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hayleyvem's review against another edition
dark
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Terminal illness, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Mental illness, Sexual assault, and Incest
Minor: Death
orianareadshere's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
hopeful
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
4.5
Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market’ comprises of a multitude of folkloric tropes in order to denote the mercantile economy of (bodily) transactions underpinning the poet’s contemporary Victorian context. Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, published in 1979, is a collection of fairy tales reformulating the concepts tackled here through a partially feminist lens, wherein the marketplace of exchange is evocative of the bartering Italian piazza. Moreover, the goblins’ ‘come buy’ (l. 3, l. 4) is homophonically resonant with ‘come by’.
‘Twilight is not good for maidens.’ (l. 144): This line, replete with a patronising sense of instruction, is indicative of the liminal borderland of the forum-like marketplace as an exemplification of the boundary that lies between the realistic world and the supernatural sphere. This notion is particularly poignant in the poet-speaker’s deployment of an enumerated catalogue of domestic conventions:
Laura rose with Lizzie:
Fetched in honey, milked the cows,
Aired and set to rights the house,
Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat,
Cakes for dainty mouths to eat, (ll. 202-6)
By listing out the two sisters’ daily routine in almost a chronological manner, Rossetti drags the readers back to the mundane triviality of the quotidian. With this being the case, it is unsurprising that Laura hastily defects to the lullaby-like enchantment of the goblins.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Eating disorder, Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, and Bullying
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