Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market

Difference in Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market

Written in the nineteenth century Victorian era, Christina Rossetti’s poem Goblin Market supports and upholds the ideologies of the British Empire on race and gender. Throughout her poem, Rossetti highlights gender and racial differences. She warns readers against attempting to assume a role of the opposite gender, and illustrates the consequences for doing so. In a similar interpretation, traces of racialism can be found as she warns against interactions with the goblin men who are not like the Laura and Lizzie, and whose fruits’ soil of origin is unknown. Rossetti puts emphasis on the fact that the way the British Empire operates is best; women at home, men in the market, and other races inferior to British.

According to Myra Jehlen, gender is a cultural idea having nothing to do with the basis of sex that is born of and supported by literature. She writes, “The conventional meanings of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ shape the sense of literary phenomena that have no intrinsic association with sex” (Jehlen 263). Rossetti supports the idea of gender and gender roles throughout Goblin Market with her language usage. Some scholars have said that Goblin Market is meant to empower women, but Rossetti’s use of gendered language confines women further to their typical roles as sexually tempted and dutiful maid. In Terrence Holt’s “’Men sell not such in any town’: Exchange in Goblin Market” he writes, “Goblin Marketattempts to imagine a position for women outside systems of power, but its language, which cannot escape from gender, undoes the attempt” (51). The language in Goblin Market, because of its inability to escape gender, supports traditional gender roles.

Readers are constantly reminded throughout the poem of what a maid should be and how she should act which is not empowering to women, but restrictive. The Victorian female is often thought of as, “an egoless, domestic ‘angel’ in the service of the male, who possesses all social and political power” (Casey 63-64). Lizzie says, “Dear, you should not stay so/ late,/ Twilight is not good for/ maidens;” (Rossetti 195-198). Lizzie represents the ideal maid in the poem, always doing the right thing and acting as a proper maid should. Her sister Laura strays away from being a proper maid and becomes the opposite of the ideal maid which is “the fallen woman, whose sins are of a sexual nature” because of her fascination with the goblin men and their market (Casey 64). Her intrigue is not without consequence, which is a warning against acting outside of traditional gender roles.

In Janet Galligani Casey’s “The Potential of Sisterhood: Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market,” she writes, “Hence Goblin Market is not, as some critics have suggested, a feminist manifesto in which women assume the roles of men. Rather, it is the positing of a world in which interdependence […] is a positive thing, and in which women are permitted to take part in the achievement of that wholeness” (75). This suggests that the interdependence of gender roles helps the world function. Goblin Market is not encouraging women to take on the roles of men, it is supporting the gender roles already in place and it is supporting the way the British Empire functions. The men need to work and provide, and the women need to nurture and handle domestic duties. There are many scenes in the poem where Rossetti illustrates Laura and Lizzie doing domestic chores happily, getting all of the sustenance they need from it, but once Laura visits the goblin men, she stops performing her chores. Rossetti describes her as “listless,” because she is no longer motivated to do her chores since tasting the goblin men’s fruit. This implies that without her domestic chores, Laura has no purpose in life. This translates to the view that a woman’s sole purpose is to be a wife, mother, and maid. Without those things, she has no purpose, at least in the nineteenth century.

The women are constantly warned to stay away from the market and from the affairs of the goblin men in the poem. Rossetti again writes Lizzie give warning as the figure of the ideal maid. She says, “Their offers should not charm/ us,/ Their evil gifts would harm/ us.” (Rossetti 81-84). Lizzie warns Laura that having any involvement in dealings with the goblin men is dangerous and could lead to harm. Rossetti inserts the story of another maid who was harmed by her dealings with the goblin men as a further warning and cautionary tale that trying to get involved with male gender roles will come with consequences. She writes, “Do you not remember Jeanie, / How she met then in the moonlight,” (Rossetti 201-203). Here Lizzie is reminding them of a story they seem to have heard many times, perhaps as a tool used to warn them away from goblin men since they were children. “While to this day no grass/ will grow/ Where she lies low:/ I planted daisies there a year/ ago/ That never blow./ You should not loiter so.” (Rossetti 218-224). Jeanie gave into temptation and stepped outside her gendered role and faced the consequences. The last line is Lizzie giving Laura a last warning, telling her not to make the same mistakes that Jeanie did, as to not become like her.

