Rossetti's Goblin Market

Rossetti was born in London in 1830 into a remarkable family of artists, scholars and writers. Her father was an exiled Italian revolutionary and poet and her brothers William and Dante Gabriel Rossetti were founding members of art movement the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Christina had her own first book of poetry privately printed by her grandfather when she was 12 years old. At the age of 19 she contributed poems to Pre-Raphaelite journal The Germ, under the pseudonym Ellen Alleyn. Rossetti then died in 1894.

The women in her family were committed High Church Anglicans and as a teenager, Christina suffered a nervous breakdown that was diagnosed at the time as 'religious mania'. Rossetti fell in love with several suitors, but rejected them

In this poem, the speaker rejects the offering of love from the persistent John. Her work speaks to the idea of unrequited love. The speaker contends that she never told John that she loved him and that he knew she never loved him. As the poem progresses, Rossetti’s speaker moves from a simple refusal by incorporating a beautiful verse with tactfully rude remarks.

In 1862, at the age of 32, she published her first full collection, Goblin Market and Other Poems. A sensuous fairy story, Goblin Market is a heady tale of repressed sexuality and sisterhood. There are two popular interpretations of “Goblin Market”: one reading is religious, and the other focuses on gender and sexuality. If the reader is more familiar with the religion, the reader will see the Christian allegory. However, if the reader is well versed in the study of gender and sexuality, then the symbolism will more readily relate to that topic. In the Christian interpretation, Laura represents Eve, the goblin men are the equivalent of Satan, their fruit is the temptation to sin, and Lizzie is the Christ figure. Laura sins by going against the interdiction that she must not

In Maude Clare Rossetti uses the more spontaneous ABCB rhyme scheme to provide some relief from the strict regularity of the meter. As a result, the meter is awkward at times, paralleling the uncomfortable situation in which the characters are torn between expressing their true emotions and maintaining proper social behavior. Maude Clare’s aggressive tirade against Thomas and Nell begins with an attention grabbing “lo,” and does not soften with her presentation of wedding gifts. She embodies the Victorian archetype of a scorned woman whose wrath cannot be assuaged. Maude Clare is almost monstrous in her anger, like a savage Juno, but yet, she is a victim of society's conventions. This also reflects on how in temperament Rossetti was most like her brother Dante Gabriel. Christina was given to tantrums and fractious behaviour, and she fought hard to subdue this passionate temper. There is a constant battle between restraint and free expression it’s a recurring theme throughout Rossetti’s poems as women were