The Victorian female had always been perceived as an
egoless, domestic “angel” in the service of the male. Christina Rossetti tries
to captivate her readers with a critical yet conflicting assessment of
Victorian economics as well as sexual politics in her poem, ‘GOBLIN MARKET’ (1862).
Like other female writers of the nineteenth century, Rossetti believed in the
inherent redemptive power of women. Highly influenced by Florence Nightingale
whose brave service during the Crimean war made her an a-typical Victorian
woman, Rossetti modelled her protagonist Lizzie as a strong, resolute woman who
in order to protect her sister Laura could submit herself to a metaphorical rape,
“They trod and hustled her / Elbowed and jostled her / Clawed with their
nails…” When Laura becomes the fallen woman after partaking the forbidden fruit
from the goblins and becomes Eve-like, Lizzie becomes Christ-like in presenting
herself to Laura as a kind of a Eucharist, “Eat me, drink me, love me.”
The poem begins with the goblins inviting people to buy
their wares, “Morning and evening/ Maids heard the goblins cry/ ‘Come buy our
orchard fruits/ Come buy, come buy’…” But exchange in GOBLIN MARKET is the
province of the goblins, not of maidens. Indeed the two sisters, Lizzie and
Laura seem to know instinctively that, “We must not look at goblin men, / We
must not buy their fruits…” Yet Laura feels attracted to the goblins’ world of
exchange. Her powerlessness in bargaining with the goblins when she fails to
pay in cash, “You have much gold upon your head / They answered all together/
‘Buy from us with a golden curl’…”, and her final giving up to the goblins’ demands
suggest what a woman really lacks is a privileged term of gender.
On the other hand, Lizzie’s “having to do” with the goblin
men is particularly to save her sister Laura, whose “tree of life drooped from
the root” having yielded to the eroticism offered by the goblins. Lizzie
embodies a spiritual, sisterly love as illuminated by the Christian typology
when The Son of God offered himself, “Take, eat this is my Body which is given
for you… Drink ye all of these for this is my Blood of the New Testament which
is shed for you.”
Lizzie ventures
“by the brook” at “twilight” with the intent of buying and carrying away from
the goblin men the fruits that would alleviate her sister’s fatal condition. Although
the goblins try to force her to “sit down and feast” with them on “…apples /
Russet and dun, / Bob at our cherries, Bite at our peaches, / Citrons and dates
…”, Lizzie arms herself from the goblins’ pushy advances by having “put a
silver penny in her purse” before her entry into their glen, unlike Laura.
The goblins’
cataloguing of their various commodities, a ‘spectacle de la marchandise’
provides a synesthetic pleasure with the iterated jingle, “Come buy, come buy: /
Apples and quinces / Lemons and oranges… Come buy, come buy…” Their calls are, “Sweet to tongue and sound
to eye.” They demonstrate something of a razzmatazz or a mass-consumer desire
through the process of advertising. While it was not until 1937 the term ‘
jingle’ got publicised as a genre of product advertisement, the goblins (and
Rossetti) show a zealous understanding of how hype is the be-all and end-all in
a consumer capitalist economy.
According to
Richard Menke, Lizzie’s acquisition of the silver penny is “the central mystery
of the poem”. The trope of the silver penny has moral, religious and economic
value in the Christian context, in the 'Parable Of The Lost Coin' found in the New
Testament:
“Or what woman, if
she had ten drachma coins, if she lost one drachma coin, wouldn’t light a lamp,
sweep the house, and seek diligently until she found it? When she has found it,
she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I
have found the drachma which I had lost. Even so, I tell you, there is joy in
the presence of angels of God over one sinner repenting.” (Luke 15:8-10)
What Lizzie arms
herself with, then, might in fact be the knowledge of, and more so, the faith
in redemption which the parable epitomizes or exemplifies. The silver penny
affords Lizzie the ability to not only resist the goblin men’s advances but also
allows her to fend off any kind of sexual assault. However, the text cites
Lizzie as “Tender Lizzie”, characterising her on one hand, as “kind, loving,
gentle”, - the traits of an ideal Victorian woman; while on the other hand,
‘tender’ also implies currency prescribed by the law as that in which
transactions may be made. Bourgeoised in two ways, Lizzie becomes both the
feminine ideal as well as the very material of capitalist exchange in the end.
GOBLIN MARKET is
a tale of a woman’s survival in a world led by market economy where, “the
market offers itself to women and girls as a stage for the production of
themselves as public beings… on particularly unfavourable terms.”
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