Download Christina Rossetti's “Goblin Market” and Binary Oppositions and more Study notes Painting in PDF only on Docsity!
KRYSTAL KROCKER
Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market”
and Binary Oppositions
anguage is composed of words; words have meaning. This state- ment is as simple of an understanding of language as there will ever be. Linguists may argue about how people interpret language, but one of the most interesting arguments is that people understand a word only because they can understand the opposite of that word (Fromkin). Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” is a wonderful exam- ple of how language influences the reader through use of binary opposites. Rossetti uses precise diction to emphasize the opposite of what may be a superficial reading of the text, creating more depth and mystery in this twisted fairly tale. In this poem, goblins tempt a young girl, named Laura, to eat their fruit, even after she is warned by her sister, Lizzie, not to. Another girl, Jeanie, had previously eaten the fruit and died, unmarried, because of it. Laura falls into temptation anyways and offers a lock of hair and a tear in exchange for a taste. She is then consumed by her yearning for another taste of the fruit and falls sick, withering away into certain death. Lizzie cannot stand to see her sister in this state, so she approaches the goblins and offers to buy the fruit with money. The goblins will not accept this as currency, but Lizzie refuses to give them anything else. The goblins become angry and try to force Lizzie to eat their fruit by smashing them on her, but she resists and only gathers the juices from the fruit on herself. She runs home to Laura and asks Laura to, “hug me, kiss me, suck my juices” (467) and “eat me, drink me, love me” (470). Laura is cured of her yearning of the fruit by this
L
act. They live happily ever after and teach their children the lesson. Many critical readings of “Goblin Market” exist. The most popular include that this poem is about homosexuality, commerce, drug addic- tion, feminism, loss of innocence, religion and ritual, or anorexia. All of those elements can be supported by the text, but when reading this text strictly as diction creating binary opposites the previous theories offered may support and disagree at the same time. A deconstruction- ist reading of the text allows all of the binary oppositions to be looked at as if they stand alone, especially the ones that do not seem as cen- tral to the story (Lynn). One of the most interesting binary opposites is the theme of broth- erhood and sisterhood. The goblins are referred to as brothers with, “brother with queer brother” (94) and “brother with sly brother” (96). In fact, a special emphasis is placed on this concept of brotherhood because the lines parallel each other. This emphasis is also placed on Laura and Lizzie's relationship. This theme is heavily echoed through- out the poem and most especially at the very end. This is the moral of the story, which is:
For there is no friend like a sister In calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, To fetch one if one goes astray, To lift one if one totters down, To strengthen whilst one stands. (561-566)
Those last lines are compelling and actually lead the reader to feel great about the wonderful bond of sisterhood and how that bond can withstand anything. To understand this concept of sisterhood, the reader must see sisterhood as a binary opposite. The opposite of sis- terhood is brotherhood. The brotherhood offered as this opposite is, of course, the evil band of goblins who try to tear apart the sister- hood. The goblins are evil, yet they never fight with each other and work to achieve common goals. Only sisterhood is threatened. Only Laura and Lizzie fight each other and corrupt their own sisterhood. While the reader is shown this dueling within the sisterhood, the brotherhood and sisterhood pair can only exist together in this world.
BINARY OPPOSITIONS
not be “lifted” unless one “totters down” (565). Sisterhood cannot exist without brotherhood, whether it is evil or not, and brotherhood cannot exist without sisterhood. Within this text, sisterhood and brotherhood also suggest the con- cept of good vs. evil and hero vs. villain. Why are the goblins evil, especially if we are to consider them to be men? The reader knows that sisterhood is good, because of the context it is placed within the text. Sisterhood is never really given much of a description until the conclusion of the poem, so the reason that we know that sisterhood is good is because we know how evil the goblins are. They are described as animals:
One had a cat’s face One whisk’d a tail, One tramp’d at a rat’s pace, One crawl’d like a snail, One like a wombat prowl’d obtuse and furry, One like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry. (71-76)
They are inhuman and cannot possess in their characters any trace of humanity. They “cry” (2) and “call” (46) for women to buy their fruit. The emphasis with this diction is immediate and berating. There will be no negotiations, no sweet talk, only “come buy, come buy” (4). Beginning with line 147, the tale of Jeanie is retold by Lizzie for Laura’s sake, that the goblins are evil and villainous. The lesson is that any association with the goblins will cause you to fade away (156) and die where “no grass will grow” (158) on your grave. The reader is hit over the head with the fact that the goblins are evil and villains. If they are only men and only merchants, as some critics believe, than the fact that goblins are portrayed as such evil beings seems to be a huge statement by Rossetti, which may be the lesson she learned through her experience with “fallen” women. The goblins are the bad guys, so who is the hero in this tale? The first suggestion would be Lizzie. She saves Laura from certain death and from not having flowers grow on her grave when she will eventu- ally die. She resists the temptation and seduction of the fruit in favor of saving Laura. The definition of a hero in this case is one who
BINARY OPPOSITIONS
