Goblin Market

What happens?

1. Laura and Lizzie hears sound of goblin fruit market from their house. They try to ignore it but Laura goes to look even after warnings from Lizzie

2. Goblin men offers Laura the fruit. She has no money, so the goblin men take some of her golden hair

3. Laura gorges on the fruit and heads home to Lizzie

4. Laura begins to waste away, so Lizzie goes to the goblins

5. Goblin men try to tempt her but Lizzie stands firm

6. Goblin men turn violent and try to stuff fruit in Lizzie’s mouth. She squeezes her mouth shut so juice goes all over her

7. Laura kisses all the juice off her sister’s cheek and is miraculously and painfully healed

8. Years later, Laura and Lizzie are both wives and mothers and they describe their experience to the children

Ballad form

Narratives set to music, originally to dance to

Popular as story-telling songs from Middle Ages to the 18th Century

Written ballads became popular in the 18th century and retained strong rhythms

Form

• Use of quatrains

• Clear alternate rhyme scheme

• Strong rhythm

• Moral at the end of

• Repetition and incremental repitition

• Strong alliteration

• Dialogue and conversational language

Iambic metre

• Metrical pattern of unstressed beat followed by a stressed beat

• de DUM = iambic foot/iamb

• The heartbeat rhythm - walking, dancing and ordinary English speech

• “Maids heard the goblins cry” = iambic trimester (3 feet per line)

Dactyl - DUM de de

Spondee - DUM DUM

Epic poem

Michael Meyer:

• Lengthy narrative poem

• Dealing with God or supernatural forces

• Gave shape to moral universe

• Involves a time before living memory

Victorian Fairy tale

Charles Perrault had collected and written versions of fairy and folk tales in the 18th century. Rewritten by Hans Christian Anderson and The Brothers Grimm

Erica Leigh Durian Fairy Tales

Moral - Sisterly love and curiosity is bad

Fantasy setting - Medieval market and lack of adults

Magic and magical beings - the goblins

Good vs Evil - Goblins vs Lizzie

Perilous quest undertaken in spite of warnings - Lizzie goes to save Laura by going to the goblins even though she knows the damage they can cause. Laura goes to get the fruit despite being reminded of Jeanie

Siblings and sibling rivalry - Laura and Lizzie

Gluttony and poverty - Laura’s greed gets the better of her and she follows the goblin’s music. The girls appear to live in poverty

Repitition - Multiple fruits named, similar incidents between Jeanie and Laura

Happily Ever After endings - Wives and children after Laura is saved

Marxism

Hegemony - one class holds power over another

Bourgeoisie - upper class

Proletariat - working class

Meritocracy - harder you work, the more reward you will receive - “myth of meritocracy”

Repressive state apparatus - stopping someone from doing something by keeping them somewhere (i.e. jail)

Marxism Literacy Theory

Representation of class distinctions and class conflict within literature

Social and political over artistic and visual elements of a text

Girls → Proletariat

Goblins → Bourgeoisie and hegemony

Fruit → Dominant ideology - The attitudes, beliefs, values, and morals shared by the majority of the people in a given society

Terrance Holt

• Economic language and metaphors

• “Come buy” echoes throughout the poem

• Inhabit apparently innocent words

Elizabeth Campbell

Rossetti uses the literacy market in order to critique the values and hidden assumptions of capitalism

Consumerism

Fruit

Laura and Jeanie are over consumers

Oxford Movement

• Tractarians

• Importance of emotions/heart

• Active role for women

• Spiritual emphasis on poetry

Doctorine of Reserve

‘The kingdom of heaven is like a hidden treasure’

God conceals as well as reveals

Have to struggle/suffer to reach enlightenment

Adam and Eve

• ‘Apples’ are the first fruit named in the poem

• Eve gets tempted like Laura

• Goblins = snake

Sacrifice of Jesus

Mirrors the same way Lizzie risked her own life to save Laura

Mary-Lu Hill

Lizzie is a Christ-like figure and Laura is saved by her licking her body like “Eucharist” (breaking bread)

7 deadly sins

• Envy

• Pride

• Sloth

• Wrath

• Gluttony

• Greed

• Lust

All displayed in Goblin Market

Lizzie

• Mature

• Strong-willed

• Vibrant

• Caring and nurturing

• Protective

• Loyal

Laura

• Curious

• Naive

• Child-like

• Easily manipulated

• Stubborn

• Reckless

Victorian ideal of womanhood

Angel in the house - Woman’s place in the home. Mother and goof housewife

Prostitution was an issue of London that no one knew how to deal with - Rossetti worked with prostitutes

Gender and Sexuality

• Rehabilitating fallen women

• Unconscious celebration of lesbian

• Feminist celebration of sisterhood

Laura was able to become respectable mother and wife. Unlike the women Rossetti would be help in the refuge

Addiction

Context

• Common feature of Victorian life

• Imports of opium quadrupled between 1830 and 1860

• No illegal substances

Signs in Goblin Market

• Laura’s unable to resist tempetation

• “Sought after it day and night”

• “I ate and ate my fill, yet my mouth water still”

“Come buy” “Come buy, come buy”

Advertisement, persuasive. Focus on need replicate marketplace, street seller

fruit listed “apples”

“Apples” first = first sin

Listing = overwhelming

“Clashing arms and cautioning tips”

Market = unwelcoming and cold

“Tones as smooth as honey”

Deception

“Knew not was it night or day”

Confusion. Dependent on Lizzie

“One had a cat’s face, one whisked a tail”

Animalistic, beastly. Children’s storybook. Creates sense of underworld

“Haunts of goblin men”

Will not leave her alone. Evil drug pushers constantly in her mind. Unable to stop thinking about the fruit. Addiction

“Fetched in honey, milked the cows”

“Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat”

Cataphoric reference to “fetched honey, kneaded cakes of wheat”

No matter what happens between, the same, repetitive jobs must be done

“Lizzie most placid in her look,

Laura most like a leaping flame”

Lizzie is the angel. Fire imagery for Laura suggests devil, unwanted desires

“Purple and rich golden flags”

Lizzie = regal and proper. Royal colours

“Thirstier”

Even if she drinks, she will still up thirsty if not topped up. Same with fruit. Addiction

“Kernel-stone”

Nothing grows through consumerism

“No friend like a sister”

Without Lizzie, Laura would’ve died. She is without medicine - “fiery antidote”