In \u201cGoblin Market\u201d by Christina Rosetti, there are several allusions to female sexuality, even though historically it is a tale about sisterly love. The numerous references to fruit and flowers, to me, served as a metaphor for sexuality and a loss of virginity. Specifically, in the passage where the maidens refer to Jeanie, whose demise serves as the cautionary tale steering the women away from the goblin merchants, I felt as though there were several blatant hints at sex or repeated sexual encounters. The women say, \u201cDo you not remember Jeanie,\/How she met them in the moonlight,\/ Took their gifts both choice and many,\/ Ate their fruits and wore their flowers\/ Plucked from bowers\/ Where summer ripens at all hours.\u201d (147-152). The choice of words, and the structure of this passage is what made it stand out the most to me in its references to a potential sexual relationship with Jeanie and the goblin men.<\/p>\n
The first word that stood out to me here was \u201cmoonlight.\u201d I found it interesting that a young woman was going to a market that sells fruit in the nighttime, instead of during the day. The moon is also a repeating image in the poem, as it has several connections with danger and temptation. It is also interesting to note that after Laura eats the goblin fruit in the moonlight, she becomes in sync with the moon\u2019s changing phases. She starts to \u201cdwindle\u201d when the moon changes out of its full phase. The moon and the nighttime are often associated with danger and the unknown, and, since Lizzie and Laura are Victorian women, they have been advised to stay out of anything that causes potential harm or could lead them to lost purity. The theme of purity and its importance was highlighted for me in the fourth and fifth lines of the passage I chose, where Jeanie \u201cAte their fruits and wore their flowers\/ Plucked from bowers.\u201d Here, the use of \u201cfruit\u201d and \u201cflowers\u201d together in a line suggested to me the image of the female reproductive system. A flower is delicate and pure, and the following line \u201cplucked from bowers\u201d suggests that the purity is no longer there and significant. Since a woman\u2019s bowers are her private room or bedroom, I felt as though this line meant that her purity was plucked from her through sexual acts.<\/p>\n
Even though the poem \u201cGoblin Market\u201d contains a powerful anecdote of sisterly love, I think through the excessive sexual imagery and the violence of the men towards Lizzie later in the poem, it suggests a darker theme. In the passage introducing Jeanie, I felt as though the words chosen were very deliberate, and allowed the reader to see the sexual undertones present.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In \u201cGoblin Market\u201d by Christina Rosetti, there are several allusions to female sexuality, even though historically it is a tale about sisterly love. The numerous references to fruit and flowers, to me, served as a metaphor for sexuality and a loss of virginity. Specifically, in the passage where the maidens refer to Jeanie, whose demise … Continue reading Sexual Imagery in “Goblin Market”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2616,"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-464","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\/464","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\/2616"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}