Class Blog

I almost hate myself for this title, but it’s too relevant to this topic. Just look up the definition of “Daddy” on Urban Dictionary, and prepare to be grossed out (Depending on your kinks, I guess, but incest terminology is not one of mine.)

One of the most fascinating things about our culture today is the idea that older men are the gatekeepers of female sexuality. In our country today, our sex education system is totally screwed/skewed towards teaching “abstinence” and reinforced with things like “purity pledges” or “purity balls”. Similar to debutante balls in that girls are making their debut as women, instead of age-appropriate dates, their fathers sign a pledge to keep their daughters pure. If you look at the pictures, these girls look like child brides wedding their fathers. Their fathers are ultimately guiding them into the realm of ~womanhood~, and get to choose when they do this.

In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice explores concepts of womanhood in a safe, dream world of Lewis Carroll’s making. He allows her to test the waters of femininity, so to speak, by caring for pig-babies, having tea parties, and changing sizes quickly. In the sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, Alice’s concept of the home is literally flipped, and she makes her way across a chessboard with the hope of becoming a “queen” at the end. Along the way, she learns about the backward nature of adulthood, and as a pawn, she can’t see the rest of the chessboard. It’s a metaphor, perhaps, that children cannot see the “big picture” of life – maybe a euphemism? Children don’t know the “birds and the bees” – or the way adults procreate? They don’t quite have knowledge of mortality or puberty, perhaps.

So just as Alice gets close to the end of the chessboard, she is rescued by a white knight. An older man, with kind eyes who helps/allows Alice to cross the river (menstruation reference?) to become a queen (an arguably less veiled metaphor for womanhood). He tells her that she will transform when she crosses the river. He believes that she’s sad, and therefore tries to cheer her up with a rhyme before saying goodbye. Is this chapter, this description about the White Knight seems like Lewis Carroll’s way of saying goodbye to Alice as she enters womanhood. It seems like he’s giving her permission to become an adult and to leave him (and possibly his affection, as he might not be as attracted to adult Alice as curious, childlike-Alice). In this way, he’s the gatekeeper of her sexuality. Only after he gives her permission and guidance can she leave him to “cross the river”.

And at the end of the next chapter, Alice is growing and shaking and yelling at the people around her until she wakes up two chapters later. A metaphor for sexual release perhaps, now that she’s received permission from her father figure?? It sure has another context when thinking about Lewis Carroll’s fascination with her.

Quite obviously, the poem Goblin Market has a plethora of sexual undertones. We see these undertones most notably in two places. First, in the beginning when Laura and Lizzie see the goblin men:

(The line right before this passage is “Laura bowed her head to hear”)

Many of the words in this passage are subtly (or not so subtly) sexual, like blushing, clasping, lips, close, fruits, hungry, and thirsty roots. The line “who knows upon what soil they fed their hungry thirsty roots?” definitely makes me think of sexually transmitted diseases. The interaction that Lizzie and Laura are having in the previous passage reminds me of how two girls would act at a party if one of them wants to go home with a questionable guy. Here is what I imagine the previous passage would be like if the scene was set in a college party:

A guy comes over to Laura and Lizzie to hit on them. He lets it known that he is single and ready to mingle. Laura is interested in the boy, while Lizzie tries to ignore him. The girls stand together to whisper about the boy. Lizzie tells Laura to stay at the party with her, because if she goes home with strangers she could get an STD.

The second passage where we see strong sexual undertones is on page 4 when Laura buys the fruits.

There are many examples of sexual words in this passage, like sweeter, fruit, man-rejoicing, tasted, lips, and most obviously, suck. When Laura cuts off a piece of her golden hair, it can be seen as a symbol of her losing her purity, or virginity. By crying right after cutting her hair, Laura could be showing that she is sad about losing her purity. This passage really reminded me of a one night stand. If the passage above was set in a college setting, here is what I imagine it would look like:

Even after Lizzie warns her not to, Laura decides to go home with the boy from the party. She has sex with him, losing her virginity. She cries a little after, maybe because she is sad about losing her virginity, or maybe the sex was just that good? She also may have given him a blowjob, or three. After, Laura leaves his room, all out of sorts, on her walk of shame back to her dorm.

