The Proto-Feminist Message of Goblin Market Puja Harikumar College

While Christina Rossetti may have set out to write “Goblin Market” as nothing more than a children’s story, her original intentions have not prevented it from receiving a considerable amount of attention from the literary community. The fact remains that the poem contains a surprising amount of erotic imagery for a work that was supposedly meant for entertaining children, with no deeper thematic reflections on Rossetti's society. Several scholars have interpreted this imagery as part of Rossetti’s attempt to portray the long term effects of sexual assault on women. While there is no denying that certain scenes within the poem cannot be viewed as reminiscent of anything but rape, that is but only one aspect of the larger theme at hand. This essay will proceed to analyze the alternative ways in which Rossetti depicts the male capacity for sexual violence against women in order to support the poem’s central theme of how only their fellow women can help them properly recover from it.

Critics have a lot to say about the manner in which the goblins try to force their produce down Lizzie’s throat. Pinning her down, tearing her clothing and trying to force-feed her fruit until it dribbles down her in the form of juice has evident...