Texts written for children often have clearly defined morals that children are supposed to understand by the time the tale has concluded. However, these deceivingly clear-cut messages are often convoluted with more sinister warnings. In “Goblin Market,” Christina Rossetti ends her poem with a tidy saying about the value of sisters, diverting the attention from the dangerous, foreign men who prey on innocent young women. Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland similarly describes the happiness of childhood at the conclusion, which moves the reader away from the anxiety of ignorance placing a child in danger. The simplified morals in these texts illustrate the complex desire of adults to simultaneously warn children of danger but prevent them from becoming too fearful of life.
The deeper meaning of “Goblin Market” is interwoven into the final stanza. The role of becoming a mother provides the women with a defined role, but it causes their hearts to be “beset with fears” and to reflect on “not-returning time” (488). The fear arises from their worry for their children and from the realization that they are growing old. Despite their romanticized perceptions of their “pleasant days” of childhood, the “haunted” and “wicked” events in the market-place are true and frightening (488). Lizzie stood in “deadly peril” to save Laura; there is nothing “pleasant” about that circumstance. Therefore, the clear moral denies children access to the more important messages about avoiding dangerous situations, especially those connected to sexual endeavors.
The final chapter of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland also draws all of the disastrous elements of Alice’s adventure into a positive message about enjoying one’s dreams while one can still access her imagination. Alice believes that she had a “wonderful dream,” which is then replayed in a condensed form in her older sister’s daydream (102). After the sister’s rationalization about everything that occurred in the vision, her sister thinks about how Alice will “keep…the simple and loving heart and her childhood” through her adult years (104). Though this seems like a lovely attribute, Alice’s childhood mind is filled with ignorance, disrespect, and simplicity. These attributes prevent her from sympathizing with others and keep her extremely close-minded. Through the emphasis on the joys of childhood at the conclusion, the narrator forces children into believing Alice’s tale was wonderfully positive.
The narrators of “Goblin Market” and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland each conclude with the hope that these tales will be passed on from generation to generation. These texts create two binaries that cause tension in the texts based on this form of storytelling. The first is the natural occurrence of maturing into adulthood while still maintaining access to the memories of childhood. The second is the relationship between the stories parents tell their children and what these stories actually teach. These parental anxieties are one of the driving forces of “Goblin Market” and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Without the focus on a young audience, these texts could have very different, and less happy, endings.