I was shocked to discover that this poem was written for children, because it has so many sexual references. I was also surprised at how this poem written in 1862 is so relatable to a 2016 college campus. Perhaps what has made this poem so popular across centuries is that it has timeless themes.

Through the Looking Glass expands themes found in Alice in Wonderland but brings them to a more complete stage of thought. Alice continues to question her identity, focusing more on her name and her ownership of narrative than her physical size as in the first volume. Additionally, Alice struggles to understand why people behave the way they do and what or who defines acceptable actions.

Towards the end of Through the Looking Glass, Alice encounters the Red and White queens, who represent successful and failed attempts at Victorian womanhood, though both are equally compliant with Victorian society’s demands of women. The Red Queen insists upon avoiding challenges to propriety and passes judgement on other women, while the White Queen fails to visually or behaviorally reflect the ideal Victorian woman’s composure and delicacy. The Red Queen embodies the ideal authority female figure when she critiques the White queen and Alice’s behavior. She instructs Alice to, “Speak when you are spoken to!” (Carroll 211). Alice promptly responds, saying, “if you only spoke when you were spoken to, and the other person always waited for you to begin, you see nobody would ever say anything, so that—–“ (Carroll 211). The Red Queen silences her and proceeds to flail at a response before changing the subject. This exchange is important because Alice leaves out a key facet of Victorian social rules in her rebuttal. She fails to take into account those who are given the authority to speak before addressed. Even though the queen is one such individual, Alice’s failure to recognize and question the viability of this fact reveals how much she has been trained to accept such a hierarchy.

This passage is also important because it demonstrates the way Alice’s dream allows her to challenge and question rules that she could never discuss in waking life. When Alice’s nurse or mother instructs her to behave in a certain way, Alice would expect to be denied and punished, while she feels much more free to do so when faced with a figure like the Red Queen, whom she does not recognize from Victorian society. Her ability to point out an inconsistency in the queen’s instruction reveals and important takeaway from the book as a whole. By suggesting that the only conceivable method for exploring such ideas is a dream, Carroll also indicates that no one in Victorian society will speak on such topics even to discuss them, never mind object to them.

The circumvention of Alice’s question has significance as well because she is not able to bring up her point again. The Red Queen successfully moves on to another topic, proving the effectiveness of Victorian evasion at preventing reform or challenge to the status quo. Alice is likely accustomed to such a shift in conversation when there is a danger of substantive debate, just as she is used to someone in authority, like the nurse she mentions, instructing her.

This passage is a good example of the way Carroll asks the reader to consider why individuals are not discussing behavioral norms in Victorian England. By setting this story in a dream, he shows the extent to which Victorians would consider pursuing such topics. While he does indicate people are concerned about these ideas’ truth, he also acknowledges the likelihood of change or discussion. He does this by continually limiting Alice’s success in reaching definitive answers and by denying her understanding of her own thoughts. Without realizing that she is questioning her society, Alice will not continue to do so when she returns to her home and her cats.

Image from Wikipedia (Red Queen and Alice)

“White and golden Lizzie stood, Like a lily in a flood,– Like a rock of blue-veined stone, Lashed by tides obstreperously,– Like a beacon left alone in a hoary roaring sea, Sending up a golden fire,– Like a fruit-crowned orange-tree, White with blossoms honey-sweet, Sore beset by wasp and bee,–Like a royal virgin town, Topped with gilded dome and spire, Close beleaguered by a fleet, Mad to tug her standard down” (12).

