Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti

It was Virginia Woolf who advised me to read this poem. Um, um, let me rephrase... more humbly! It was while re-reading A Room of One's Own that I saw mention the Goblin Market that this time I read.
I hadn't read anything about Christina Rossetti before. That poem struck me, overwhelmed me, moved me. Of course, the writing, the structure, is fabulous.
But above all, it's a story, written by a woman in the middle of the 19th century, whose two main characters are two young girls. With rhymes as rhythmic as a nursery rhyme, Rossetti exposes all the problems of his time. It should be remembered that the author worked as a volunteer for eleven years in a shelter for former prostitutes.
Fallen women, according to society. But rather women lost by that society. Used by young men to satisfy their needs before marriage, by old men to satisfy their needs during marriage. This fresh, inexhaustible, ever-renewed flesh ended up in misery, oblivion, abandonment, social decay.
What is interesting in this poem is that:

On the one hand, these two female characters are complex:

* Laura feels full of a physical sexual desire that she can't satisfy naturally in this 19th century Western society that only considers women when they are virgins or married - and rarely married for love. Hence the attraction of the Goblins, who are male characters. At first Laura hides from the Goblins; but is she afraid of them or afraid of herself, afraid of her own desire? Moreover, her condition as a simple girl of the people makes her desire for material goods that she will never be able to afford represented by the fruits sold by the Goblins, which are also a sexual symbol. Read, you will understand! Laura is curious about all this, about fruits that are not even to be found in the markets where she could go.
The author Christina Rossetti does not think that curiosity is a bad thing. For, let's put it in its time young men’s curiosity is encouraged, why should young girls’ curiosity be stifled?
As soon as she commits to the Goblins by cutting a curl from her hair, Lizzie feels she's making a mistake. She cries. She knows she chose a slippery slop but goes through with it anyway. If you can call choice the only two ways to live her life as a woman that society offers her. She has both pleasure and disgust. She is a female character very difficult to understand for a 19th century man. She is neither all black and white, neither angel nor devil.
As soon as she commits to the Goblins by cutting a curl from her hair, Lizzie feels she's making a mistake. She cries. She knows she chose a slippery slop but goes through with it anyway. If you can call choice the only two ways to live her life as a woman that society offers her. She has both pleasure and disgust. She is a female character very difficult to understand for a 19th century man. She is neither all black and white, neither angel nor devil.

* Lizzie - her sister, her friend, her girlfriend? (another suggested theme?) - is not a one-piece character either. At the beginning, we feel that she is both anxious to conform to a society that says not to frequent the Goblins, and fearful too. She is afraid that what happened to poor Jeanie will happen to her or Laura as well.
Then an incredible force will be born in her to save her friend Laura. She will face the Goblins. She will remain pure, not because they have not touched her, but because she has resisted them with all the strength of her heart and soul. Wounded, she will be, but not in her soul or her heart. She has something of a Jesus who gives himself up to save men. Lizzie faces alone, unarmed, a whole troop of goblins. She shows immense courage, great strength and above all a big heart, because she is not fighting for herself, for a land or for money, but for her friend, her sister. She wins nothing in the affair except to save Laura who has fallen into depression.
In this 19th century where stories are mostly told by men, where women are seen through the eys of men, this is not common: women's solidarity. Laura will not be saved by a man-warrior, will not be saved by a man-lover, but by a girl friend, a sister.
It is with this idea that the poem ends with the last eight verses, full of peace and hope for the future.

On the other hand, the male characters: the Goblins.

The least we can say is that they don't have the good part! They are tempting, evil, they have power, strength, material goods. They are devils and not merchants, as they would have you believe: they don't care that Laura doesn't have any money, as they only ask her for a curl of hair. All they want is her, her young body, her virginity. As for Lizzie, who has a silver coin and asks for fruits in exchange and only fruits, it makes them furious, they assault her, beat her, brutalize her and try to rape her.
Why couldn't Laura hear the goblins' call once they get her? Because they didn't want her anymore.

The goods in this story are not the fruits of the Goblins, they are the young girls. In 19th century Western society, they are the commodities. They are the ones that men pay for when they use them as prostitutes, they are the ones that men sell when they marry them. They are put on a stall, adorned with ribbons and frills, to please men whoever they are. And almost all of them endorse this system because it is the only one they know; because they have not had their eyes opened by a proper education to claim what they would like to be; because not everyone has the strength to stand alone against the society in which one lives because it can be dangerous, but also because one might be isolated. And it is something that can kill a human being because he is is a social animal.

In short, I admire this poem, this beautiful, profound, violent, poignant masterpiece which, fortunately, ends with a note full of hope that I will not quote for fear of spoiling your reading.

Gabrielle Dubois