Not only does Rossetti put emphasis on the warnings for the maids to stay away from the market, but she creates them in a way that they seem like two completely different entities. The home where the sisters are from resembles that of a nineteenth century sisterhood, which Rossetti was heavily influenced by in writing her poem. The market resembles commercial roles of men in the economy and the corruption that followed. In Jill Rappoport’s “The Price of Redemption in ‘Goblin Market,’” she writes, “Like many Anglican sisters, Laura and Lizzie of ‘Goblin Market’ are ‘redundant,’ single and set apart from men whose absence from the poem hints that there may be no market other than the goblins for the girls” (860). Laura, Lizzie, and their ability to sustain themselves at home and outside of the market is representative of the Anglican sisterhoods. Rappoport goes on to argue that sisterhoods did a lot of volunteer work which freed them from the monetary corruption that poisoned men in the marketplace. This can be seen in the poem as Rossetti puts emphasis on the security of Laura and Lizzie’s home and the perils of the goblin market in comparison. The sisters are morally superior to the goblin men. This moral superiority is illustrated when Lizzie refuses to give her body to the goblin men.

It is clear that Rossetti does not want readers to associate with the goblin men or to associate the sisters with the goblin men in anyway as she describes them with inhumane characteristics. She writes, “One had a cat’s face,/ One whisk’d a tail,/ One tramped at a rat’s pace,/ One crawl’ed like a snail,/ One like a wombat prowl’d/ obtuse and furry,” (Rossetti 91-96). Rossetti wants her readers to be weary and suspicious of the goblin men and to understand them as completely different from the women. Here, Rossetti is suggesting that men are so different from women that they can be considered a different species. She writes, “Brother with queer brother,/ Signaling each other,/ Brother with sly brother.” (Rossetti 123-125). Rossetti makes it clear that the goblin men are only men. They signal each other as if they speak a different language, as if men speak a different language than women. This can be interpreted as the instinctual differences in men and women; women as nurturers, and men as primal providers.

Jill Rappoport writes, “The titular and titillating market has increasingly taken center stage as a site of coercive practices and a symbol of gendered trade” (853). The marketplace is a solidified gendered role for men as household duties is a solidified gendered role for women. However, because of the primal nature of men, the marketplace becomes dangerous for women. Which is illustrated in the poem in both Laura and Lizzie’s dealings with the goblin men. Rappoport goes on to write, “Penniless Laura buys fruit with a lock of hair, representing the perils of female consumerism by becoming the very object consumed” (853). Because of women’s domesticated gender roles, they have no monetary value. The only thing of value women can offer in the marketplace is their bodies. Rossetti supports this claim by illustrating Laura’s exchange with the goblin men. She tells them she has no money, and they respond by asking her for physical tokens such as a lock of hair and a tear drop. Laura enters into the goblin market and surrenders her body and power without understanding the consequences. Laura “pays a symbolic price, a representative, physical exchange for the value of fruit and gold […] Too late she learns that the goblins will not be satisfied with this gesture; […] Laura trades a lock that ultimately surrenders her body” (Rappoport 854). By surrendering her body to the goblins in exchange for the fruit, Laura’s body now belongs to the goblin men. This is illustrated in the poem when readers see that Laura begins deteriorating and fading away. Her once golden head grows gray and she no longer performs her domestic duties.

Lizzie’s dealings with the goblin men do not leave her unscathed either, but she manages to maintain her body and her morals in attempting a fair exchange with them. Lizzie only enters into the market and into the male role of economic trade in order to save her sister. Rappoport writes, “Lizzie’s coin ensures her against market forces, protecting her own curls from the goblin merchant men and allowing her to take on the role of rescuer rather than victim” (861). By only offering the penny in the exchange and by refusing to sit and eat with the goblin men, Lizzie denies them what they truly want and threatens the power they have as men over her and the power they have over women. This is similar to men feeling threatened by the emergence of sisterhoods in the nineteenth century. Women and female labor wanted to be seen as complementary to male labor, but men felt that the work of sisterhoods was “unwelcomed competition” (Rappoport 857).

Up until this point in the poem, the goblin men seem like peaceful creatures, different from the sisters, but not violent. Once they are denied this submission from Lizzie, the goblins transform into violent evil creatures that Lizzie has been warning Laura about throughout the poem. She writes, “They began to scratch their/ pates,/ No longer wagging, purring,/ But visibly demurring,/ Grunting and snarling” (Rossetti 545-550). The goblins attack Lizzie violently and forcibly take what they want from her as a show of their power. Here, like Laura, Lizzie falls to the dangers of the market which is no place for a proper maid. However, because Lizzie was aware of the dangers of the market and refused to surrender her body willingly to the goblin men, she is able to return home to safety and to save her sister. Rossetti again puts emphasis on the safety of the sisters’ home which is separate from the market. She sends the message that the only thing that can heal a maid that strays into the affairs of men is the security of the home and of the domestic role.

