THE GOBLIN MARKET - CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Christina Rosetti’s The Goblin market is an allegorical tale that is fairy. The Goblin Market” has a
seemingly endless number of interpretations and this poem can be used to argue against everything
from the Victorian ideals of chastity to the commodification of Victorian women and the echoes of a
feminism to come. Christina Rossetti claimed that Goblin Market was improvised in a single day. She
also called it a children’s poem, and for her it probably was since, like her romantic antecedents, she
saw childhood as a time of unparalleled intensity and experience

“Goblin Market” was symbolic of man’s relationship with God. It really is a narrative that is long about
two sisters, Lizzie and Laura, and just how Laura succumbs to urge and tastes the fruit offered by the
goblins. The market features a number this is certainly apparently endless of and also this poem can
help argue against anything from the Victorian beliefs of chastity towards the commodification of
Victorian ladies as well as the echoes of feminism in the future. There are two popular interpretations of
“Goblin Market”: one reading is religious, and the other focuses on gender and sexuality. The fresh fruit
into the poem which the goblins sell has been translated in a variety of means. Mention of the fruit that
is unique symbolic of sexual urge, with Laura given that fallen woman which succumbs to masculine
wiles and is destroyed because of this. This ‘temptation’ invites evaluation this is certainly an additional
explanation. Clearly, the poem is about the experience of sexuality, and it also seems clear that the
sexuality in the poem centers on same-sex eroticism. Laura’s dependence on the fruit this is certainly
exotic the poem therefore the connection with medicine addiction. In Victorian Britain, opium addiction
was a real problem this is certainly social opium being, just like the fresh fruits of ‘Goblin Market’. Goblin
Market”also can be mired in allegorical representations of biblical proportions. For Laura, as for Adam
and Eve, it is worth death, but only when they do not yet know what death is. Metaphorically, from the
point of view of the adult who can look back retrospectively, the intimation of mortality is the fact that
the overwhelming primacy of sexual excitement is so ephemeral. The experience displaces every other
experience, but only for a very brief period, and then the greatest experience of childhood—the first
entry into sexuality—comes to an end, and its ending means the death of childhood and the beginning
of death.

So the poem “Goblin Market” is an abundant, an allegorical poem that is peppered with biblical allusions
and even hints at sex roles in Victorian society. Lizzie and Laura, the narrators, deliver the poem as a
lesson to their children. So “Goblin Market” may be a children’s poem, but like everything the children
hear, it is sung by the goblin men, the inevitable emblems of age and death. The recompense, if there is
one, is joy, love, tenderness, and fear for subsequent generations of children, and the poem’s halfhappy
ending is one which makes it possible to reimagine the richness of the world through children who still
feel it that way. Rossetti successfully conveys the importance of sacrifice therefore the worth of intimate
connections between household members to her audience.