{"id":960,"date":"2017-11-14T09:48:20","date_gmt":"2017-11-14T14:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/?p=960"},"modified":"2017-11-30T11:38:51","modified_gmt":"2017-11-30T16:38:51","slug":"sexuality-the-new-woman-and-christina-rossetti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/2017\/11\/14\/sexuality-the-new-woman-and-christina-rossetti\/","title":{"rendered":"Sexuality, “The New Woman” and Christina Rossetti"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although all the examples of sexuality in \u201cGoblin Market\u201d are purely ones of metaphor, there is still an extremely prominent theme of sex and female sexuality in the poem. Even though Lizzie stays composed and refrains from the \u201cfruits of the goblins\u201d that come out at night, telling her sister Laura \u201cTheir offers should not charm us, their evil gifts would harm us.\u201d Laura is seen as pure, graceful and elegant– how the proper woman during the Victorian Era should be. Laura, on the other hand, while she starts out as pure, ends up becoming very impure and develops an \u201caddiction\u201d to the fruit. Once she is lured into the goblin’s\u2019 market, she began to \u201csuck their fruit globes fair or red, sweeter than honey from the rock\u2026 she never tasted such before, how could it cloy with the length of use?… she sucked until her lips were sore\u2026 and knew not was it night or day as she turned home alone.\u201d Quite obviously, Laura\u2019s encounter with the goblin\u2019s \u201cfruit\u201d is a metaphor for fellatio and loss of her virginity. From this moment on, there is an obvious divergence between Laura and Lizzie– while Lizzie stays pure, works on her chores, and lives for the day, Laura spends her time pining for the fruits of the goblins, thus craving the night and not getting to her chores at all. While Lizzie yearns for the light (referring to heavenly, good tendencies), Laura yearns for the darkness (referring to sin). <\/span><\/p>\n

When looking at this poem through the lens of the article \u201cDaughters of Decadence: the New Woman in the Victorian Fin de Siecle\u201d, it can be concluded that Rossetti is against the age of the \u201cnew woman\u201d, and hopes for womankind to stick to the strict gender roles established for them. One of the largest factors the \u201cnew woman\u201d embraces is her sexuality and need for lust. \u201cPursuing new sensations\u201d was very important to the \u201cnew woman\u201d, and freedom to have sex was one of the sensations women were wanting to enjoy. Rossetti warns in her poem the dangers of premarital sex, declaring that all who do will waste their lives away craving nothing but sex and losing sight in the jobs that women must perform. According to Rossetti, sex (after marriage!) is important, because it is seen at the end that the sisters are married with children (which implies that they have had sex), but ultimately, there is no stronger love and passion than love for a sister rather than a man. This is implied when the two say together \u201cfor there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather; to cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

What I am really trying to say here is that while there were many writers that supported this new Victorian idea of the \u201cnew woman\u201d, there were many authors, like Rossetti who condemned it. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although all the examples of sexuality in \u201cGoblin Market\u201d are purely ones of metaphor, there is still an extremely prominent theme of sex and female sexuality in the poem. Even though Lizzie stays composed and refrains from the \u201cfruits of the goblins\u201d that come out at night, telling her sister Laura \u201cTheir offers should not … Continue reading Sexuality, “The New Woman” and Christina Rossetti<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123801],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960","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\/3641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}