Goblin Market.

I decided to start a thread for this basically because it gobsmacked me.

I've owned Rossetti: Poems and Prose for a long, long time but never got round to reading 'Goblin Market' - probably because it's so long - but I've finally come to it through my slow working of my way through The Longman Anthology of Gothic Verse.

It pretty much took me hostage - grabbed me by the collar and hauled me through at a brisk trot. I can't praise it enough. I really think this is one of those things everyone should read at least once in their life.

However, it raises a couple of perennial questions:

There's the eternal argument of what is or isn't Gothic. Thinking over it, I'm finding it quite difficult to pin down this poem at all (folk tale?, children's poem?, fantasy? horror?) - let alone figure out if it's really Gothic or not.

Could she really have intended what appears to my 20th/21st-century mind as 'in-you-face' eroticism? Could she possibly have been unaware of it - particularly given Rossetti's 19thC religious devotion? Could her first readers have been unaware of it, particularly her brothers?

Yet another writer where I find I need a good biography.

Have we had this conversation before? I'm being plagued by déjà vu, but I did a site search and nothing showed up for this group. Perhaps it's because I've been thinking for a week or two of posting on it, but I've got the vaguest memory of online conversation.

ETA - probably those goblins messing with my mind ...

I feel as though I must have read this in a poetry class in college, but that was so long ago, and I was a bratty college kid who didn't think highly of poetry at the time. BUT I do still have my textbook, so I'll see if it's in there and give it a try....

At least I was unbratty enough that I loved "The Lady of Shalott".....

>3 amysisson:

Do read it - setting aside my two questions, it's just a cracking read. The words almost say themselves - I'd never heard a recording of it, yet I could clearly hear the words and rhythms in my mind while I was reading it. It almost forces you to speak the words aloud. I'd better stop - I'm gushing.

Though not particularly a Tennyson fan, I rather like 'The Lady of Shalott', but I have a memory of my childhood headmaster standing-in for our English teacher one day and doing the lesson on it, and being very disparaging and very funny - obviously not a fan. I particularly remember his scorn at a macho figure like Lancelot singing 'Tirra-lirra by the river' - he felt he'd have been more likely to have sung some fruity rugby song.

>5 frahealee:

Glad you liked it because I was really, really impressed with it. It had been a long time since a poem had grabbed me the way this one did.

I love Goblin Market and Christina Rossetti. So glad that others are reading this!

Really was enthralled by this poem. My moniker on LT is kind of related ;)

If you don't already own it, i really encourage you to go the extra-mile and consider the Folio Society edition. It's gorgeous.




http://www.foliosociety.com/book/GBM/goblin-market-and-selected-poems

>8 Niurn:

One of those things I'd love to have but don't feel I can really justify. I have so much stuff on my wish lists ...

>9 alaudacorax: A wish list is something everyone should have. It gives one something scandalous to read when bored.

Well you lot got me reading it. I’m not usually much for poetry, but I quite liked this. I even developed a yearning for that FS edition (goblin publishers are doubtlessly involved).

I’m not really seeing the feminist message various critics discern, tho. The surface moral is that good girls should avoid temptation and grow up to become wives and mothers - that’s about as conventional a moral as you can get. That the “fallen” Laura gets redeemed in this life is, I gather, unusual for the time of writing, but the notion she needs to be redeemed at all is surely more Christian than feminist.

>11 AndreasJ:

The premisses you seem to be operating with make it difficult to address your post. I'm neither a literary expert nor a social scientist, so apologies if what I try to say is clumsy or inadequate.

For one thing, love and marriage, to say nothing of children, are pre-eminently feminist concerns; there's no reason to suppose either make a story, situation etc. not-feminist. Nor is there any reason to suppose there is something definitionally feminist about not being married or childless, or non-feminist about being married or a mother. There's also no definitional opposition between Christianity and feminism. So there's one problem--perhaps you need to re-examine your assumptions about feminism.

Then there's the question of what it means to interpret a text. An interpretation is built from a point of view. These can be myriad. The issue isn't so much whether we agree with a given interpretation or not, but whether we understand the insights it gives, the light it throws on the subject.

Feminist interpretations bring a range of novelties to criticism--women as focus and as subjects, women's points of view, women's concerns etc. It's not that hard to understand if one isn't firmly set against abandoning the straight white male gaze.

I'm not assuming that feminism is necessarily opposed to marriage or motherhood, nor to Christianity. But "good girls grow up to be wives and mothers" cannot be characterized as a feminist message simply because some feminists would agree; it would win the assent of most non- and anti-feminists. If Rossetti said, it, we're not therefore licensed to assume she was a feminist.

It's one thing to look at the poem with feminist glasses on, another to claim that Rossetti was a feminist, and a third that she was sending a feminist message, or a "feminist cri de coeur" as one review put it, in this particular poem. It's the third one I'm not seeing (I have no idea about Rossetti's wider social and political beliefs).

I suppose it could be looked at as feminist because Lizzie has 'un-female' agency - she plays the knight errant part to Laura's damsel in distress.

>14 alaudacorax:

That's a good point.

