The Role Of Hunger In Goblin Market

Hunger plays an important role in every person’s life. Everyone experiences hunger in one way or another, whether it be physical or even mental/emotional states of hunger and longing. In “Goblin Market” by Christina Rossetti, hunger takes on an atypical but major part in the poem. The role of hunger in “Goblin Market” is much more than solely Laura’s physical hunger; rather, it is representative of desperate and harmful longing in a never-ending cycle of desire for more shown through various elements of the language used in the poem. The poem begins with goblin men describing the fruits they are selling while two sisters, Laura and Lizzie, unsuccessfully attempt to avoid them. The sisters begin by both keeping their distance from the goblin

By crouching into each other and even clasping arms so they stay extra close and can resist, they’re trying everything they can to avoid the beckons of the goblin men. At this point. Laura clearly wants nothing to do with their fruits as she is doing all she can to stay away from the goblin men. However, she becomes intrigued by the goblin men and their fruits once she realizes they are forbidden, and her hunger for the fruits begins to grow. When Lizzie notices Laura becoming interested in the goblin men, she tells her “Their offers should not charm us,/ Their evil gifts would harm us” (65-66). The rhyming of the words “charm” and “harm” is significant here; it shows that the two words are related and connected in meaning. The goblins are trying to charm the girls into buying the fruits

The goblins tell her that because she has no money, she must give up a lock of her golden hair. While this upsets her and she sheds a tear, she does not give it any more thought. When they tell her to pay in hair, Laura simply “clipped a precious golden lock,/ She dropped a tear more rare than pearl,/ Then sucked their fruit globes fair or red” (126-128). She was so willing to satisfy her hunger and longing for the fruit that she gave up a clearly valuable part of herself without any further consideration whatsoever. She does not pause to think about her decision; she just decides fulfilling her hunger is easily worth relinquishing a part of herself. The use of the word “golden” and the comparison of her tear to something more rare than a pearl show that the parts of herself that she is giving up aren’t just regular locks of hair or regular tears; rather, they are undoubtedly valuable parts of her that she is willing to simply give up to taste the fruits. The lack of protest demonstrated by Laura shows that she does not care about losing a part of herself if it means that she can indulge. Her lack of hesitation and thought shows how willing she is to give herself up; she goes from clipping her hair and dropping a tear immediately into sucking the