Porphyria´s Lover And Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market

Since its inception in the late eighteenth century, the Gothic movement has been fascinated with female bodies. This is especially true of Gothic poems of the Victorian Era, such as Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue Porphyria’s Lover (first published as Porphyria, 1836) and Christina Rossetti’s disturbing children’s fable Goblin Market (composed 1859, published 1862). Each poem demonstrates that, due to societal attitudes, a woman’s body has the potential to be dangerous to her, while also possessing positive and restorative qualities; though a woman’s body is innately benign, it can become destructive when exposed to the malignance of the patriarchy. Both Browning and Rossetti vividly, and—to varying extents—sensually, evoke the bodies …show more content…
925). Most notable, and akin to Porphyria, is Laura and Lizzie’s oft-noted ‘golden’ hair (Line 41). Comparing parts of the girls’ bodies to precious metal emphasises the intrinsic goodness of the two, and creates angelic imagery, such as in the line ‘Golden head by golden head’ (Line 184). In addition to hair, in Goblin Market the girls’ breasts and cheeks all play an important role. Breasts and cheeks are drawn upon to evidence the close sororal bond between Laura and Lizzie. In the lines ‘Cheek to cheek and breast to breast / Lock 'd together in one nest’ (Lines 197, 198), rhythmic repetition of the body parts demonstrates the physical closeness of the sisters’ bodies, this union of their forms showing their interdependence on each other and suggests the ultimate cure for Laura’s enchanted …show more content…
Having apologised for not being able to pay for their wares with money, ‘“You have much gold upon your head,” / They answered all together: / “Buy from us with a golden curl”’ (Lines 123–125). The colour and property of gold is significant in Goblin Market, as it was to Karl Marx who wrote, just five years after Rossetti’s poem was published, that gold’s main function was ‘to supply commodities with the material for the expression of their values,’ acting as ‘a universal measure of value, and only through performing this function does gold, the specific equivalent commodity, become money’ (Marx, from Mendoza 2006, p. 923). Rossetti’s choice to make Laura and Lizzie’s hair gold and to give it material worth shows that the sisters’ bodies have capital value with which they can trade, as demonstrated by Laura using her hair to pay the goblins. That parts of female bodies are depicted as potential currency also suggests that female bodies can be bought, a notion very relevant to Christina Rossetti due to her involvement with so-called ‘fallen women’ of the Victorian era. (When writing Goblin Market, Rossetti was working at the St Mary Magdalene Penitentiary for such women in Highgate.) Instead of condoning this idea, the poem condemns it, presenting the goblins as malicious and showing the negative effects on