arseneau, Mary. “Incarnation and Interpretation: Christina Rossetti, the Oxford Movement, and ‘Goblin Market.’” Victorian Poetry, vol. 31, no. 1, 1993, pp. 79–93. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40002453. (-- removed HTML --)
Casey, Janet Galligani. “The Potential of Sisterhood: Christina Rossetti 's ‘Goblin Market.’” Victorian Poetry, vol. 29, no. 1, 1991, pp. 63–78. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40002055. (-- removed HTML --)
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Wordsworth Classics, 1992.
Holt, Terrence. “‘Men Sell Not Such in Any Town’: Exchange in ‘Goblin Market.’” Victorian Poetry, vol. 28, no. 1, 1990, pp. 51–67. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40002040. (-- removed HTML --)
Gates, Sarah. “Intertextual Estella: ‘Great Expectations," Gender, and Literary Tradition.” PMLA, vol. 124, no. 2, 2009, pp. 390–405. JSTOR, JSTOR,