255‑56): “I hear the fruit‑call but I dare not look” (l. Lizzie, still pure, alone can hear “that goblin cry, / ’Come buy’” (ll. 259), she can no longer see the goblins or hear their cries. It is only after eating the goblin fruit that Laura’s senses cease functioning appearing “deaf and blind” (l. Once Laura “buys” their fruit with part of her body, her hair, and sensuously eats it, she has “fallen.” Ironically, Laura awakens to her sensuality only to have it taken from her because she has experienced such sensuality in the wrong context: worldly, carnal lust. However, what the goblin men want is not her money but herself, of which their fruit is a lure: “‘You have much gold upon your head, /. Laura naively thinks she can buy fruit with standard money, of which she has none. Her “fall” begins when she first “rear her glossy head” and repeatedly tells Lizzie to “look” (ll.
If these “men” represent carnal lust, then Laura’s purchase and consumption of goblin fruit initially seems like a loss of her virginity. Original cover illustration of Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" Sexuality in itself is not evil, just the goblins’ distorted representation of it, which is why their song is so seductive to virgins. These goblin men do not represent sexuality in general but its worldly aspect, carnal lust they desire to consume the body without its spiritual counterpart, the soul. It is a siren song that Laura and Lizzie, desiring neither to “see no evil” nor “hear no evil,” must avoid, for both see the goblin men as evil characters: “You should not peep at goblin men” (l. The goblins symbolically want their customers’ bodies, not money for their wares. The goblin men appear to sell fruit, but they really appeal to, and try to waken, women’s carnal lusts: “sweet to tongue and sound to eye” (l.
Bloom‑down‑cheeked peaches, / Swart‑headed mulberries, /Wild free‑born cranberries /.
What these goblins represent is clear by their seductive, sexually explicit, description of their fruity wares: “Plump unpecked cherries /. The poem begins with the goblin men’s continual cry, “Come buy, come buy” (l. Lizzie appears as a type of Christ in her redemption of Laura, but it is a role that encompasses both earthly and spiritual redemption. Instead, Lizzie and Laura learn to embrace both their earthly and spiritual natures in traditional, Victorian marriage. This poem is a story of renunciation, but not one of denying the body and its desires in order to embrace the spiritual nature of the soul. In "Goblin Market" (1862), Christina Rossetti (1830‑1894) presents a story of two sisters who must endure carnal lust in order to embrace a higher and purer realm of sexuality: marriage.
0 kommentar(er)
