{"id":419,"date":"2015-03-06T01:34:16","date_gmt":"2015-03-06T01:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=419"},"modified":"2016-08-24T15:51:12","modified_gmt":"2016-08-24T15:51:12","slug":"girls-and-goblins-gendered-tensions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2015\/03\/06\/girls-and-goblins-gendered-tensions\/","title":{"rendered":"Girls and Goblins: Gendered Tensions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maurice Sendak\u2019s 1981 illustrated children\u2019s book, Outside Over There<\/em>, 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 <\/em>alone picks up the themes of foreign anxiety, the otherworldly realm of sexual danger, gender divisions, and sisterly care\u2014all of which we\u2019ve discussed in the context of Christina Rossetti\u2019s \u201cGoblin Market.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The title page to Maurice Sendak’s 1981 Outside Over There<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The title itself evokes the foreign world of the goblins: it is not only outside<\/em>, while the girls often remain inside the house, but it is also over there<\/em>, in a space not normally inhabited by the baby or by Ida (one is kidnapped and taken there, the other must \u201cclimb backwards out\u201d of her window and fly around for some time to find it). The dangerous otherness of this world is emphasized by the goblins\u2019 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\u2019s upright posture and the baby\u2019s distance from the ground, and the anxiety obvious on both of the girls\u2019 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\u2019s 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\u2019s first thought upon realizing that the goblins have taken her sister is that they have \u201cstole[n] [her] sister away [\u2026] To be a nasty goblin\u2019s bride!\u201d Before she actually discovers them in the middle of a wedding, her explicit goal is to interrupt their \u201cgoblin honeymoon\u201d\u2014with its distinct connotation of sexual activity.<\/p>\n

It is interesting to put Outside Over There <\/em>in conversation with Rossetti\u2019s text, not only because of the obvious content-based and underlying thematic similarities, but also because both claim a role as children\u2019s 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\u2019 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\u2019s father sings a song on the sea that guides her to the goblin lair; Lizzie and Laura tells her children and Lizzie\u2019s about the dangers of goblin men\u2014but Ida\u2019s mother dreams absentmindedly of her husband and leaves Ida to take care of the baby, and Lizzie and Laura\u2019s parents never appear in the text)?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maurice Sendak\u2019s 1981 illustrated children\u2019s 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 … Continue reading Girls and Goblins: Gendered Tensions<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[111380,108029],"tags":[111404,111400,111396,111406,111411,1991,92708,111401,111408,111403,111402,111407,85284],"class_list":["post-419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-360-victorian-sexualities","category-spring-2015","tag-absent-parents","tag-christina-rossetti","tag-goblin-market","tag-goblins","tag-ida","tag-laura","tag-lizzie","tag-maurice-sendak","tag-other-worlds","tag-othering","tag-outside-over-there","tag-sexual-danger","tag-sisters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419","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\/1106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}