Christina Rosetti’s poem “Goblin Market” has elements of Christianity and sexuality; however, the Christian elements outweigh and are more influential than the sexual elements.
Throughout the entirety of “Goblin Market,” Christianity work its way into the story. At the beginning, the goblin men try to entice Laura and Lizzie into buying their abundance of fruit. In Christianity, a similar event occurred. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were forbidden by God to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Despite being forbidden to eat from the tree, Satan tempted Eve to eat the fruit, and she and Adam both partook from the tree; they gave into temptation. Furthermore, the goblin men go into detail as to what kind of fruit they have; two types of fruit they offered were pomegranates and figs. Pomegranates are considered the suspect of being the original fruit in the Garden of Eden, but it is portrayed as an apple in art and media. Figs are also considered the fruit that Adam and Eve ate. Also, after eating the fruit from the tree, Adam and Eve used fig leaves to cover their naked bodies. Despite these Christian contexts, a sexual undertone can also be taken from the goblin men’s attempts to tempt Laura and Lizzie. Instead of literal fruit, the goblin men could be attempting to coerce Laura and Lizzie to engage in sexual acts with them (i.e. forbidden fruit).
Laura and Lizzie’s first initial reactions to the goblin men’s offers can be interpreted as either a Christian or sexual context. After the goblin men describe what they have to offer Laura and Lizzie, the girls try to ignore the goblin men and refrain from giving into their temptation. Laura “bow’d her head to hear”, and Lizzie “veil’d h...
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... is strongly resisting the goblin men’s offers and Laura considering them, the goblins’ characteristics are listed. For instance, one looked like a cat, one was similar to a rat, one was like a ratel (a honey badger), etc. Cats are considered clever, rats are sneaky and often thought of as dirty and vile, and ratels do whatever they want when they want regardless of the consequences. Also, all animals act on instinct and are not aware of good or evil like human beings are. Although animals lack awareness of good and evil, in chapter five, verse eight of 1 Peter, it states that the devil prowls around like a lion, “looking for someone to devour.” The goblin men may be representative of Satan. The literal lion is most active at night, looking for prey; the goblin men only come out at night in the poem and are actively looking for someone to tempt to buy their fruits.
Adam was the first man that God created and was created to be the image of God himself. God planted the beautiful Garden of Eden in which there was no sin and the trees were filled with delicious fruits, everything a person would need to eat. In the middle of the garden was the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” One day, a serpent came into the garden and convinced Eve to eat an apple from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge. The fruit did not make Adam and Eve any better than they already were. Instead, the jealousy, the desire to eat what was forbidden—and then the physical eating of the fruit that was forbidden—allowed sin to enter humanity. God punished Adam and Eve, and all their descendants, by making their lives hard. Likewise, in the novel, peace and innocence left the Devon school and Gene and Finny's friendship, and after the winter session, discipline and hard work began. Eve eating the apple can be paralleled to Gene jostling the limb of the tree while Phineas was standing on the edge of it for in that second, both of their lives ch...
Of the two sisters Lizzie and Laura, Laura is the one whose curious desires get the best of her. She and her sister encounter the goblin men and Lizzie just “thrust a dimpled finger / In each ear, shut her eyes and ran” (67 – 68); however, Laura’s curiosity gets the best of her and she chooses to stay: “Curious Laura chose to linger / Wondering at each merchant man” (69 – 70). These goblin men are selling fruit, and once Laura gets her hands on it, she is hardly able to stop herself. Quenching her desire is overwhelming for her, so much so that when she is finally done she “knew not was it night or day” (139). When she arrives home later, she tells her sister, “I ate and ate my fill, / Yet my mouth waters still; / Tomorrow night I ...
Baron Richard Von Krafft-Ebing, a 19th century German psychiatrist, was quoted as having said, "We find that the sexual instinct, when disappointed and unappeased, frequently seeks and finds a substitute in religion." This may have been the condition of Margery Kempe when she desired to cease all sexual activity with her spouse because of her devotion to God. Instead of performing her duties as a wife, she chose instead to spread her knowledge of God to her community and did so not only in speech, but also in literature. Whatever her motivation for creating such descriptive language, it is evident that her faith in God conquered both her fear of public opinion and the constraints placed upon all women during the period. Living in the 1400s, she steps out of a woman's role and into the territory of a man by living her life publicly, abandoning her position of mother and wife, and recording her life in writing. Fortunately, because she was writing for religious reasons, her work was both permitted and accepted. In The Book of Margery Kempe, she describes her experiences with brilliant imagery, some of which is sexual, all of which is sensual. By using her own senses to portray her spiritual...
