In Christina Rosetti\u2019s \u201cThe World\u201d she writes of being tempted by some mysterious \u201cshe,\u201d writing \u201cBy day she woos me to the outer air, \/ Ripe fruit, sweet flowers, and full satiety\u201d (45). As Rosetti uses fruit and sweetness in Goblin Market to represent sexuality, by pairing \u201cripe fruit\u201d and \u201csweet flowers\u201d in conjunction with the repetition of wooing, a sexual undertone is created. The contrasts between the lines about night and day, as represented by the opposites of night and day and switching between the two, create a duality of the woman\u2019s nature. While the day represents a sexual relationship, night shows an evil, monstrous side. By night the woman who was so \u201csoft\u201d and \u201cfair\u201d before transforms into a horned, cloven footed beast. With \u201cserpents gliding in her hair\u201d she is compared to Medusa, incapable of love and threatening to turn anyone she looks at to stone.<\/p>\n
Between the sexual undertones of the relationship, the representations of this woman as a monster, and the fact that it was written by Rosetti, a woman, about a woman, I think this poem represents a sexual relationship between two women and the cultural rejection of homosexuality. In the 1860s when this poem was published, not only was homosexuality widely discouraged, same-sex relationships between women weren\u2019t even commonly acknowledged and there was relative blindness towards female sexuality. The fact that a relationship between two women would likely be rejected by society and religion explains Rosetti asking if she \u201cshould sell \/ my soul to her, give her my life and youth, \/ Till my feet, cloven to, take hold on hell?\u201d The religious anxiety shown in the fear of going to hell due to acting on homosexual desire is also shown in the line calling the presumed lesbian woman \u201cA very monster void of love and prayer,\u201d demonizing the seductress beyond any hope of redemption.<\/p>\n
The duality of the woman\u2019s nature represented between the day and night dichotomy in this poem also reminded me of Lady Audley. While Lady Audley was able to woo most with her beauty, her willingness and ability to do anything necessary, including arson and murder, made her into a monster in secret. Lady Audley\u2019s \u201cmonstrosity\u201d and her ability to use her beauty to hide her secrets and cunning landed her in a mad house. During the Victorian Era some lesbians and spinsters who refused to marry were also viewed as mentally ill and placed in asylums, much like Lady Audley. Whether giving of \u201clife and youth\u201d and taking \u201chold on hell\u201d represent an asylum or not, \u201cThe World\u201d has strong lesbian undertones representative of the cultural attitudes of the time towards homosexuality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Christina Rosetti\u2019s \u201cThe World\u201d she writes of being tempted by some mysterious \u201cshe,\u201d writing \u201cBy day she woos me to the outer air, \/ Ripe fruit, sweet flowers, and full satiety\u201d (45). As Rosetti uses fruit and sweetness in Goblin Market to represent sexuality, by pairing \u201cripe fruit\u201d and \u201csweet flowers\u201d in conjunction with … Continue reading “The World” and Lady Audley: Lesbians and Madness<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3017,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3017"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}