“Goblin Market”: Prostitution, Fetishization, and the Porn Industry
A Staff Piece by Elle Neill
Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” is a tale of two sisters’ bond and the temptation of what is too good to be true. In “Goblin Market,” Rossetti chronicles the story of Laura and her sister Lizzie, who are tempted by peddling goblins and their fruit. In the poem, Laura falls victim to the goblins’ temptations and tastes their fruit, only to wither away after doing so. Lizzie, unable to watch her sister suffer, finds the goblins, suffers their attacks without ever tasting their fruit, and brings the juices back to Laura to restore her vitality. Although originally written in the style of children’s literature, the sexual undertones of the poem span the entirety of the work at the surface. While implicitly sexual on the surface, Rossetti criticizes the male understanding of women in the economy- specifically how they are sexualized and consumed. Goblin Market offers criticism of male consumption of women in a society and economy in which they have little control or power. She provides warnings for readers, via Jeanie, of the social condemnation of prostitution, but also the possibility of redemption and rehabilitation through support and sisterhood for women who turned to prostitution, like Laura. Notably, Rossetti unpacks some of the fetishization of “Fallen Women” by male standards which is incredibly ironic as the work resurfaced in the late 20th Century to be examined and consumed by the same male market that she aims to condemn.
Women occupied marginalized roles in all aspects of Victorian English life, which Rosetti reflects on in “Goblin Market.” It is important to understand that a woman’s place in the economy in Victorian England is, “marginal rather than non-existent, their economic role was often supplementary to their husbands’,” (Gordon and Nair 796). Women assumed domestic roles and very minimally had representation in the workforce or the economy as they did not often make their own income. Further, women’s only social power came from association with their husbands or other male family members if they were single. As men hold the power in society and women can gain that power byway of marriage and their sexuality, maiden women would often find the only power they possessed to be in the form of their sexuality. Rossetti’s Goblin Market works to criticize the male consumption and corruption of women’s sexuality and image. She also actively works to deconstruct the notion that women are innately coy or mere objects for male pleasure. Instead, she asserts that women have and should embrace their sexuality for themselves, while also deliberately laying the underpinnings of prostitution by eating the fruit.
Rossetti worked with prostitutes working in a Fallen Women’s shelter, and from this experience she not only narrates the experience of Jeanie who was killed by this metaphorical prostitution but offers redemption for other women like her in the form of Laura via Lizzie. While men in the Victorian era tended to believe the idea of women falling into the temptation of prostitution, thus placing the blame on the women’s shoulders, women had a different approach and understanding. In her article, Jessica Silvis states, “Because women could all identify with being treated as objects, the issue with prostitution brought forth a unity amongst females, though some women wanted to damn prostitutes for staying in their position while others saw prostitutes as victims of the never-ending loop of poverty.” Rossetti’s perspective drove her to write the story of Lizzie and Laura not only to serve as a warning but to embrace female sexuality and promote the perspective that not all exploits of the male market are damned. For this reason, she not only writes of Jeanie’s death by consuming the fruit but also Laura’s redemption through sisterhood.
The notion of women navigating the world while using their bodies as their only form of currency rings true even in the cases of naive women such as Laura. She knows the warnings Lizzie shares about the fruit and the stories of Jeanie, but her curiosity condemns her. She waits for the goblins to find her so she may try the fruit, however, when they ask for payment, she has no money, but the goblins claim they want her hair:
“You have much gold upon your head,”
They answered all together:
“Buy from us with a golden curl.”
She clipped a precious golden lock,
She dropped a tear more rare than a pearl,” (lines 123-127)
Instead of paying with money, she gives up part of her body to find ecstasy in the fruit. Using her hair as a form of payment is symbolic of prostitution which leaves a woman’s sexuality in the hands of the buyer. Additionally, the specific use of her hair as currency is important in the Victorian era with the use of lock collecting as a way to show ownership over a partner or lover. It is also specific in that a woman’s hair was also incredibly symbolic and, “could portray the social and moral position of the woman,” (Aspinall). One of its major symbols was that hair represented a woman’s femininity and sexuality. Thus, by cutting the hair, Rossetti can symbolically claim that Laura has lost a part of her sexual and moral virginity. Additionally, with the image of paying with a tear, Laura’s loss of sexual purity could be understood as non-consensual. This may be alluding to the fact that many women had no choice but to turn to prostitution to survive and also had little control over their sexual encounters with men in that industry.
