Ecofeminism in Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin market”

Abstract

Victorians Journal 63 Ecofeminism in Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin market’’ BY KATHLEEN ANDERSON and Hannah Thullbery Since its publication in 1862, Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” has sparked intense curiosity among critics. Although Rossetti’s editor-brother, Michael Rossetti, claimed she disavowed complex literary or ideological motives for the poem, scholars have generated diverse interpretations of this highly evocative “children’s” tale about girls and goblins. As a Victorian woman writer who was aware of her culture’s social and literary expectations of women, Rossetti likely preferred to avoid notoriety that might call into question her feminine propriety. For example, the question of female desire or appetite is a central feature of the poem; and, as C. C. Barfoot argues, such “craving to give and to take, would seem improper when expressed so blatantly by a woman” (146). In her overview of the reception history ofRossetti’s poetry, Alison Chapman notes that “The sentimental tradition, seen in the nineteenth-century as the only properly feminine mode for women poets, insists that women’s poetry is confessional and personal” (6). In this context, one would be surprised if Rossetti was not being coy regarding the authorial intentions behind “Goblin Market,” which contains a richly evocative interplay of biblical, mercantile, and sexual themes. One of the poem’s most intriguing aspects is the way in which Rossetti combines these elements in her portrayal of a pervasive bond between nature and the feminine soul. “Goblin Market” is a highly effective early example of ecofeminist literature, one that raises critical and still-relevant questions about the co-inherent roles of women and the environment in a precarious industrialized world. This becomes more clear when the dominant thematic foci of scholarly discourse on the poem—the 64 Victorians Journal religious, economic, and reproductive allusions—are examined in terms of their environmental implications. Rossetti saturates “Goblin Market” with ecological imagery, demonstrating a love of nature that is characteristic of her poetry generally and of her personal ethics as an anti-vivisection activist and animal lover. This bond is mirrored in her portrayal of protagonists Lizzie and Laura and reflects the poem’s importance as an ecofeminist work. While out in the wilderness of the “haunted glen” (1. 552), the two sisters encounter “goblin men” who tempt them to ‘“come buy’” (11. 42, 4) their divers tantalizing fruits. Lizzie resists, whereas Laura succumbs, buying the fruit with a lock of her own hair and soon sickening with insatiable hunger for more. Lizzie searches out the goblins and endures their assault-by-fruit to bring her sister the juices as an antidote to save her life. The sisters are thus restored to an almost pre-lapsarian harmony with each other and with the earth, as signaled by spring’s renewal: the “first birds,” “dew-wet grass,” “morning winds,” and “new buds” (11. 530, 533, 534, 535) greet Laura when she awakens from her life-and-death struggle and embraces Lizzie. An examination of the poem through a biblical lens enhances such prevalent religious themes as temptation and women’s spiritual roles: “Rossetti always depicts things of this world as meaningful only in their relationship to the higher reality that gives them significance” (Arseneau 91). Yet through its depiction of a spiritual bond between women and nature, the religious parable in “Goblin Market” is simultaneously an ecoparable as well. Similarly, although the goblins’ role as participants in the capitalist marketplace often receives critical attention, the poem’s more important ecofeminist theme is that this participation reflects men’s impulse to conquer rather than commune with both women and nature—their assumed products to buy and sell. In addition to the religious and economic themes in the poem, sexuality and fertility are also portrayed as signifying the kinship between nature and women, whose combined forces defeat patriarchal domination. Victorians Journal 65 Critics have taken a broad range of approaches to “Goblin Market,” whether as “commentary on the capitalist marketplace; as a tale of sexual, sometimes homoerotic yearning; as feminist glorification of sisterhood; and perhaps most often as Christian allegory of temptation and redemption” (Grass 356); many of their arguments contribute valuable insights toward a new critical interpretation of the work...