Marxist Approach In Goblin Market, By Christina Rosetti

On Monday, our class had an in-class discussion about Goblin Market, which is a poem written by Christina Rosetti in 1859. Although it has quite a wide range of possible theories that it can be examined through, I propose to examine Goblin Market through the Marxist Approach by analyzing the Victorian society’s effect on the story through a Marxist Criticism perspective. I chose this because the story clearly has strong undertones that represent consumer culture and its connection to the struggle between the groups in the capitalist class system. By analyzing the different characters in the story and their roles, one can definitely find underlying meanings about the society in which it was produced- Victorian Britain, which was a newly industrialized …show more content…
This type of society refers to a society in which the means of production is controlled by the bourgeois class, who then depend on the society’s lower classes for labor (the working, proletariat class). Within Goblin Market, a Marxist can visualize the goblins as the Bourgeoisie, who are depicted as evil, violent, and unattractive animal-like creatures who work tirelessly to gain control of the sisters (who can be seen as the Proletariat) with the products that they sell (their exotic fruits that are said to have been grown in different parts of the world). The sisters are depicted as innocent and naïve characters that can easily become addicted, and try to resist the temptations of the goblins, which the goblins take to their advantage.This situation can be compared to consumerism in a Bourgeois society, in which the Bourgeoisie alone control all means of production and depend on the Proletariat’s need work in order to consume, allowing them to have power and control over society. In the Victorian culture, the industrialized part of the country depended on the support and exploitation of the Proletariat class in order to maintain and expand its way of …show more content…
During this time, Great Britain went through changes that would eventually transform it into a greatly expanded and massively industrialized society, providing insight for the critique of consumerism in the Victorian age and its social ideals. If one were to focus on how the goblin market is depicted in the story with Marxism in mind, it would not take long to find criticism against commercialism and consumerism (ideals which were being acted out by Victorian culture. This era was also the age in which Marxism came about in England, making the story easily susceptible to Marxist criticism, as Rosetti could have easily been influenced by her society while writing the