It is clear, even at first glance at the poem, that Rossetti’s work is implicitly sexual but with explicit glamorizations of exoticism. In her first stanza, Rossetti describes the fruit the goblins are trying to sell to anyone desperate or curious enough to buy. Not only would fruit have been considered exotic purchases in Victorian England because very few were suited to grow in the cold, harsh climate, but Rossetti specifically notes the novelties of these already rare fruits:
Plump unpecked cherries,
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,
Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
………….
Taste them and try:
………….
Sweet to tongue and sound to eye;
Come buy, come buy. (Goblin Market, lines 7-11, 25, 30-31)
Their descriptions are undeniably sexual in nature as well as clearly underscore this notion of exoticism, which is specifically important when understanding male sexual interest. Exoticism here refers to the fetishizing allure of an object, especially when it is considered rare, fresh, and unusual to the consumer. Exoticism sexually plays into “Goblin Market”—take for example, the line “Plump unpecked cherries” describes the fruit modernly associated with women’s breasts and describes them as full and “unpecked.” The connotation of unpecked alludes to the idea of virgin breasts, being unpecked by another. This sense of virginity is furthered by the descriptions of “wild” and “free-born.” Not only does this repeat the idea that the fruits have not yet been corrupted by man and society, but also the sense that these fruits are particularly special, denoting a sense of sexual exoticism. The specific use of exoticism and virginity when describing sexual temptation is not because they are the sexual temptations of women, but that of men, as virginity signifies the freshness and rarity associated with exoticism. Often idealizing the novelty of virginity, this is what the fruit means to the goblins’ representative of the male buyers. To the female buyer, the fruit is representative of their desires, but the act of eating it is symbolic of the man’s pleasure in the sexual transaction. Tainting the virgin fruit and pecking the “unpecked cherries” is Rossetti’s depiction of male sexual novelty.
Rossetti’s poem warns readers of the dangers of sexual indulgence and overindulgence. However, “Goblin Market” does not entirely condemn female sexuality. We first see in Laura’s feast the embrace of sexual indulgence. However, as she begins tasting the fruit, there is an undeniably sinful tone that eclipses the idea that this fruit is merely exotic; gluttony and lust make Laura’s feast a deadly depiction of an addiction-like corruption.
She never tasted such before,
How should it cloy with length of use?
She sucked and sucked and sucked the more
Fruits which that unknown orchard bore;
She sucked until her lips were sore;
Then flung the emptied rinds away, ( lines 132-137)
Firstly, the repetition of “sucked” is deliberate use and repetition of sexual diction eating the fruit. Intertwining lust with a sense of gluttony, as Laura can’t get enough- she questions if anyone could ever grow sick of the taste- gives way to a sense of addiction-like yearning that continues to follow Laura afterward and nearly leads to her death, only saved by the savior of sisterhood. Rossetti alludes to the death to follow as she finishes the fruit and flings away the emptied rinds. With this layered diction of lust and gluttony, Rossetti is laying forth the warnings of women giving into the temptation of sexual fulfillment in the unforgiving world of male sexual consumption. However, Rosetti does not mean this to steer women away from their sexual desires. Instead, she embraces it in a setting outside of cultural norms. For this reason, we see the inclusion of pastoralism in which a queer relationship between Laura and Lizzie flourishes. Once those elements are disrupted by Laura’s addiction to the sexual fruit, a passionate embrace and kiss between the two is what reunites them and breaks the curse over Laura. This inclusion is Rossetti recognizing that there is a separate world in which female desire can be explored and untainted, but that it happens secularly from the world of male desire.
Her diction and description of Jeanie as a prostitute have fallen to the temptation of sex and “How she met them in the moonlight,” (line 148) can’t help but reference a prostitute waiting for nightfall to meet her clients. She also mentions that she can no longer find the goblins despite searching for them tirelessly. This may be in reference to the quick turnover rate of male interest. While the deal may look good, using sexuality or prostitution to gain leverage, the exoticness of a new woman is quickly gone after one night. After that, she has lost her lover, yet in search of new ones, they don’t want her because she has already lost her virginity, or because she has already eaten the fruit. For Rossetti to say that nothing will grow on her grave is to mean that she cannot bear new life. If she is seen as a whore, no man wants to put his child inside a woman who has already been used for her purpose. This section is critical of men’s sexual desire to only want virgin women when they are likely the biggest hypocrites of such sentiment.
