In “Goblin Market” by Christina Rosetti, there are several allusions to female sexuality, even though historically it is a tale about sisterly love. The numerous references to fruit and flowers, to me, served as a metaphor for sexuality and a loss of virginity. Specifically, in the passage where the maidens refer to Jeanie, whose demise serves as the cautionary tale steering the women away from the goblin merchants, I felt as though there were several blatant hints at sex or repeated sexual encounters. The women say, “Do you not remember Jeanie,/How she met them in the moonlight,/ Took their gifts both choice and many,/ Ate their fruits and wore their flowers/ Plucked from bowers/ Where summer ripens at all hours.” (147-152). The choice of words, and the structure of this passage is what made it stand out the most to me in its references to a potential sexual relationship with Jeanie and the goblin men.
The first word that stood out to me here was “moonlight.” I found it interesting that a young woman was going to a market that sells fruit in the nighttime, instead of during the day. The moon is also a repeating image in the poem, as it has several connections with danger and temptation. It is also interesting to note that after Laura eats the goblin fruit in the moonlight, she becomes in sync with the moon’s changing phases. She starts to “dwindle” when the moon changes out of its full phase. The moon and the nighttime are often associated with danger and the unknown, and, since Lizzie and Laura are Victorian women, they have been advised to stay out of anything that causes potential harm or could lead them to lost purity. The theme of purity and its importance was highlighted for me in the fourth and fifth lines of the passage I chose, where Jeanie “Ate their fruits and wore their flowers/ Plucked from bowers.” Here, the use of “fruit” and “flowers” together in a line suggested to me the image of the female reproductive system. A flower is delicate and pure, and the following line “plucked from bowers” suggests that the purity is no longer there and significant. Since a woman’s bowers are her private room or bedroom, I felt as though this line meant that her purity was plucked from her through sexual acts.
Even though the poem “Goblin Market” contains a powerful anecdote of sisterly love, I think through the excessive sexual imagery and the violence of the men towards Lizzie later in the poem, it suggests a darker theme. In the passage introducing Jeanie, I felt as though the words chosen were very deliberate, and allowed the reader to see the sexual undertones present.
Wow! I really love your interpretation. I loved how you used the fruits and the flowers to symbolize female fertility and sexuality. I also really enjoyed your close reading on “Ate their fruits and wore their flowers/ Plucked from bowers.” For me, this poem highlights a huge double standard. Women are expected to uphold their virtue and this poem is meant to symbolize the terrible things that will happen to them if they don’t. The largest moral that sticks out for me is that women should not to mingle with foreign men. But, the only message I read for men is that they should not be like Goblin men. Laura and Lizzie’s husbands, who are supposedly men of virtue, are not presented at the end of the poem. So, there is never an example of how Victorian men should be, but only how they should not be.
I totally agree with you. Couldn’t it be that sisterly love, pure and unpretentious, is proposed as a valid alternative to the the man-woman bond, characterized, instead, by the male sexual desire and thirst for affirming his superiority on her through the possession of her body? Is this true for all the men? Or instead, as Christina Rossetti seems to suggest, it is a desire which only belongs to foreign men? If this is the case, doesn’t the poem reflect a form of Victorian Xenophobia?