Preface: This essay stirred self-doubt and questionable career paths due to its final grade. While I have made a few tweaks to this paper, I felt it was necessary to release a piece that invoked excitement and curiosity within my work at university. My relationship with criticsm has mirrored a complexity of my love for literature in general, so as a way of letting go, i felt it was necessary to uplift a voice not understood, or markedly seen as wrong.
“The evil of [her] self-indulgence, the fraudulence of sensuous beauty, and the supreme duty of renunciation[1],” delivers Rossetti‘s conflicting dispositions in her fairy-tale world of the “sensuous, […] ascetic[2],” and religious. On reading Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market,’ sexual desire permeates the text of the fairy-tale world of the poem yet, I argue, we should go further and examine the eroticism of the mouth in maidenhood, to capture consumption through a lense of temptation and excess, eventually altering the body.
Christina Rossetti’s brother, Dante and his painting, The Annunciation, cited as Image A, composed the Virgin Mary, cowering in the corner of the bed, leaning away from archangel, Gabriel, to capture inciting fear of an approaching holy figure. Yet, the psychological realism confronts the young maiden through a forceful motherhood. Hilda Koe’s painting, referenced as Image B, introduces similar implications as Dante’s piece, of white gowns, biblical references from golden circles to tempting apples, fearful eyes as the man imposes into female spaces. The condition of the women merges here, as she is now tempted by possibility, of the taste of fruit or the holy summoning, yet unaddressed by the sexual nature of the offering, that which is the social insistence of motherhood.
Laura approaches the Goblin men, by “stretch[ing] her gleaming neck[3]” like a ‘poplar branch,’ an gesture of intrigue, until “[her] last restraint is gone[4].” Desire is initiated by the maiden until the temptation compels her to cut a lock of golden hair; “’Buy from us with a golden curl’ / She clipped a precious golden lock[5].” Her virgin maidenhood shifts to female eroticism, transactional is relingquishing a piece of herself, notably her youth, until the emodiment of seductress follows the expanse of her mouth. Eventually a physical rupture of Laura’s virginity hungrily commences when, “She dropped a tear more rare than pearl / Then sucked the fruit globes fair or red[6],” till the “mouth-watering urgency[7]” she trembles with, incites a realm of perversion. It is through this desirable loss of innocence, her mouth becomes a sexual orifice, filled with, “hunger and satiation[8]” and as a result, temptation becomes animalisitc as her oral state is transfixed on consumption for, “She sucked and sucked and sucked the more / … / She sucked until her lips were sore[9].” Must she bite into the fruit, a mirror of Eve who held the red apple, the ‘fruits that thy soul lusted after[10]’ leave the maiden to be consumed by an erotic madness, which now sustains her body. A hunger which can no longer be satiated by the forbidden fruit “sweeter than honey[11].” The temptation in now embedded within the lining of her stomach and the taste lingering in her mouth, until she must return for more, utilizing such a mouth to speak, kiss, and desire: “’Nay hush, my sister: / I ate and ate my fill, / Yet my mouth water still: / To-morrow night I will / Buy more,’ and kissed her[12].”
Noted in religious text as the “Fall of Man” with Eve’s temptation of the apple, to the “Fallen Woman” during the pre-Raphaelite era, biblical interpreations begin to center the sexual corruption of women. Sharon Smulders’s, Christina Rossetti Revisited, reimagines Laura’s actions toward that of Eve writing, “Indeed, while the sisters’ temptations double on Eve’s temptation, the fruits multiply outrageously. If the first fruit of the goblin as well as Satanic temptation is the allusive apple, the second fruit (the quince) and the twenty-first (the pear) belong to the apple genus.[13]” Precisely, the relationship between the mouth of a biblical, virginal, or maiden women consume a ‘sinful’ fruit, prescribes her ‘fallen’ stature and immoral standing with God, until the hunger which riddles temptation can only be led by the mouth of a man.
From this moment, the decay of Laura unfolds. She becomes an “all-giving, all receiving womb[14],” yearning to embrace the taste and the sensuality to suck upon the fruit which fills her mouth, dependent on the pleasure she is to receive. Marsh conceives this phenomena arguing, “This is also the essence of desire: once attained, it ceases to satisfy, vainly driving the sensual urge to repetition, seeking to regain the first, orgasmic joy[15].” As a result, the animalization of Laura recenters the mouth to hold her forbidden carnality, while also supplying bestial gestures as eroticism reconstructs her previous maiden identity: “She gnashed her teeth for balked desire, and wept / As if her heart would break[16].”
