Sacrifice

So, when we last left the sisters of Goblin Market, Laura was cut off from the goblin fruit-sellers. She begins to waste away just like Jeanie, the girl in the story Lizzie told. Lizzie watches her sister's declining health with fear, and finally makes a decision:

"Till Laura dwindling

Seemed knocking at Death's door:

Then Lizzie weighed no more

Better and worse;

But put a silver penny in her purse,

Kissed Laura, crossed the heath with clump of furze

At twilight, halted by the brook:

And for the first time in her life

Began to listen and look" (33).

Lizzie previously had always covered her eyes and plugged up her ears, ignoring the sight and sounds of the goblin men and their cries. Now, she's seeking them out, opening her awareness, as it were, to temptation. The goblins cackle at the sight of her and scurry up: "Hugged and kissed her:/Squeezed and caressed her:/Stretched up their dishes,/Panniers and plates" (36). Lizzie tries to buy fruit in bulk to take back to Laura, but the goblins urge her to stay and eat with them. Lizzie stands her ground, though:

"'Thank you," said Lizzie: "But one waits

At home alone for me:

So without further parleying,

If you will not sell me any

Of your fruits though much and many,

Give me back my silver penny

I tossed you for a fee."--(39-40)

The goblins react badly; they drop their charming airs and snarl at her. They attack her, "Held her hands and squeezed their fruits/Against her mouth to make her eat" (42) in a scene that rings clearly of rape, with Lizzie "Like a royal virgin town/Topped with gilded dome and spire/Close beleaguered by a fleet/Mad to tug her standard down" (43). Despite it all, Lizzie keeps her mouth closed, "But laughed in heart to feel the drip/Of juice that syrupped all her face" (44). The semen imagery is clear, but Lizzie sustains herself throughout the attack and is not penetrated by the fruit or juices. Eventually, the goblins disappear and Lizzie hurries home.

When she gets there, she offers herself, covered in pulp and juice, to Laura: "Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices/Squeezed from goblin fruits for you" (49). Laura leaps up and kisses her sister for her perceived sacrifice and tastes again the goblin fruit.

"Her lips began to scorch,

That juice was wormwood to her tongue,

She loathed the feast:

Writhing as one possessed she leaped and sung,

Rent all her robe, and wrung

Her hands in lamentable haste,

And beat her breast" (51).

She's consumed entirely by the fruit again ("Ah! fool, to choose such part/Of soul-consuming care!" 52), her senses fail her and she collapses: "Pleasure past and anguish past,/Is it death or is it life?/Life out of death" (53). Lizzie keeps watch over her through the night, and when dawn breaks, Laura wakes and is as she was before she ate the goblin fruit. The last stanza is an epilogue in which Laura tells her children of her ordeal, and how her sister's virtue saved her.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Goblin Market is surprisingly explicit in its erotic imagery, what with all the sucking and the fire in breasts and everything. Rossetti depicts sexual desire as something evil, something which possesses and consumes a person, which makes sense in the context of Victorian morality and Rossetti's Anglican upbringing. The same flame that Oliver Mellors and Connie Chatterley embrace as a symbol of their love tears Laura apart. Despite its graphic description, this is all in all a more typical message of sexuality, more along the lines of what we expected from "classic" literature.

Cravings

So, we've finished Lady Chatterley's Lover! What a journey that was. Our next book is actually a fifty-eight page poem called Goblin Market, by Christina Rossetti. It was first published in 1862 and was very well received. Rossetti's brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, is a famous pre-Raphaelite painter, and his works are featured alongside the poem in the edition I have. His Proserpine (pictured left), a depiction of a woman from Greek mythology more commonly known as Persephone, is featured on the cover of the book and embodies the themes of forbidden pleasures in his sister's poem.

The poem begins with three goblins trying to tempt the beautiful, virginal sisters Lizzie and Laura into buying their fruit. The fruit becomes a clear metaphor for corruption, as in the Persephone story and the Biblical story of Adam and Eve:

'"No," said Lizzie: "No, no, no;

Their offers should not charm us,

Their evil gifts would harm us"' (7)

Lizzie then runs away so as not to be tempted. Laura, however, stays and observes the goblin men as they approach her somewhat suggestively:

"Brother with queer brother;

Signaling each other,

Brother with sly brother" (10).

As they offer her fruits and flower-wreaths and other delights, she longs to accept, but says she has no money to pay with. The goblins urge her to "Buy from [them] with a golden curl" of hair (13). So she gives them a lock of her hair and in return, they give her fruit:

"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" (14)

Doesn't that just sound dirty? Upon her return home, her sister Lizzie upbraids her for lingering:

"Should not loiter in the glen

In the haunts of goblin men.

Do you not remember Jeanie,

How she met them in the moonlight,

Took their gifts both choice and many,

Ate their fruits and wore their flowers

Plucked from bowers

Where summer ripens at all hours?
But ever in the noonlight

She pined and pined away;

Sought them by night and day,

Found them no more, but dwindled and grew gray" (15-16)

Jeanie died from want of the fruit of the goblin men. Laura, however, pays no mind to Lizzie's warning, regales her with the wonders of the fruit, and promises to buy more for both of them tomorrow night. They spend the next day, "Lizzie with an open heart,/Laura in an absent dream,/One content, one sick in part" (22). When the evening comes and they go into the glen again, Laura is "most like a leaping flame" (22). In Lady Chatterley's Lover, Oliver in particular was described as experiencing a leaping flame in his bowels when arousal first hit him, and he refers to his and Connie's love in the end as the "little flame" between them (331).

At length Lizzie hears the goblin's cry, but Laura does not:

"Laura turned cold as stone

To find her sister heard that cry alone,

That goblin cry,

"Come buy our fruits, come buy."

Must she then buy no more such dainty fruit?

[...]

Her tree of life drooped from the root:

She said not one word in her heart's sore ache;

[...]

So crept to bed, and lay

Silent till Lizzie slept;

Then sat up in a passionate yearning,

And gnashed her teeth for baulked desire, and wept

As if her heart would break" (26-27).

So it appears Laura is out of favor with the goblins, and like Jeanie, she craves the "fruit" again. Stay tuned for the dramatic conclusion of Goblin Market in the next post!