GM critical interps. - Gender and Sexuality

Sandra Gilber and Susan Gubar

Rossetti poses ‘an effectively matrilineal and matriarchal world’ through Goblin Market

Cora Kaplan

‘the poem undoubtedly remains an exploration of women’s sexual fantasy, which includes suggestions of masochism

Gilbert and Gubar

‘a covertly (if ambivalently) lesbian world.’

Dorothy Mermin

Lizzie’s heroism demonstrates that ‘a woman can be strong, bold and clever, Christ-like in active self-sacrifice as well as in silent endurance.’

Caroline Norton

The last 8 lines of the poem are didactic, and fit in the context of the fairy tale motif that stresses the importance of sisterhood rather than ‘an allegory against the pleasures of sinful love’