Hawthorne tells us the story of Brown, a young man that is married to his wife of three months. (Hawthorn, pg 91). The name of his bride is faith, a name that should not be ignored. He leaves her to go to the towns communion. Along the way his faith and trust is shattered as he meets the devil himself along with other folks from his town. The climax of the tale reveals to the reader that this is not the holy communion we are all familiar with. This is an unholy witch/wizard communion where the inductees themselves are forced to drink blood.
In the year of 100AD in the desert, the town Sodom and Gomorrah stood. Sodom and Gomorrah is a place full of evilness and sin-stricken where their motto is “Everything that gives pleasure is good.” However, beneath the presence of darkness in the town a small but great light of hope with blue eyes, brown maple skin, strong build, and dark coiled hair glimmered. Her name is Faith.
Navarette, Susan J. "The Word Made Flesh: Protoplasmic Predications in Arthur Machen's "The Great God Pan"." The Shape of Fear: Horror and the Fin de Siecle Culture of Decadence. Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 1998. 178-201.
Christina Rossetti's, 'Goblin Market' is one of the most controversial poems of it's time. Although she insisted it was meant to be seen as a childrens fairytale, many readers have interpreted it as an erotic poem, many seeing it as a warning for young women against the temptations of sex. The poem has many hidden inuendos. For example the Goblin's describe the fruit in a sensual way, “Plump unpecked cherries” (line 7). Cherries are seen as a sign of virtue so this a clear example of a sexual situation. There is also a very strong religious theme in this poem. The fruit the goblin merchants are offering is a very clear symbol of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit. “Obviously the conscious or semi-conscious allegorial intention of this narrative poem is sexual/religious.” (Gilbert and Gubar, 566). This essay will discuss the theme of sensuous experience in terms of what makes this poem erotic, female sexuality and it also aims to discuss the religious symbolism in Rossetti's, 'Goblin Market'.
Bradstreet, Anne. “The Flesh and the Spirit.” The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter, et al. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. Lexington: Heath, 1994. 302-305.
Rossetti, Christina. “Goblin Market.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature: Vol. 2B. Ed. David Damrosch, et al. New York: Longman, 1999. 1712-1724.
Like Plato’s quote, there are countless ways to do evil. There are countless ways to illustrate evil. In fable like Red Ridin Hood, the villain is the wolf. This was the age of when Christianity dominated faith and government in Europe, Christians believe that wolves were servents of Satan. Reasons to why they believe this is because wolves hunt the symbol of innocent christians, the lamb. Wolves are depicted as evil creatures that hunt the christian people. With wolves being represented this way, parents feared for the lives of their children. Since children are so easily trusting towards creatures and strangers.
Goblin Market is in essence, an analogy drawn between the commodity/bodily exchange, which the sisters apply thoroughly to their experience in the goblin market, and the grand narratives of Christianity and sexuality; told through the story of Lizzie and Laura’s venture into goblin territory, or rather, male-dominated economic territory. Sexuality, Christianity and economics each in its own right very demanding issues especially mid 18th century.
Brownley, Martine Watson, "Love and Sensuality in Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market." Essays in Literature 1979 Western Illinois University Vol. No. 2 Rpt in TCLC.
all the hunted animals convey connotations of evil, and this is doubtless the reason why the author of the poem seems so involved in the outcome of the hunts and never tires of triumphantly describing the final slaying of the pursued animals. (Howard 85)
In several poems found in Songs of Experience and Innocence Blake presents the church, as well as religion, as corrupt and damaging to the innocence and purity of youth’s souls. The poe...
Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” compares the two main Victorian views towards women. One of them is represented by Lizzie who despite the attempts of the men to tempt her to consume the goblin fruit remains pure and innocent. The other view is represented by Laura who eats the goblin