1.
Goblin Market Critical Appreciation
Christina Rossetti’s poem
“Goblin Market” tells the story of Laura and Lizzie, two sisters who are
tempted by goblin fruit. Macmillan published the poem in Goblin Market and Other Poems in
1862. The poem’s rhyme scheme and meter are irregular, often with ABAB couplet rhymes.
Laura and Lizzie live near
the Goblin Market and can hear the goblins advertising their fruit. Laura warns
her sister that they shouldn’t look at the goblins or buy their fruits as she
is suspicious of their effects.
The goblins hobble by, and
this time, Lizzie warns Laura not to look at the goblins as she covers her
eyes. Laura looks and describes the men hauling their goods. The fruit looks
plump and juicy, and Laura feels tempted. Lizzie tells her the food is likely
bad, saying their “evil gifts would harm us.” She shoves her fingers in her
ears and runs, but Laura stays behind.
Some of the goblins have cat
faces and long tails, some look like wombats and are furry. They come upon
Laura, and they exchange sly glances. One of the men begins to weave her a
crown, and the other offers her some fruit. Laura tells them she doesn’t have
any money, and they ask for a lock of her golden hair. She gives them a lock of
hair along with a “tear more rare than pearl.”
The fruit is sweeter than honey
and stronger than wine and Laura sucks at it greedily. When she can eat no
more, she heads home in a kind of drunken state.
Lizzie meets Laura at the
gate and scolds her for staying out so long. She reminds her of Jeanie, the
girl who ate the goblin fruit and pined away until she died. No plants grow on
Jeanie’s grave, not even the daisies that Lizzie planted there.
Laura says that she ate her
fill, but her mouth still waters for more fruit. She looks forward to tomorrow
night when she can buy some more. The two go to sleep together.
The next morning, the sisters
go about their chores milking the cow, cleaning the house, churning the butter,
and kneading the dough. Laura is absent-minded thinking only of the goblin
fruit.
As night falls, Laura is
listening for the goblins, but can’t hear them. Lizzie, however, can hear them
and urges Laura to head back to the house with her. Back at home, they climb
into bed. Laura is upset that she can’t hear the goblins and worries she won’t
be able to eat the fruit again. She cries and gnashes her teeth all night.
For days, Laura is tormented
by her need for the fruit. Her health fails, and she begins to decay. Her hair
begins to gray, and the light leaves her eyes.
Laura remembers a seed that
she took from one of the goblin fruits, and she plants it, hoping it will grow.
She stares at the spot, longing for the fruit in the same way that a traveler
hallucinates water in the desert. She stops doing her chores and refuses to
eat.
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Lizzie, greatly concerned for
her sister, takes a silver penny down to the goblin market. The goblins swarm
around her, and she tosses them the penny, asking them to fill her apron with
fruit. They refuse and tell her to sit and eat with them. Lizzie explains that
Laura is waiting for her, and if the goblins don’t give her some fruit, they
should give her the penny back. Her cautiousness angers the goblins, and they
call her proud and uncivil. They hold her hands and try to force-feed her, but
Lizzie is resistant. After much kicking, scratching, tearing, and pinching, the
goblins give up and leave.
Lizzie runs back home,
covered in juice from the goblins’ fruit. She calls Laura as she comes to the
gate to come to kiss her, “Eat me, drink me, love me…”
Laura is terrified that
Lizzie has eaten the fruit and wound up in the same situation as her. She
kisses her sister and cries. Laura reacts to the juice of the fruit as though
she has been poisoned, and she falls to the floor.
Lizzie nurses Laura through
to the next day, and when Laura wakes, she is healed of her sickness. Her hair
is back to its normal, golden color and she is healthy again.
The two sisters live long
lives and tell their children the story of the goblin market, with the moral,
“For there is no friend like a sister/In calm or stormy weather.”
Although scholars have
analyzed the poem in a myriad of ways, some of the more popular interpretations
include sex and religion. Sexual imagery is perceived in Laura’s binge on the
goblin fruit and Lizzie’s sticky encounter with the goblins. Though Rosetti
insisted that she wrote the poem for children, some critics equate the poem
with Victorian sexual repression.
In contrast, other critics
see a correlation between the goblin fruit and Adam and Eve’s “forbidden
fruit,” likening Lizzie’s insistence that Laura “eat” her to the Christian
tradition of symbolically eating the body of Christ.
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