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Goblin Market Poem

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What does this preference suggest about the relation between trade and sexuality in the poem?
This essay aims to explore the relationship between trade within the goblin market and the sexuality that is heavily implied within the text of the poem. The poem “Goblin Market” is written by Christina Rossetti in 1859, right in the middle of the Victorian era. During this time, unmarried women were discretely searching for husbands. They could not speak to a man without a married women present. Before very long the medical community taught that females were only considered to have romantic feelings and did not have sexual appetites. While young men on the other hand did, and they could find themselves prostitutes to relieve their sexual needs. Rossetti …show more content…

Jeanie was once a friend of the two sisters, until one day she went to the goblins. For Lizzie, she served as a cautionary tale. “She thought of Jeanie in her grave,/Who should have been a bride;/But who for joys brides hope to have” (312-314). Maidens in the Victorian era, as we are reminded were not able to partake in sexual activities prior to being married. When Lizzies thinks of Jeanie being a young bride, she is alluding to not having intercourse on her wedding day. An act that all maidens do for the first time unlike their husbands to be. It is not confirmed how Jeanie paid for her fruit, but it soon becomes apparent it would have been for …show more content…

Lizzie stands firm begging for fruit in exchange for her penny. At this demand the goblins change from “wagging and purring” creatures to that of “grunting and snarling.” The actions taken against her were many, from line 396 to 436 in their brutality against her to make a trade, or to eat their fruit in their presence. The largest to note are two similes used, the first being, “Like a fruit-crown 'd orange-tree/White with blossoms honey-sweet/Sore beset by wasp and bee,--” (415-417). Lizzie is compared to a tree, standing strong, with her flowers. Many times in culture the losing of a females virginity is referenced to deflowering. Here she is a tree covered in flowers, which are trying to be pollinated or impregnated by the goblins, as bees would to

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To bring an end to her sister’s pain, Lizzie “for the first time in her life began to listen and look” for the goblins (Lines 327-328). In her attempt to buy fruit from the goblins, she was invited to feast with them but refused. Similarly, in Matthew 4 where Satan tried to tempt Jesus to turn the stone into bread. Lizzie 's actions are done out of as love as was Jesus’ and as a result “they trod and hustled her, elbowed and jostled her, clawed with their nails at her, Barking, mewing, hissing, mocking, tore her gown and soiled her stockings, twitched her hair from the roots, […] squeezed their fruits against her mouth to make her eat” (Lines 359-401). Rossetti uses this comparison adding to the effect of sacrificial atonement to redeem Laura.

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