Goblin

The theme of obsession and addiction is evident throughout Christina Rossetti’s poem, Goblin Market. Goblin Market can be interpreted as a storyline unfolding the symptoms, signs, treatment, and the overall dangers of drug addiction. From the beginning lines, the goblins are identified as drug dealing creatures. Rossetti creates a drug-dealing setting where the male creatures are the sellers, and the young unmarried women are the customers. The robotic crying of the goblins, ‘Come buy, come buy’ oddly enough allows them to be manipulative and successful entrepreneurs. The goblins tempt the women into buying their perfect fruits all day long; morning and evening as described by Rossetti. Conjunctionally, these rare fruits symbolize illicit…

To what extent and in what ways do The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Goblin Market and Rebecca unsettle cultural definitions of gender and/or sexuality? Christina Rossetti, Daphne du Maurier and Angela Carter question and unsettle contemporary ideas of gender and sexuality respectively in Goblin Market, Rebecca and The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. Each author, writing at different periods in history and therefore different eras in terms of both the women’s rights movement and the…

There is a strong sense of truth to Katja Brandt’s statement that Christina Rossetti uses the women in her poem, “Goblin Market”, to act as spiritual guides rather than a subservient female characters. Instead of making her female characters into passive figures, like many authors did at the time of the poem’s publication, Rossetti makes her characters into transmitters of a higher truth. Brandt accurately identifies that the female characters in “Goblin Market” act as religious interpreters.…

In “Goblin Market,” Christina Rossetti discusses three main characters involved in the poem and the different experiences they encounter with these Goblin Men. In this essay, I will compare and contrast the different experiences, while describing what message Christina Rossetti is trying to formulate from these different experiences. I will also describe some similarities that this story has with our first story we read “How to Be a Victorian.” Each character has a unique encounter with the…

In “Goblin Market,” Christina Rossetti discusses three main characters involved in the poem and the different experiences they encounter with these Goblin Men. In this essay, I will compare and contrast the different experiences, while describing what message Christina Rossetti is trying to formulate from these different experiences. Each character has a unique encounter with the Goblin men that has many different meanings to them and different messages being sent by the Author. The young,…

Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” focuses primarily on the theme of temptation, which is represented by the Goblins and their fruit, and the sisterly relationship between Laura and Lizzie are represented through a Christian allegory. Rossetti describes the Goblin men as animalistic creatures who take advantage of the innocence, curiosity, and affections of young women. She gives “each merchant man” physical attributes of an animal, “one had a cat’s face… one tramped at a rat’s pace,” and…

Goblin Men: Then and Now All around the world, women are degraded for reasons such as intelligence, sexuality, physical strength, or even details some would find insignificant, such as hair color or weight. Women are catcalled, sexually harassed, abused, and thought of as inferior to men every single day. Christina Rossetti shows how men in the Victorian Era degraded women in the same way women are degraded today. It is disheartening to see that the way some men acted during this time is still…

Rosetti’s “Goblin Market” displays the female body in two contrasting lights- one of vulnerability, and one of strength. Laura’s body is marked by descriptors of fragility; her eager consumption of the goblin men’s fruit in exchange for a “precious golden lock” leaves her “wasted,” “undone,” and “knocking on Death’s door” (8, 13,17). This reflects traditional ideas which profess that women’s bodies are readily receptive to, and easily “ruined” by the temptations presented by men. Yet, through…

purity, the antithesis of what he is. Both Porphyria 's Lover, by Robert browning, and Goblin Market, by Christina Rossetti, explore the duality of eroticisation and demonization of the female form – which acts as a manifestation of female desire - by utilising…

Women during the Victorian Era experienced some brutal battles, similar to those expressed in Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market,” and Elizabeth Browning’s “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti both present the themes, the cruelty of women and the necessity of family’s love to thoroughly describe their hardships and braveness for one another. Rossetti’s character encounters assault to aid her sister out of depression, while Browning’s kills…