Tag: Goblin Market

The Goblin Market and Identity: Victorian and Modern Perspectives

Christina Rosetti’s poem “Goblin Market” tells the story of two sisters, one of whom falls for the tempting fruits being peddled at the titular bazaar and begins to waste away after tasting these forbidden delicacies. She is only saved when her sister Lizzie braves the same market, but avoids consuming any of the food, instead bringing the juice back for the first sister, Laura, to eat and recover her strength. Overall, the narrative serves as a metaphor for sexual promiscuity and the way in which, in Victorian times, the concepts of virginity and purity were closely tied to personal identity and sense of self. It also highlights a strong sense of familial values and the importance of sibling bonds–“Tender Lizzie could not bear/ To watch her sister’s cankerous care/ Yet not to share.”

A more modern story, the webcomic “Namesake,” co-authored by Megan Lavey-Heaton and Isabelle Melançon, often references Rosetti’s varying works, but makes a fairly major plot point out of the mysterious “goblin market,” a place where vendors buy and sell names, the result of which is a divided identity in which a person’s “existence” is separated from their physical being. Most significantly, the main character, Emma Crewe, is actually the result of such a thing–her parents made a deal at the market, where Emma’s name (and therefore existence) were given to a changeling child, while Emma’s physical body was given to a man named One, the head of an organization currently acting as the main antagonists. This essentially calls into question the concept of identity–is a sense of self more tied to physical traits or to a more metaphysical concept? After some time (and a little help), Emma comes to the conclusion that her identity can’t be determined by what she’s supposed to be, but rather by what she is–even after the discovery of how she came to be, the most defining factor in what makes Emma Emma isn’t that she was created from somebody else, but the ways she relates to other people and her close personal relationships, especially with her sister, Elaine.

While these tales have obvious differences (one being a children’s rhyme written by a Victorian woman containing cautions about sexuality and the other being a very complicated ongoing webcomic written by two modern-day women dealing with a somewhat ridiculous number of thematic elements), the ways in which the works portray the idea of identity and the importance of sibling bonds are especially interesting to compare. The Victorian concept of virginity was highly tied to social status and identity–women were expected to remain virginal until marriage, and an “impure” woman was looked down upon. This change in class is reflected in the physical changes Laura undergoes in “Goblin Market” after eating the fruit: “Her hair grew thin and grey;/She dwindled, as the fair full moon doth turn/ To swift decay and burn/ Her fire away.” Meanwhile, the modern concept of identity is more focused upon the mental–the idea that who you are “inside” is more significant than who you are externally. This is shown with the conclusions drawn about Emma in “Namesake.”

Another common theme is that of the relationship between sisters. Goblin Market’s Lizzie braves the fairy creatures as a last resort to save Laura, due to their sisterly bond–they are described as being “Like two blossoms on one stem,/ Like two flakes of new-fall’n snow, /Like two wands of ivory” in a fashion reminiscent of the relationship between Hermia and Helena as described in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Emma has a similarly strong relationship with her sister Elaine–indeed, as tied into the discussion about identity, it was Emma’s love for her younger sister which allowed her to become more than a ghost of the “real” Emma Crewe and to take on her own identity–in a way, Elaine saved Emma without even knowing.

The ways in which the concept of a “goblin market” can be represented in works from different time periods can reveal a lot about the prevailing morals and ideologies of the time–for instance, the “sibling bond” is strongly valued in both modern and Victorian times, while (at least in this case) the concept of identity is less tied to morality and more to an internal sense of self.

This Poem is Not for Babies

When I first read Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market”, I took it to be a poem about the dangers of female sexuality, pre-marital sex, race, and emotional entanglement, with a sexual assault (or, quite possibly, rape) scene thrown in for kicks and giggles. So hearing that this poem is for children kind of blew my mind. I mean, look at the scene on page 12:

 

“One may lead a horse to water,

Twenty cannot make him drink.

Though the goblins cuffed and caught her,

Coaxed and fought her,

Bullied and besought her,

Scratched her, pinched her black as ink,

Kicked and knocked her,

Mauled and mocked her,

Lizzie uttered not a word;

Would not open lip from lip

Lest they should cram a mouthful in:

But laughed in heart to feel the drip

Of juice that syrupped all her face,

And lodged in dimples of her chin,

And streaked her neck which quaked like curd.

