Context - Goblin Market

• Goblin Market follows two close sisters, Laura and Lizzie, who live alone and fetch water from a nearby stream - One evening, they hear goblin merchants calling out their strange, tempting fruits - Despite Lizzie's warnings, Laura stays behind, trades a lock of her hair for the fruit, and indulges in a frenzied feast
• At home, Laura dismisses Lizzie’s concerns, but when she returns to the stream the next evening, she can no longer hear the goblins - Deprived of the fruit, Laura begins to waste away - In a desperate act of love, Lizzie seeks out the goblins to save her sister - When she refuses to eat, the goblins assault her with their fruit, but Lizzie resists
• Back home, Lizzie encourages Laura to consume the juices smeared on her, which repulses rather than satisfies her craving, triggering a violent but healing reaction - By morning, Laura is restored - In later years, the sisters share their story as a testament to love, loyalty, and the dangers of temptation
• 'Goblin Market' can be interpreted as a Christian allegory exploring sin, temptation, and redemption - Laura’s indulgence in the goblin fruits mirrors Eve’s fall from grace, while Lizzie, enduring violence yet remaining pure, evokes Christ’s sacrificial role - Rossetti, shaped by the intense religiosity of Victorian England and her own Anglo-Catholic beliefs, embeds the message that salvation is possible through selfless suffering and spiritual resilience
• 'Goblin Market' can also be seen as an early feminist text, celebrating female solidarity against male oppression and temptation - The goblin men, grotesque and coercive, represent the threatening forces of a patriarchal society, yet Lizzie’s defiance showcases the power of female agency - At a time when women’s autonomy was limited, Rossetti crafts a narrative where sisterhood, not male rescue, is the means of survival and moral triumph
• Influenced by Pre-Raphaelite ideals, 'Goblin Market' revels in intense, sensual imagery that blurs the line between beauty and danger - The luscious descriptions of fruit and the goblins’ animalistic charm reflect the Pre-Raphaelite fascination with the natural world’s vividness and the latent menace within it - Rossetti’s involvement with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood situates the poem within a movement that questioned conventional morality by presenting beauty as both transcendent and corrupting
• Another interpretation sees the poem as an exploration of repressed sexuality and the dangers of unregulated passion within the rigid moral framework of Victorian society - Laura’s frenzied consumption and subsequent decline embody the Victorian fear of female sexual agency, while Lizzie’s ordeal suggests the necessity of self-control and the social expectation of female chastity - Rossetti delicately navigates these taboos, reflecting her era’s anxieties about purity, temptation, and the consequences of transgression
• Viewed through a Freudian lens, 'Goblin Market' dramatizes the internal conflict between instinctual desire and moral restraint, with Laura embodying the impulsive, pleasure-seeking Id, and Lizzie representing the controlling, ethical Superego - Laura's immediate surrender to the goblin fruits symbolises unchecked libido and the allure of forbidden gratification, while Lizzie’s steadfast resistance and self-sacrificial mission illustrate the governing conscience that preserves societal and moral order - Rossetti, writing in an era obsessed with notions of female propriety and repression, intuitively anticipates later psychoanalytic models by presenting sisterhood as a psychic battleground between desire and duty
• Another psychoanalytic interpretation centres on the tension between Eros (life instincts) and Thanatos (death instincts) manifested through Laura and Lizzie’s relationship - Laura's initial surrender to pleasure edges her toward self-destruction and decay - a triumph of Thanatos - while Lizzie’s intervention revives the force of Eros, preserving vitality and communal bonds - Rossetti thus enacts a Freudian dualism decades before its formal articulation, illustrating how love, survival, and death are intertwined forces driving human experience beneath the surface of Victorian moralism
• 'Goblin Market' by Christina Rossetti uses the extended metaphor of the goblin merchants and their tempting fruits to explore themes of desire, temptation, and moral consequence - The fruit itself serves as a symbol for illicit pleasure, with its promise of satisfaction ultimately leading to Laura’s physical and spiritual decline - Through this metaphor, Rossetti critiques the dangers of indulgence, while also presenting the redemptive power of love and sacrifice, embodied in Lizzie’s selfless act