>13 AndreasJ:

But "good girls grow up to be wives and mothers" cannot be characterized as a feminist message simply because some feminists would agree;

No, this is a distortion of both Rossetti's poem and of feminist thought. Feminism isn't about judging who's a "good girl" and who's not. Again, a feminist perspective takes in account a woman's consciousness and agency, posits woman as the subject, etc.

You need to unglue yourself from what you declare is the "surface moral"--incidentally, are you generally satisfied with "surface" interpretations or is this case for some reason special?

>14 alaudacorax:

There must be a zillion essays out there discussing the poem from a feminist perspective--it's actually one of the classic readings and by now you could call it a critical trope. More than that, it's also a lesbian classic (as I learned first hand when a young lady wooed me with a gift of a special edition!) and frequently anthologised with LGBT poetry.

But clearly it's all due to an idiotic misunderstanding of "the surface moral". ;)

>16 LolaWalser: No, this is a distortion of both Rossetti's poem and of feminist thought.

Would you then care to explain how I misinterpret the poem?

Feminism isn't about judging who's a "good girl" and who's not.

I certainly didn't say or suggest that it was.

You need to unglue yourself from what you declare is the "surface moral"--incidentally, are you generally satisfied with "surface" interpretations or is this case for some reason special?

Who said I'm satisfied with surface interpretations in this case? I got into non-surface things in the very next sentence after mentioning the surface moral.

Frankly, you give the impression of projecting onto me some ready-made enemy to be beaten down. If you want to convince me, point out concrete things I've gotten wrong or things I've missed; and do not ascribe to me things that I have not said.

>17 AndreasJ:

Who said I'm satisfied with surface interpretations in this case? I got into non-surface things in the very next sentence after mentioning the surface moral.

I don't see that you are getting behind what you think is "the surface moral". Your words:

>11 AndreasJ:

I’m not really seeing the feminist message various critics discern, tho. The surface moral is that good girls should avoid temptation and grow up to become wives and mothers - that’s about as conventional a moral as you can get. That the “fallen” Laura gets redeemed in this life is, I gather, unusual for the time of writing, but the notion she needs to be redeemed at all is surely more Christian than feminist.

You've discovered there are feminist interpretations of this text and perhaps reading them might help grasp that point of view. Or not.

I'm not interested in convincing you of anything and after your rudeness don't want to engage in conversation with you at all.

This was a duplicate message. As I dislike leaving the cryptic "...has been deleted..." message and having people read into them god knows what, let me use it for reference.

First google hit on "goblin market feminist analysis":

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/critical-feminist-studies/dchin/reading-go...

Third:

http://blogs.bcu.ac.uk/virtualtheorist/gender-and-feminisim/analysis/

Mmm, sixth or seventh?:

http://www.academia.edu/27952390/Rossetti_and_Feminism_in_The_Goblin_Market

Etc:

https://web.stanford.edu/group/journal/cgi-bin/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012...

There's lots more. The point here isn't that these papers carry some "truth" (and no other) anyone needs to be convinced of, but that they offer a point of view throwing a certain light on the poem. Either one follows the interpretations and sees the poem in that light, and (one hopes) discovers something new, or, well, one doesn't.

>18 LolaWalser:

It's rather rich to repeatedly misrepresent what someone is saying and then calling them rude.

And with that observation I'm out of the thread.

>20 AndreasJ:

It's rather rich to repeatedly misrepresent what someone is saying

This is an outright lie--but I'm hanging onto shreds of charitableness and would welcome seeing it's all some misunderstanding. Quote where I "misrepresented" you--and repeatedly at that. I addressed your posts only twice (>12 LolaWalser:, >16 LolaWalser:), already in >18 LolaWalser: I reserved all comment except to quote your own words.

And to that, one can't help noticing, your only response is to accuse ME of "misrepresentation" and flounce off!

On the contrary, I've signposted from the start that my understanding of your attitudes was tentative and as such prompted clarification:

The premisses you seem to be operating with make it difficult to address your post. I'm neither a literary expert nor a social scientist, so apologies if what I try to say is clumsy or inadequate. (...) So there's one problem--perhaps you need to re-examine your assumptions about feminism.

Frankly, nothing that followed makes me think that there isn't a general problem in how you understand both (or either) feminism and literary exegesis.

>16 LolaWalser: - ... from a feminist perspective ...

I was actually trying to see the poem as much from CR's perspective as a modern feminist one. I don't know exactly how innovative such an active - as opposed to conventionally passive - female character as Lizzie would have been by the mid-19thC, but I can well believe that it was enough so for CR to be conscious of challenging current cultural norms - hence, 'feminist', even though she wouldn't have known the word.

By the way, that third article you linked (by Kya Buller) is very good - it adds a lot to one's reading of the work. Now I'm looking at Laura in a couple (at least) of new lights.

Oops! Another post while I've been writing ...

Ah, sorry, got it--the writer. Right. (ETA: wondered about "CR" for a mo'...)

>22 alaudacorax:

I like the phrase I noticed in one of the links: "pro-feminine" (I think it was...) That's the feminism of the past.