At last the evil people,

Worn out by her resistance,

Flung back her penny, kicked their fruit

Along whichever road they took,” (12)

 

Well. That’s not disturbing at all. If there wasn’t a word limit on this prompt, I’d quote the preceding pair of stanzas, but I think the above gets my point across quite well. This poem uses the good sister, Lizzie, to suggest that nice young women don’t have sex. In fact, nice young women are so against pre-marital sex that it is impossible to rape them, because they just won’t “open lip from lip.” Great. It’s always encouraging to hear the suggestion that if women just resist hard enough, they cannot be raped (although the poem does suggest they can still be brutalized, and have “juice” sprayed all over their faces, which is does not sound pleasant in the least).

 

This stanza is more than just victim blaming, though. If Lizzie were to “open lip from lip,” like her younger sister did, she would become addicted to something she can never have again. In this case, that something is goblin fruit, although the juicy, juicy fruit is a thinly veiled representation of sex. That relationship between fruit (sex) and addiction is a clear warning to young women that if they start having sex before marriage, they will be unable to resist the temptation to do it again. In the poem, this addiction leads them to waste away, but it suggests a slightly less fatal outcome for actual Victorian women who give in to temptation. Victorian men wanted to marry virgins, so if a woman was found to be having sex, it probably wouldn’t have be good for her marriage prospects. In a society where marriage and procreation make up a woman’s entire purpose in life, losing the chance for those things to happen would mean an end to her future. The loss of a future is strikingly similar to the loss of a life, so suddenly, a deadly addiction to fruit makes a lot more sense in the context of Victorian sexuality.

Maternity, Society, and the Legitimization of the Female Storyteller

At the end of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice’s older sister imagines “how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman […] and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago; and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys” (Carroll 99, Norton 1992 Ed. Gray). Alice’s sister immediately thrusts her forward from childhood into womanhood, from an imaginative, experiential role to an informative, supporting one. Although initially problematic because it seems to sketch Alice’s future solely within the confines of motherhood, this image of Alice as a maternal figure subtly legitimizes her role as a female storyteller.

Alice’s experience in Wonderland is validated by its transmission to the next generation, whose gaze lies “bright and eager” on her tale. Through the socially accepted role of “mother,” Alice is able to use her imagination (which, despite her dream state, I would deem her female experience) to form new physical and emotional bonds within her society—to “gather about her” a group of children, and to “feel” their sorrows and joys, perhaps even giving them advice. Her role as mother empowers her to retain her dream-world in a way that other adults cannot, and to spread the lessons that she learned and the experiences that she had there to the next generation.

In “Goblin Market,” Christina Rossetti similarly paints the two sisters transitioning from an experiential otherworldly danger to the safe, idealized realm of domesticity. Although their story is more explicitly didactic than Alice’s tale, it still retains the thrilling, imaginatively provocative elements of “the haunted glen,” “the wicked […] men,” “poison in the blood,” “deadly peril,” and “the fiery antidote” (Rossetti 488). That they have access to the experience with which to tell such a tale positions Lizzie and Laura as authoritative storytellers. Furthermore, the moral of their tale, like the end of Alice’s sister’s imaginings, includes connective imagery—with their story, they “[join] hands to little hands […and] bid them cling together,” thus aligning the emotional bond and mutual reliance of sisterhood with the physical bond of clasped hands (Rossetti 488). Like Alice, the sisters bring about structural social change in the next generation by telling their story. This depiction empowers them in their role as female storytellers, underlining their experiential authority—but it does so by first legitimizing them as mothers.

Girls and Goblins: Gendered Tensions

Maurice Sendak’s 1981 illustrated children’s book, Outside Over There, tells the story of a young girl named Ida who must rescue her baby sister from goblins who have kidnapped her in order to marry her off to one (or more) of their kind. The title page of Outside Over There alone picks up the themes of foreign anxiety, the otherworldly realm of sexual danger, gender divisions, and sisterly care—all of which we’ve discussed in the context of Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market.”