As we discussed in class, this is the moment where Lizzie is sexually assaulted, however it’s written in this implicit language that we have become so familiar with. Lizzie is described as “white and golden”, and immediately a red flag goes up. The idea of whiteness has been prevalent as a virginic and pure symbol throughout our text and this is no different. By adding in the word “golden” Rossetti suggests that there is also a kind of gold standard that Lizzie has been held to. So not only is she “white”, she is “golden” in her whiteness. She then gets compared to a lily in a flood, and immediately I thought of the painting of Ophelia in the river. Not to mention Lizzie is seen as “like a rock of blue-veined stone”, similar to Ophelia’s cold dead body.

Consistently in this passage, Lizzie becomes objectified. She’s classified as a “beacon”, an “orange-tree”, and a “royal virgin town” (cough, cough virgin). These classifications then come along with descriptions of being pure and chaste and with otherworldly forces trying to strip her of her purity. All three of these symbols also resemble some aspect of being a women. The “beacon” as an object of light that is cherished and celebrated. The “orange-tree” as the bearer of sweet fruit (children), and the “royal virgin town, topped with golden dome and spire” ready to be infiltrated by an unwelcome force (her first sexual encounter). This language that Rossetti uses is quite reminiscent of a women’s first experience with sex, but one can’t help but lean towards the idea that it’s unwelcome. What really drives this home, is the line “Mad to tug her standard down”. This force, the goblins, that interact with her are not beneficent. They are trying to sway her away from her moral and pure goodness through sexual acts, bringing any possibility of a pure marital union crashing down. Thus bringing any future that she may have, down.

Now, so what? It’s always hard for me to find an answer to this question. Why would a sexual act that is not welcomed also be a method to bring a woman’s standard down? It’s not her fault that she’s being violated. In the Victorian era, it seems to me, that no matter what sexual act that is taking place, it is deemed deviant and the fault gets put on the woman. It is her responsibility to stay pure, and no matter what she must keep it in her pants. What’s funny, or really not funny, is that this sentiment exists even today with the pressure to not sleep around, and the horrible effects of rape culture. Consistently the blame gets put on the victim. They were asking for it. Did you see what they were wearing. They didn’t say no. Well they sure as hell didn’t say yes!

Yikes. I never thought I’d have to look up fetish terms for educational purposes. Since the prof declared in class that BDSM is a legitimate topic of discussion, however, I retain my right to go there, as it were. Y’all have been forewarned.

If “Goblin Market” didn’t make you at least a little hot and bothered by the end, then you must have the libido of a [comment redacted]. Honestly, the poem has a little something for everyone. Do you fancy huge melons? Or, in case the vulgar connotation I’m suggesting didn’t exist in the mid 1800s, “fruit globes fair or red?” (Rossetti 4) There’s also the “ravish” fantasy, a kink to which Lizzie subscribes. The speaker mentions, in no fewer than two instances in the text, that being forced to consume forbidden fruit quite literally, uh, tickles her fancy (“laughed in heart” and “inward laughter”) (12-13). And who could forget the “juice that syrupped all her face, / And lodged in dimples of her chin, / And streaked her neck which quaked like curd?” (12) This juice, of course, originated from the goblins, who “squeezed their fruits / Against her mouth to make her eat” (12). In Japan, the sexual act in question is called bukkake: multiple men ejaculating onto someone’s face. Sounds like fun (as long as it’s consensual, obviously)!

Unlike Laura, Lizzie suffers no consequences from the ordeal because she refused to open her mouth and, essentially, ingest their cum (told you I’d go there). In fact, when the sisters reunite, Lizzie lets Laura drink from the “goblin pulp and goblin dew” in which she is covered (13). It turns out to be the antidote after all. Ostensibly, Lizzie’s brave interaction with the goblins showcases her dedicated love to her sister. Read the poem again and you notice how wrong the concluding stanza is about the whole situation. Lizzie, you see, derived pleasure from refusing to imbibe the fruit juices. This is known in BDSM circles as erotic sexual denial. While the short (and I think beautiful) stanza on page 13 goes on, through multiple similes, about how much of a stalwart paragon our hero is, neither she nor the speaker ever indicates that this was some onus. Au contraire. Whew! I could use a cold shower right about now…