Women In Christina Rossetti's The Goblin Market

In Christina Rossetti’s poem called the Goblin Market, she presents a conservative, middle-class view of women through character development. The characters Lizzie and Laura represent virtue and recklessness of virtue through their actions. Rossetti’s poem the Goblin Market parallels the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 as an allegory. She uses the allegory to show the dangers of the goblin men and to compare the opposing traits between Laura and Lizzie.
The goblin men take on the role of Satan. Rossetti begins the poem by introducing the reader to the goblin’s cries “Come buy our orchard fruits, come buy, come buy: apples and quinces, lemons and oranges, plump unpecked cherries” (Lines 3-6). Lizzie and Laura associate the goblin cries with danger “We must not look at the goblin men, we must not buy their fruits: who knows upon which soil

To bring an end to her sister’s pain, Lizzie “for the first time in her life began to listen and look” for the goblins (Lines 327-328). In her attempt to buy fruit from the goblins, she was invited to feast with them but refused. Similarly, in Matthew 4 where Satan tried to tempt Jesus to turn the stone into bread. Lizzie 's actions are done out of as love as was Jesus’ and as a result “they trod and hustled her, elbowed and jostled her, clawed with their nails at her, Barking, mewing, hissing, mocking, tore her gown and soiled her stockings, twitched her hair from the roots, […] squeezed their fruits against her mouth to make her eat” (Lines 359-401). Rossetti uses this comparison adding to the effect of sacrificial atonement to redeem Laura.
Christina Rossetti’s poem Goblin Market contrasts the impulsive nature of Laura and the sacrificial nature of Lizzie to prove a conservative, middle-class view of women. The opposing traits of Laura and Lizzie and the allegory of Genesis 3 present the dangers of an impulsive nature in women and the threat it poses to Laura’s