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Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market

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“What is the beginning? Love. What is the course? Love still. What the goal. The goal is love,” this is a quote from Victorian writer Christina Rossetti and it and its meaning can be seen throughout her writing. What Rossetti believes love to be, can be greatly seen in her famous poem, Goblin Market, which was written in 1862. In this poem, Rossetti displays and shows the answer to a great question, what is true love? From the start of birth humans have tried different ways to show and display their love for others, whether, by terms of words, objects, sexual acts, and emotional acts, humans not only want to show love but also get love from others. The Goblin Market is an example of a kind of love show to someone by someone, however, the “love” …show more content…

Who do these “goblin men” and “maids” symbolize? The goblin men can be seen as many things, they can be seen as some kind of salesmen or just men in general, however, referring to the symbolism of Christianity in this poem, Rossetti is possibly referring to them as those in the world who tempt others to fall into sin or they can be seen as Satan himself, the one who is tempting those around him with “fruits” that seem great but are not really good. This can be seen in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, where a snake a.k.a. Satan, temps Eve to eat the fruit (might or might not be an apple, the Bible does not specify) of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, “And the serpent said unto the women, ye shall not surely die: for God does know that in the day you eat, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3: 4-5, KJV). Eve does indeed eat the fruit as well as Adam does, even though they knew it was wrong and because of it, they knew good and evil. The goblins are doing much of the same in this poem, trying to sell the fruit to the maids. These “maids” that “heard the goblins cry” (Rossetti, 1862, line 2) can be seen as those in the world who are in a word, sheltered from the knowledge of the world of good and evil. They are innocent and young

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