Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market
One of the strongest emotions inherent in us as humans is desire. The majority of the time, we are unable to control what we crave; however, with practice, we learn not all things we want are necessary. As a result of this mature understanding, we are able to ease our feelings and sometimes even suppress our desires. Something even more mature is understanding that when we give in to our desires, we become vulnerable. In a harsh, brutal world, vulnerability will not work to our advantage. In Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market,” she writes about a sister who succumbs to her desire and pays dearly for it while the other sister resists her desires and receives the ultimate reward of her sister’s life. By creating such a spectacular tale, Rossetti stresses the importance of being in touch with one’s desires and being able to prevail over their strong hold because in the harsh world we live in, we cannot afford to let our desire get the best of us.
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 ...
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... men’s fruit. Because of this, she suffers premature aging. Rossetti is conveying the importance of being aware of the possible peril that waits in the outside world, and controlling one’s desires in order to keep oneself from being vulnerable. If one gives in to their desires and makes oneself vulnerable, one will ultimately suffer. Lizzie does not succumb and does not do what the goblin men want her to do. As a result of this refusal, she has the power to bring her sister back to normal and take away her premature aging. Christina Rossetti is conveying the importance of maintaining control over one’s self: if one keeps oneself from becoming vulnerable, resists desires, and chooses the right path, one will remain safe and be rewarded handsomely.
Works Cited
Rossetti, Christina. Goblin Market. Illustrated by Laurence Housman. 1893. New York: Dover, 1983.
In the Goblin Market there is an odd list of twenty nine different kinds of fruits. Many overwhelmed readers may question why there is so many different kinds of fruit: why not one or two? Just like the overwhelmed reader it may symbolize Laura being overwhelmed by her temptation and desire to eat the different kinds of mouth watering fruit. The fruit is both ripe and the source of decay. The fruit represent opposites: “night vs. day, light vs. dark, summer vs. winter, and life vs. death.”(Krocker) The maidens only hear the goblin cry in the morning and in the evening, never at night. Mornings and evenings are transitional periods, “Twilight is not good for maidens.”(Rossetti 144) Even after Laura cannot hear the goblins anymore, Lizzie still can, but only when “slow evening came” and “before the night grows dark.” The transition symbolizes the transition from a young girl to a woman. Another example of youth to maturity is where the goblins sell the fruit, the brookside a split between land wa...
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"Goblin Market" centers around one girl who has a love for the wonderful, but does not realize that the wondrous is often disguised as the wonderful. While these two terms seem the same, wonderful is rooted in naivety and wondrous exposes the ways of the real world in a cruel way. Laura falls prey to the disguise that the wondrous puts on, and at the end of the poem, her entire belief system has been altered for good. Laura's ideas were based on the songs and stories she would have heard when she was younger, which places the goblins in a sense of the wonderful, though they are incredibly dangerous. The reader can see Laura shift from innocence to distrust and brokenness through the similes scattered throughout the poem as she starts out as something out of a romantic tale to a broken shell of a woman. Fairy tales that seem wonderful in the sense of gaiety, like how the goblins seemed at first, are reflected in the fourth stanza, while after the goblins have become more of the wondrousness of monsters, the simile in the third to last stanza shows how Laura has changed from the naive to being harshly reminded of the real world, no matter how fantastic it seems.
There were two principle views concerning imagination, the Victorians and the Romantics, who didn’t accept each other’s ideas about imagination. But, despite their clashes on the status and views of imagination, the Romantics and Victorians share similar ideas through different angles of perspective, which we could assume are linked in part to their era. The long poem, named Goblin Market, written by Christina Rossetti shows the contrast between the ideas of Romanticism and the Victorian image of imagination while utilizing the same motifs. Goblin Market centralizes its theme on the Victorian approach towards Imagination as being a destructive, alien force that leads to grave and fatal consequences. Nature is seen as a demonic force that leads to death, as well as the clear distinction of the imaginative creatures, consisting of the goblins, being portrayed as satanic and evil. In addition, throughout this tale we see how the imagination is constantly blamed for leading to unfortunate situations, while the Romantics would consider the imagination to be doing the person good even if it leads the person astray on a path of death and destruction. Thus, Rossetti’s text demonstrates the Imagination having satanic nature, which portrays imagination as intoxicating and deadly. Also, the author displays her disapproval of nature by demonstrating Laura’s rejection of nature as her enlightenment, whereas the Romantics would do otherwise. The Romantics have different views of the imagination than the Victorians. They consider imagination as a divine force and a pathway to a higher experience and spiritual truth in any form. The Romantics consider that their perc...