Correspondingly, Victorian history alongside prostitution produced conversations on venereal dieases, leaving women to become the center of another social illness. Eager to consume only the body of women,[AS1] their mouths produced the sexual desire, the necessary tempation, to leave the women are their “…hair grew thin and gray: / […] dwindled, as the fair full moon doth turn / To swift decay , and burn / Her fire away[17].” The mouth now rids her of vitality, sprititually depleting the maiden, and a site once fit for eroticism fades swiftly as, “Her tree of life drooped from the root[18]:” until she can no longer serve, nor consume eagerly as a biblical woman.
As I divulge into ‘excess’ in ‘Goblin Market,’ the maiden’s peverse actions are analyzed through the lens of, “violence of passion[s]; extravagant or rapturous feeling; [and] unrestrained manifestations of grief[19].” Arthur Rackham’s illustration as Image C, drowns Lizzie in the “Cat-like and rat-like, Ratel- and wombat-like[20]” creatures, tearing at her white dress, as their hands force sinful fruit into the maiden’s face. Otto Greiner’s sketches seen as Image D, attracts a desirable comparison between the poised women: the body is malleable, desirable, corporeal as its skin holds the hands of those below them, each head turned purposefully, the mouth shut and unwilling to concede, skin wrapped with pure intention. Sap-filled pastures, blooming lilies, to the maiden’s milking the cows, the intersection of nature within Rossetti’s poem expands Dijkstra’s thoughts, “Thus, the eroticized body of woman became the late nineteenth-century male’s universal symbol of nature and of all natural phenomena. She sat, a flower among flowers, a warm, receiving womb and body, waiting patiently for man, the very incarnation of the spirit of the rose[21].”
The development of Lizzie from a cautious, untouched maiden insistent of the deviant sexual nature the goblins present to excessively urging her sister to lick upon her face, is no coincidence. A rational, modest maiden who “churned butter, whipped up cream, / Fed their poultry, sat and sewed[22]” to:
“Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeezed from goblin fruits for you
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me[23]; “
captures the sexual sacrifice explored by Rossetti, through an excessive, ‘unrestrained manifestations of grief” of Laura’s declining state. A transitionary moment for both sisters, the exploration of excess expands with the rape of Lizzie as the goblins forcefully invade her body with the forbidden fruit. Moreover, Freud’s construction of hysteria, the breach of the mind can develop from, “[…] any pains, whatever their cause, reach maximum intensity and that any afflictions are ‘terrible’ and ‘unbearable’[24]” accompanies the demanding, desperate tone to present her face covered in the ejaculation of the goblin men. Even further, Dijkstra argues alongside Albert Von Keller painting as Image E, of feminine submission as “[…] sadistic pleasure [is felt from] the representation of a vulnerable, naked woman tied to a cross[25].” Mirrored alongside Image C, the subjection of Lizzie as the goblins constrain her body against the tree, in possession of her vulnerable nature, displays the carnality she exhibits as the poem ends.
As a result, the self-sacrifice must become transactional – Lizzie “put[s] a silver penny in her purse, / Kiss’d Laura” while the carnal desires of the goblins were “unrestrained[AS2] , erotic”, and held that penny to exhibitionism of her now hyper-sexualized body[26]:
“Tho’ the goblins cuffed and caught her,
Coaxed and fought her,
Bullied and besought her
Scratched her, pinched her black as ink.
