Goblin Market Critical Appreciation

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.