The title page to Maurice Sendak's 1981 Outside Over There
The title page to Maurice Sendak’s 1981 Outside Over There

The title itself evokes the foreign world of the goblins: it is not only outside, while the girls often remain inside the house, but it is also over there, in a space not normally inhabited by the baby or by Ida (one is kidnapped and taken there, the other must “climb backwards out” of her window and fly around for some time to find it). The dangerous otherness of this world is emphasized by the goblins’ mysterious grey cloaks and hunched, low-to-the-ground posture, as well as the black, absent spaces where their faces should be. These features contrast greatly with the pastel colors worn by the girls, Ida’s upright posture and the baby’s distance from the ground, and the anxiety obvious on both of the girls’ faces. Elsewhere in the text, it is made clear that the goblins are all male, so the physical space between the goblins and the sisters on the title page can be read not only as an anxiety-bred othering, but also as an intentionally enforced gender divide. Ida’s anxious, serious sideways glance, the tightness of her grip around her sister, and the tension in her feet and shoulders all convey her instinct to protect her sister from the parade of otherworldly goblins. I read this as a sexual anxiety because later in the text, Ida’s first thought upon realizing that the goblins have taken her sister is that they have “stole[n] [her] sister away […] To be a nasty goblin’s bride!” Before she actually discovers them in the middle of a wedding, her explicit goal is to interrupt their “goblin honeymoon”—with its distinct connotation of sexual activity.

It is interesting to put Outside Over There in conversation with Rossetti’s text, not only because of the obvious content-based and underlying thematic similarities, but also because both claim a role as children’s literature. Why do these texts that sensually entrance the young reader (either through imagery or illustration) encompass so much sexual danger for young girls? Why is it the girls’ job to save their sisters, with their parents providing mere oral/anecdotal guidance rather than practical support only after a kidnapping or fruit-buying-encounter has already occurred (Ida’s father sings a song on the sea that guides her to the goblin lair; Lizzie and Laura tells her children and Lizzie’s about the dangers of goblin men—but Ida’s mother dreams absentmindedly of her husband and leaves Ida to take care of the baby, and Lizzie and Laura’s parents never appear in the text)?

Some similarities between Goblin Market and The Woman in White

The sisterly bond in Christina G. Rossetti’s Goblin Market evokes, in many ways, Laura and Marian’s tie in Collin’s The Woman in White.

Many similarities seem to suggest such an association. First of all, in Goblin Market Laura and Lizzie are described as opposite but at the same time as complementary characters. If Laura is not afraid of the goblin men and “bowed her head to hear”(34), Lizzie, on the other hand, “veiled her blushes”(35) and hurries her sister to go back home. Furthermore, if Lizzie urges Laura to “get home before the night grows dark”(248), her sister “most like a leaping flame”(218) waits for the night to come in order to go to listen to the fruit-merchant men. In reading these lines, how not to recall Collins’ wise and judicious Marian and the weak and sensitive Laura? Such an association becomes even clearer when C. Rossetti writes: “Golden head by golden head,/ like two pigeons in one nest,/ folded in each other’s wings,/ They lay down in their curtained bed:/ Like two blossoms on one stem,/ Like two flakes of new-fall’n snow,/ like two wands of ivory/ Tipped with gold for awful kings”(185-192). Almost the same image is presented in “The Woman in White” when one night Marian, with a tender and innocent  glimpse, observes her sister lying on the bed. The difference between the novel and the poem is in how the sibling bond is described. While Collins does not explicitly unveil the sisterly love between Marian and Laura  but he only gives some hints, in C. Rossetti such a bond is depicted instead with a powerful sexual connotation. Lizzie and Laura’s bond is much more physical, till the point that they’re “folded in each other’s wings”(186).

As for Collins, for C.Rossetti too, the main assumption underlying this new type of  sisterly love is that it is the only true bond which can stand and win over the conventions of the Victorian society, with same-sex marriage being one of those. In a society where same-sex marriage was inspired by economic interests rather than by true love, sibling love seems the preferable alternative to escape such a conventionality, “For there is no friend like a sister/In calm or stormy weather”(563-564). The poem appears to follow this leitmotif, by insisting on Laura and Lizzie’s necessity to be together to overcome the difficulties of life, first of all the physical  dejection caused by love, which almost reduces Laura to a dead state. The conclusion, however, is pretty ambiguous. Despite praising the authenticity of sisterly love, it seems that C. Rossetti finally surrenders and conforms to the norms of her time. At the end of the poem, in fact, she says that :”Both were wives/With children of their own”(545-546). A similar conclusion happens in Collins’ novel, which ends with Laura marrying Walter and having a child. Why praising the unconventionality of sisterly love against the conventionality of the same-sex marriage all throughout their work, and then, ultimately, choosing a clashing conclusion?