Reviews

➜ This Narrative poem is important. Let me tell you why exactly.

➜A Surface read shows a charming poem about two young girls, Laura and Lizzie, visiting a Goblin Market. Laura is tempted by their fruit and ends up exchanging her lock of hair for it, later the girl is seen withering away and her sister, Lizzie, goes to find an elixir back at the market, to help her get better.
She ends up getting the elixir and her sister is restored to her young and healthy self, making this adventure a story that she will tell to her children years’ later, putting an accent on sisterhood:

"For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather ;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands.”

➜Delving deeper into the poem, the interesting thing is that it doesn’t have one official and concrete meaning, but is rather ambiguous.

➛On one hand, you can observe Rosetti’s work as a gender study of the status of a woman in Victorian times.
➛On the other hand, you can see this through the religious lens, where Lizzie is a Christ-like figure

Spoiler

(this can be particularly observed in the last few chapters when she has returned from the goblin market soaked in their fruit speaking Eat me, drink me, love me)

, the goblins are representing evil and their fruit is sin; in a context of the poem, the sin is tied to sexuality and how it can overwhelm a person, remember Laura gave her lock of hair, which can be indirectly seen as selling your body, prostitution. As you can tell, there is a parallel to the Bible and the Book of Genesis, but with elements of Rossetti’s time making it a cautionary tale.

“Dear, you should not stay so late,
Twilight is not good for maidens ;
Should not loiter in the glen
In the haunts of goblin men.
Do you not remember Jeanie,
How she met them in the moonlight,
Took their gifts both choice and many,
Ate their fruits and wore their flowers
Plucked from bowers
Where summer ripens at all hours?
But ever in the noonlight
She pined and pined away;
Sought them by night and day,
Found them no more, but dwindled and grew grey ;
Then fell with the first snow,
While to this day no grass will grow
Where she lies low :
I planted daisies there a year ago
That never blow.
You should not loiter so.”

➜If we take into consideration the time that this piece was written, it becomes even more amazing – it was written during the Victorian era; a time period when many great socio-economic changes had happened – opening the first modern railroad line, British empire abolished slavery, the invention of the electric telegraph followed by the invention of the first telephone a couple of decades later; In literature, Dickens was flourishing with his publications of [b:A Christmas Carol|5326|A Christmas Carol|Charles Dickens|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1406512317l/5326._SY75_.jpg|3097440], [b:A Tale of Two Cities|1953|A Tale of Two Cities|Charles Dickens|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1344922523l/1953._SY75_.jpg|2956372] [b:Oliver Twist|18254|Oliver Twist|Charles Dickens|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327868529l/18254._SY75_.jpg|3057979], [b:Great Expectations|2623|Great Expectations|Charles Dickens|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327920219l/2623._SY75_.jpg|2612809], [b:David Copperfield|58696|David Copperfield|Charles Dickens|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1461452762l/58696._SY75_.jpg|4711940], and Charles Darwin published his revolutionary [b:The Origin of Species|22463|The Origin of Species|Charles Darwin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1298417570l/22463._SY75_.jpg|481941].

➜It is puzzling to think that at the same time, under a female monarch, women didn’t have any rights in Victorian society.
Women couldn’t vote, own any property or legally sue anyone, and by marriage the woman loses all her physical property and all her potential future or current wages, not to mention that the husband has full ownership of his wife and her body – he could beat her, sexually assault her, take away her children and she legally couldn’t do a thing.
The main role of the women in the Victorian era was a domestic one, she is to provide the husband with children and take care of both the husband and the house in the meantime. There was this idea of a woman; to be chaste, pure, and modest.
In fact, chastity was crucial for a Victorian woman – the woman who in any way(even by force) lost her purity is considered a fallen woman and is ostracized and shamed.
The mere thought that a woman may have a sexual urge was preposterous.

"Laura stretched her gleaming neck
Like a rush-imbedded swan,
Like a lily from the beck,
Like a moonlit poplar branch,
Like a vessel at the launch
When its last restraint is gone."

This is where Rossetti’s Goblin Market plays a huge role.
Imagine a poem where the fallen woman has a chance for redemption, where losing her purity doesn’t mean the end of her social life, where another woman sacrifices herself so that the other woman is restored – it spreads solidarity between women and offers forgiveness and second chances for happiness.

“If you will not sell me any
Of your fruits though much and many,
Give me back my silver penny
I tossed you for a fee.”—
They began to scratch their pates,
No longer wagging, purring,
But visibly demurring,
Grunting and snarling.
One called her proud,
Cross-grained, uncivil ;
Their tones waxed loud,
Their looks were evil.
Lashing their tails
They trod and hustled her,
Elbowed and jostled her,
Clawed with their nails,
Barking, mewing, hissing, mocking,
Tore her gown and soiled her stocking,
Twitched her hair out by the roots,
Stamped upon her tender feet,
Held her hands and squeezed their fruits
Against her mouth to make her eat.”

➜Lizzie went to the market because she loved her sister and supported her, rather than judged her for losing her chastity. Imagine a world where instead of judging we raised a helping hand. That is true power. The fact that both women were later married and that this event that they went through is only a story with no deeper repercussions but only serving as a cautionary tale for their children that teaches them about the importance of female solidarity is powerful. Thank you, Christina Rossetti.

➜Written in a simple language with an irregular rhyme which gives a notion of spontaneity and quickens the pace of the poem, with descriptive images that put an accent on both the temptation

Spoiler

(the description of the Goblin fruit)

and the salvation

Spoiler

(the sisterly love and solidarity)

with an ambiguous interpretation and written for both children and adults this poem is revolutionary for the time and inspiring for any time honestly.

➜I would recommend people read this work and think about it after reading it. Maybe find an analysis because this is one of the best poems I have read in a while, and I find it criminally underrated. One can only hope that the message of the work can one day be applicable in every single human community.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I loved this narrative poem. More about it in a few days, because exam season is killing me over here.