Kicked and knocked her,
Mauled and mocked her[27]”
It is in the rape of Lizzie, that her new role is to indulge in Laura’s lasting sexual temptations, and most notably, the desperation that inhabits her dying sister’s eroticized mouth, as excess constructs her body to a palatable feast. In the midst of her assault, Lizzie sealed the opening of her mouth, a distant allusion to the virginal qualities that can be physically penetrated, and specifically, Rossetti emphasizes the sacrificial nature of the maiden to relinquish her body instead, “Lizzie uttered not a word; / Would not open lip from lip / … / But laughed in heart to feel the drip / Of juice which syruped her face[28].” An offering, a face covered in forbidden juices, delievers her skin, ripe in sexual pleasure to her sister, until she allows herself to be ruined, perfect for her starving mouth: “Kissed and kissed and kissed her: / Tears once again / Refreshed her shrunken eyes, / Dropping like rain / … / She kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth[29].” Thus, a promiscious mouth, riddled in ‘raptuous feelings’ of her self-sacrifice, Lizzie transforms her body to capture the erotic desires of Laura’s previously penetrated mouth, until the latter knows of hunger again.
Altogether, an examination of the mouth is pertinent to grasping the inclusion of eroticism within the poem, and more specifically, in the realm of temptation and excess. Returning to Image D of Greiner’s ‘Gaia,’ the supporting quote, ‘The woman is the man’s root in the earth[30],’ illustrates the sensual relationship between Laura and Lizzie, as each supply their bodies – and more specifically their mouths – to confront maidenhood.
Bibliography
Bram Dijkstra (1986). Idols of Perversity. Oxford University Press, USA.
Breuer, J. and Freud, S. (2013). Studies in hysteria. Digireads.com Publishing.
Marsh, J. (2012). Christina Rossetti : a literary biography. London: Faber Finds.
Mermin, D. (1983). Heroic Sisterhood in ‘Goblin Market’. Victorian Poetry, [online] 21(2), pp.107–118. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/40002024.
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “excess (n.), sense 9,” June 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/4381276791.
Rossetti, C. (1862). Goblin Market. [online] Santa Clara University. https://webpages.scu.edu/ftp/lgarber/courses/eng67F10texts/RossettiGoblinMarket.pdf [Accessed 1 Nov. 2024].
Smulders, S. (1996). Christina Rossetti Revisited. Hall Reference Books.
[Image A]: Rossetti, Dante. ‘The Annunciation’, 1849-50. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/rossetti-ecce-ancilla-domini-the-annunciation-n01210 [Accessed 20 November 2024].
[Image B]: Koe, Hilda. ‘The Goblin Market’, 1895. < https://theharvestmaidsrevenge.com/2023/04/05/revisiting-christina-rossettis-goblin-market-an-early-folk-horror-classic/ [Accessed 19 November 2024].
[Image C]: Rackman, Arthur. ‘Goblin Market,’ 1933. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Goblin_Market_032.jpg [Accessed 20 November 2024].
[Image D]: Greiner, Otto. ‘Gaia’ [Mother Earth],’ 1912. http://www.symbolismus.com/ottogreinerg228a1912.html [Accessed 21 November 2024].
[Image E]: Von Keller, Albert. ‘In the Moonlight,’ 1894. http://www.symbolismus.com/albertvonkeller2.html [Accessed 20 November 2024].
[1] Mermin 1983: 107.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Rossetti 1862: l. 81.
[4] Rossetti 1862: 86.
[5] Rossetti 1862: 125-6.
[6] Rossetti 1862 : 127-8.
[7] Marsh 2012: 231.
[8] Dijkstra 1986: 62.
[9] Rossetti 1862: 134, 136.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Rossetti 1862: 129.
[12] Rossetti 1862: 164-8.
[13] Smulders 1996: 35.
[14] Dijkstra 1986: 85.
[15] Marsh 2012: 233.
[16] Rossetti 1862: 267-8.
[17] Rossetti 1862: 277-80.
[18] Rossetti 1862: 260.
[19] Oxford English Dictionary 2024.
[20] Rossetti 1862: 340-1.
[21] Dijkstra 1986: 87.
[22] Rossetti 1862: 207-8.
[23] Rossetti 1862: 466-71.
[24] Breuer and Freud 2013: 241-42.
[25] Dijkstra 1986: 34.
[26] Rossetti 1862: 324-5.
[27] Rossetti 1862: 424-29.
[28] Rossetti 1862: 430-4.
[29] Rossetti 1862: 486-9, 492.
[30] Dijkstra 1986: 85.
[AS1]come back to cite
[AS2]“These images were expressive of men’s dreams of generous, unrestrained inclusion; of nature as simultaneously receptacle, fertile soil, and comforting breast” (85)
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