An overlooked element of the work that feeds into the ideas of the sexualization of women and the prostitution business is fetishization. Not only do we see fetishization historically in whites toward people of color with this sense of lust for exoticism, but also the damnation and fetishization of queer people. While the end of the poem depicts Lizzie and Laura as sisters kissing with serious underpinnings of lesbianism, there is another- a more poignant moment that highlights Victorian men relishing the downfall of women in these male-dominated markets. When Lizzie tries to buy the fruit with a penny and bring it back to Laura, she is met with retaliation. The goblins reply she must only eat the fruit with them- they want to watch her give in and lose herself in the taste. This alludes to a sense of male ecstasy in controlling women or voyeurism watching Laura in a sexual state as they watched Lizzie. This is the fantasy. Rossetti implicitly depicts men wanting to watch and control the sexual and societal downfall of women. Additionally, she describes the brutal assault towards Lizzie, yet she does not comply, and the goblins retreat, tossing back her penny. Because she paid in coin rather than with the lock of hair like Laura, she never lost any part of herself in the deal. Even though the goblins ruined the fruit trying to feed it to her, they still tossed back the coin when they were unsuccessful because they didn’t get what they truly wanted: to take part of her.
While Rossetti criticizes and fights back against the male-dominated economy, the sexual and lesbian elements of her story resonate with similar consumers. A little over a hundred years after Goblin Market’s publication, the poem was revisited in none other than Playboy magazine. In 1973, a featured section called “Ribald’s Classics,” which revitalized racy and raunchy literature before its time, featured Goblin Market. In its publication, Playboy included illustrations of the poem that were poignantly sexual and phallic. One goes as far as to depict the goblins performing oral sex acts on Laura and another pushes the implied Lesbian relationship of Lizzie and Laura to the forefront for male readers’ enjoyment. While these interpretations of the text do hold some validity in literary analysis, it would be a mistake not to take note of the irony of Rossetti’s work and Playboy’s exploitation. Playboy falls into the same trap of over-sexualizing of women for male pleasure until their identities are lost, which Rossetti aims to condemn in her work. The art washes out some of the other themes so that the overt sexuality is even more frank to the reader. However, it should be noted that the artwork was created by a female artist, Kinuko Craft. With this said, it paints another interpretation of the art of Goblin Market and Playboy’s depiction of the poem. Kinuko may be capitalizing on her sexuality through art without losing a part of herself in the exchange to the male buyer or this work could be interpreted as selling sex in the economy. Whether her work exemplifies a submission to the male sexual economy or an exploitation of its overtness remains open to interpretation, but what becomes clear upon analyzing Rosetti’s “Goblin Market” is the harm incumbent to the sexually objectifying and fetishizing gaze with which men across history view women.
Works Cited
Aspinall, Hannah. "The Fetishization and Objectification of the Female Body in Victorian Culture." brightONLINE, University of Brighton, https://arts.brighton.ac.uk/projects/brightonline/issue-number-two/the-fetishization-and-objectification-of-the-female-body-in-victorian-culture.
Bromberg, Tobin. "The Sexuality of Goblin Market." Dickinson Blogs | Blogs for the Dickinson College Community, 21 Apr. 2016, https://blogs.dickinson.edu/secretlives/2016/04/21/the-sexuality-of-goblin-market/.
Gordon, Eleanor, and Gwyneth Nair. "The economic role of middle-class women in Victorian Glasgow." Women's History Review, vol. 9, no. 4, 2000, pp. 791-814. https://doi.org/10.1080/09612020000200264.
Silvis, Jessica. "Saving the “Fallen Women”." writeCSU, Columbus State University Department of English, 23 Aug. 2017, https://writecsu.wordpress.com/2017/08/23/saving-the-fallen-women/.
Wakeman, R. "Ribald classic: Goblin market, September 1973." Pipe and PJs: Pictorials, 31 Aug. 2021, https://pipeandpjspictorials.wordpress.com/2021/08/31/ribald-classic-goblin-market-september-1973/.