Gender differences and gender roles are not the only separation that Rossetti supports in Goblin Market. She also supports the separation of those that are “other than,” whether that be other than women or other than the British Empire. It is undeniable that there are traces of racialism in the description of the savage goblins and their foreign fruits. Race has no biological reality in human nature. However, it is the very belief in race that is watered and supported in literature that makes it a real concept to society. Rossetti’s poem is a clear embodiment of racialism and the expression of differences between peoples. Kwame Anthony Appiah writes, “by the middle of the nineteenth century the notion that all races were equal in their capacities was a distinctly minority view” (280). It is clear through the illustration of Lizzie and Laura’s superiority over the goblins that Rossetti took part in the nineteenth century majority view. White men, especially British men were seen as the superior race, it is unclear as to why, but those other than took on the description of animalistic and savage. In the interpretation of race, Rossetti is still pushing readers towards the superiority and safety of the British Empire, as she is with the interpretation on gender.

As discussed above, Rossetti takes extreme care in fashioning the goblin men in a way that made it almost impossible for readers to associate with them. Instead of arguing that this extreme difference is to emphasize that men are completely different than women, it can also be argued that the extreme difference in the goblin men compared to readers and the sisters is to represent that they are a different race than them; that they are other than them. People who were of darker complexion than white men were often times described as savages and animals in literature. This could be Rossetti following that tradition. She writes, “Their look were evil./ Lashing their tails/ They trod and hustled her,/ Elbow’d and jostled her,/ Claw’d with their nails,/ Barking, mewing, hissing,” (Rossetti 554-559). Prior to this scene, though the goblins were not described as violent, they were still described with animal-like features and as dangerous. This scene of interaction between Lizzie and the goblin men is Rossetti showing readers their true and evil nature. Here, the goblins appear as dangerous savages, which allows Rossetti to continue to push her readers towards to realization that the British Empire is safe and correct.

Rossetti also highlights differences in race by making the fruit that the goblins sold, fruits that are not native to England soil. Lizzie is constantly questioning the origin of the fruit and telling Laura not to desire the fruit because its origin is unknown and can be harmful to them. Holt writes, “Lizzie’s question about their fruit—‘who knows upon what soil they fed/ Their hungry thirsty roots?’ (Rossetti 44-45)—questions the root-origins of those fruits; the goblins have the look of middlemen, and their fruits coming from a tropic distance, seem far from their native soil” (Holt 53). By Lizzie warning against the fruits of the goblin men and returning home to till their own land, Rossetti is implying the dangers of consuming foreign goods and the security of self-sustenance.

It can be argued that the emphasis on the goblin market and Laura and Lizzie’s home being two separate entities also is representative of the British Empire and a foreign land. Holt writes, “The goblins themselves stress the difference between the two places,” which shows an understanding of the perceived lesser race that they are “other than” Lizzie and Laura and that their home is “other than” the British Empire. He goes on to write, “The two places belong to different biological (and moral) orders, a difference that, despite Laura’s despair, is ultimately consoling” (Holt 53). Holt is arguing that the goblins are so completely different that the difference is biological and that this difference should be comforting because no one should want to be like them. Laura and Lizzie’s home is safe whereas the market is dangerous.

Her usage of language and descriptions of the goblin men and market make it clear that Rossetti’s Goblin Marketis both propaganda for the British Empire and a reinforcement of the nineteenth century idea of the Victorian woman. In a poem many critics say is meant to empower women, Rossetti further restricts and confines them in their gendered roles. She illustrates the need for separation because of the interdependence of the genders. Men and women must play their assigned roles for a smoothly functioning world. The traces of racialism in the poem are also a reinforcement of the nineteenth century ideology that the British Empire ruled all and anything other than was dangerous.

Casey, Janet Galligani. “The Potential of Sisterhood: Christina Rossetti's ‘Goblin Market.’” Victorian Poetry, vol. 29, no. 1, 1991, pp. 63–78. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40002055.

Holt, Terrence. “‘Men Sell Not Such in Any Town’: Exchange in ‘Goblin Market.’” Victorian Poetry, vol. 28, no. 1, 1990, pp. 51–67. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40002040.

Rappoport, Jill. “The Price of Redemption in ‘Goblin Market.’” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Volume 50, Number 4, Autumn 2010, pp. 853-875 (Article)

Rossetti, Christina. Goblin Market. London: V. Gollancz, 1980. Print.