{"id":362,"date":"2015-03-04T21:41:01","date_gmt":"2015-03-04T21:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=362"},"modified":"2016-08-24T15:51:38","modified_gmt":"2016-08-24T15:51:38","slug":"same-sex-saviors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2015\/03\/04\/same-sex-saviors\/","title":{"rendered":"Same-Sex Saviors"},"content":{"rendered":"

In \u201cGoblin Market,\u201d Christina Rossetti provides an account of how the love between two women is actually a necessity for survival. Lizzie and Laura\u2019s love for one another is what saves them both and allows them to uphold their duties as single women and then as married women. Their relationship is reminiscent of the one between Laura and Marian in Wilkie Collins\u2019s The Woman in White<\/em> in that each Laura is saved by the selfless acts of her respective sister. Rossetti and Collins reject the notion that love between women should be feared by highlighting the ability of this love to coexist with heterosexual marriage.<\/p>\n

Rossetti proves that though women may fall, they are ultimately powerful forces. Rossetti writes that women can \u201ccheer,\u201d \u201cfetch,\u201d \u201clift,\u201d and \u201cstrengthen\u201d one another in times of need (488). Lizzie could only achieve these feats by offering her body to Laura. When she returns from the market, she says to Laura, \u201cEat me, drink me, love me\u201d (486). In response, Laura \u201ckissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth\u201d (486). This sexually-overt physical exchange between the sisters ultimately prevented the death of Laura. In fact, her dangerous condition arose from the seduction of the male goblins, who spoke in \u201ctones as smooth as honey\u201d and caused her to \u201csuck\u201d the deadly fruits (476). Laura\u2019s weak will caused her to risk her life while Lizzie\u2019s refusal to obey the male characters saved them both from death. Through this portrayal of the female characters in \u201cGoblin Market,\u201d Rossetti shows that same-sex bonds are healthy and can be more beneficial than heterosexual relationships at specific points in a woman\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

The final line of The Woman in White<\/em> embodies that same ideal about same-sex relationships. After dominating the tale, Walter ends his narrative by stating, \u201cMarian was the good angel of our lives\u2014let Marian end our Story\u201d (612). Though it is contestable that Marian actually ends the story, she plays a key role in the marriage between Walter and Laura. Without Marian, Walter\u2019s plans for revenge and marriage would have never come to fruition. Marian acts as the nurturing and protecting force whose physical and emotional support revive Laura. Therefore, just as Laura needs Lizzie\u2019s love and physical affection to revive her from death into her youthful beauty, Laura Fairlie needs Marian to restore her to her previous self so that she is once again fit for marriage.<\/p>\n

These stories are paradoxical in that same-sex sensuality is simultaneously repressed and illuminated as a pathway to marriage in these Victorian texts. Even though both accounts end with heterosexual marriages, these unions are not the solution to the scandal of same-sex relationships. Rather, heterosexual marriages allow same-sex relationships to exist by providing women with the guise of respectability in society. Marian and Lizzie remain as close to their sisters as they did before the marriages, but these relationships are no longer explicitly erotic because each Laura can now fulfill her role as a married woman raising her children in a safe, domestic space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In \u201cGoblin Market,\u201d Christina Rossetti provides an account of how the love between two women is actually a necessity for survival. Lizzie and Laura\u2019s love for one another is what saves them both and allows them to uphold their duties as single women and then as married women. Their relationship is reminiscent of the one … Continue reading Same-Sex Saviors<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2596,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[111380,108029],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-360-victorian-sexualities","category-spring-2015"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}