Silko counsels that the story's potential for good or ill should not be easily discounted or dismissed. She seems to understand all too well that human beings house both virtuous and vicious impulses; our stories are infused with both the sinister and the sublime. There is a unifying, mythical or archetypal realm which exists just beyond the scope of individual consciousness. Stories are tethered to and wound around this insubstantial place, and the power of each story is firmly rooted in this connection.
Instructor’s comment: This student’s essay performs the admirable trick of being both intensely personal and intelligently literary. While using children’s literature to reflect on what she lost in growing up, she shows in the grace of her language that she has gained something as well: an intelligent understanding of what in childhood is worth reclaiming. We all should make the effort to find our inner child
Laura falls for the alluring trap of the fruit in “Goblin Market”. This can be used as a reference to several things like drugs. The most prominent connection is to drugs. Once she eats the fruit, she craves more and all she can think about is once she has the chance she’s going to get another fruit to eat. While she looks for it, her senses are dulled to the point that she has practically lost them. ”Listening ever, but not catching/ The customary cry, / “Come buy, come buy,”” (Rossetti 6). This can be connected to drugs because once the drug’s vice gets a hold on someone, they become unhealthy and can lose many of their senses. Mr. Fotheringay’s miracles prove to him the God has the power to do anything, and so Fotheringay would believe that miracles are real, God gave him the power to perform unexplainable by science and other worldly things. “Fotheringay was beyond disputing even so fundamental proposition as that!” (Wells 2). This quote shows that once he uses his powers, he is so shocked that he couldn’t find a logical reason as to why the lamp did as he
In the short stories, “Goblin Market” by Christina Rosetti and “The Man Who Could Work Miracles” by H.G. Wells the themes have both similar and different aspects. In both the Goblin Market and The Man Who Could Work Miracles, the same theme can be interpreted. The authors, Rosetti and Wells both presented a moral in their stories for the audience to be taught. The theme in which the two short stories share is “that one should be careful with temptation”, but they both have different aspects of this theme.
When he asks what she gives it to him for, she replies, “A—souvenir.” Then she hands it to him, almost as if to show him that he had shattered her unique beauty. This incident changed her in the way that a piece of her innocence that made her so different is now gone. She is still beautiful and fragile like the menagerie, but just as she gives a piece of her collection to Jim, she also gives him a piece of her heart that she would never be able to regain. Laura and her menagerie are both at risk of being crushed when exposed to the uncaring reality of the world.
"Goblin Market," one among Christina's most sexual poems, contains various analogies to sexual appetites, however it's unclear whether or not she was aware of these sexual innuendos. As her need for esthetical fulfillment becomes a lot more intense, Laura takes on the characteristics of a beast, recalling the fate of many lustful figures. Rossetti permits herself the total freedom of her poetic gifts: her musicality, her visual sense, and her ability in each narrative and lyric modes. The sisters within the literary composition, Lizzie and Laura, square measure tempted by the witching and dangerous fruit the goblins sell as they trudge on the valley facet. Dantean pervades Rossetti’s work with themes of earthly love. That the guilty sister
The chanting of the goblin merchants has a hypnotic quality to it that attempts to mesmerize Lizzie, as well as the reader. It is supposed to be difficult to resist the temptations for the goblin merchants. They are like the snake in the Garden of Eden, and those who have not given into temptation, yet, are like Eve. The temptation to sin is alluring and the means of tempting that the goblins use are seductive – until they become assaulting.
Janwillem Van De Wetering says, “Greed is a fat demon with a small mouth and whatever you feed it is never enough.” Guy De Maupassant’s “The Necklace” tells of Mrs. Mathilde Loisel’s longings for the finer things in life. Her desires are so intense she risks her husband’s affections, the friendship of an old chum, and even her mediocre lifestyle to pursue these cravings. One small decision based on an ill-placed desire causes a slow drawn out death of the spirit, body and relationships.
In Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace" and Toni Morrison's "Recitatif," materialism and the desire to be envied are vital ingredients in the themes of the stories. Both authors enhance their themes through the manipulation of plot and the use of women as their central characters. Maupassant and Morrison prove the notion that women are effective characters in depicting themes that deal with the social issue of craving material wealth.
...aking of virginity than how would you figure that drinking the fruit juice off of her sister’s face would make everything better? This notion does not make sense when you take it a level further. Sex is a misconstrued theme in this poem and is just a misinterpreted fairy tale. Strictly speaking, it is not intelligent to assume that eating fruit at the Goblins Market is the equivalence to having sex with the goblin men. The impression of a "Goblin Market" is a woman’s perspective of their ideal type of world. In the poem we never get acquainted with any “real” men in the tale and the only accusation that a real man does exist in the work is in the end when it says that Laura and Lizzie become “wives” (Line 544). That is the only instance that we hear of a man’s existence in the poem. This poem shows how literature can compose of a fantasy for women directly from men.