Women In Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market

Goblin Market is a poem that imaginatively blurs the lines between childish innocence and female empowerment. Christina Rossetti ingeniously uses the form of a children 's fairy-tale, in which two young women battle their way through the toil and torment of goblin men selling mystical and desperately desirable fruit, to create a fantasy of freedom and heroism, celebrating female solidarity. Rossetti uses this simple form, to not only enable the appreciation of a wider audience, but also to drastically contrast to the mature themes of female independence and sexuality, challenging the patriarchal conformities of the 19th Century with her feminist attitudes. The free and irregular rhyme scheme and meter fills the poem with fluctuating musical rhythmic changes, captivating the readers, both young and old, with childish excitement. Rossetti merges the unimaginable possibilities that exist in fairy-tale, such as magical fruit and goblin men, with the impossibilities of reality in the 19th Century, such as heroism and female independence. The poem ends with a moral lesson of the importance of sisterly bond and female solidarity in the face of danger. The independent women of the poem, Laura and Lizzie, lead lives that are completely disconnected from the male dominance of fathers or husbands. The deepest and final layer of the poem delves into forbidden pleasures; the women of Rossetti’s Goblin Market present female sexuality and eroticism in a way that is hard to interpret. She