resists temptation and who can “fetch one if one goes astray” (564), in reference to Lizzie saving Laura. This conclusion isn't a stretch of the imagination. What may be interesting is to suppose that Laura is also a hero. The only way that the poem works its way to its beautiful conclusion is that Laura must fall from grace in order for Lizzie to save her. Beyond this, Laura may also be the braver of the two sisters. In this vein, Elizabeth Campbell focuses on how the poem is a statement attesting to women’s capacity to take control of their lives through the use of eco- nomics. Campbell views the sisters as two halves of one whole. Lizzie is the 19th century’s version of the “obedient female” (402) and Laura is Eve and Pandora (402) from biblical and Greek myth. Campbell’s conclusion is, “Lizzie has completely assimilated the female social code and sees the woman’s confined place and her domestic duty as sacred, while Laura is willing to risk breaking the code and the barrier in order to gain knowledge of the market-place forbidden to women” (403). Laura is the hero for attempting to gain knowledge, even if it is forbidden. It is also only Laura’s risk-taking behavior that allows Lizzie to step up as the ultimate hero, because without Laura, Lizzie wouldn't have anyone to save. Along these same lines of good and evil is the binary pair love and hate. Love is as prevalent in this poem as the theme of sisterhood. Lizzie's bravery in being assaulted by the goblins in order to save her sister is the best example of true love in this poem. Critics have argued if this is merely a sisterly love or if it is of a more homoerotic nature. The text can be manipulated to support both views. More interesting than those well-covered views is the theory that love has both a “destroyer” and “redeemer” quality in this poem (Mahmoudi). It is Laura’s addiction (her love of the fruit) that leads to her near destruction, while it is Lizzie's love that saves and redeems Laura. This extreme emphasis on love can also be made into a statement of hate, because hate is the opposite of love and to understand love, we must know how to hate. The sisters must make the goblins their com- mon enemy, so that their sisterhood can be the emphasis. Put differ- ently, the sisters must hate the goblins, so that they can love each other. In reality, Lizzie would probably be angry at her sister for dis- obeying the common law and developing an addiction to the fruit.
KRYSTAL KROCKER
background, because such an emphasis is given to the qualities of the fruit. They are listed as:
Apples and quinces, Lemons and oranges, Plump, unpeck’d cherries, Melons and raspberries, Bloom-down-cheek’d peaches, Swart-headed mulberries, Wild free-born cranberries, Crab-apples, dewberries, Pine-apples, blackberries, Apricots, strawberries (5-14)
This is one of the lists and several additional types of fruit and varied descriptions are added in other places throughout. This listing element of the poem is common, as is seen with the list of goblins and their features. This creates a pairing of the goblins with the fruit, as if to make a statement that you can't have one without the other. The fruit itself makes an interesting binary pair. The fruit is “lus- cious” (61) and “sweet to tongue and sound to eye” (30), but causes the consumer to fade away and die. When Lizzie goes to save Laura, the only way she knows how, she pauses and
Long’d to buy fruit to comfort her, but fear'd to pay too dear. She thought of Jeanie in her grave, Who should have been a bride; But who for joys brides hope to have Fell sick and died In her gay prime, In earliest winter time. (309-316)
The consumer commits suicide in eating the fruit, and Jeanie exists in this story solely to illustrate this. The fruit is not even instant death, but a slow, dwindling decay that seems to continue beyond the grave, because “no grass will grow”
KRYSTAL KROCKER
(158) on Jeanie's grave. The ripeness of the fruit seems then to tran- scend all boundaries that fruit is normally given to become something akin to a contagious disease, even more than an addiction as some crit- ics suggest. All who have contact with the fruit must suffer in some way. The goblins then are cast in the light as foreigners because their fruit comes from many different places as is suggested by the list of fruit the reader is given by Rossetti. Jeanie is the first to contract this “disease” through her contact with the goblins and their wares. Laura and Lizzie come into contact with the foreigners through Lizzie’s knowledge of Jeanie's fate. This is only a precursor to Laura’s down- fall. The contagion of the fruit is a tidal wave that washes over all who lie in its path. Laura falls ill by her seeking out the goblins and eating the fruit. Lizzie must help her sister heal from the disease by facing the conta- gion herself. Lizzie can survive, only because she is aided and inocu- lated by her love for her sister and also that she doesn't allow a piece of herself to be taken by the goblins, unlike Laura, who gives up a lock of the hair and a tear. Lizzie then can transform the fruit's juices into an antidote to cure Laura. Both sisters must then also warn their chil- dren against the fruit by telling them this tale, so that they will not come into contact with the disease. The fruit's role as a disease furthers the binary aspect. Fruit is nor- mally touted as healthy, but in this role it becomes its own opposite. The binary opposite of the fruit being both ripe and a source of decay is furthered by the other binary opposites that always seem to sur- round it in the text. The binaries are: night vs. day, light vs. dark, sum- mer vs. winter, and life vs. death. The fact that these are some of the most elemental of binary opposites serves to further emphasize the fruit's binary elements of ripe and decay as an element of those other binaries. The goblins are always mentioned in conjunction with their fruit and the goblins are always mentioned at either evening or morn- ing. “Maids heard the goblins cry” (2) only during “morning and evening”(1) never in the afternoon or the middle of the night. Morning and evening serve as the transitional time between night and day, so that the reader gets the sense that the edges of this world are blurred from reality to fantasy, much as the poem itself functions, as does the ripeness and decaying aspects of the fruit.
BINARY OPPOSITIONS
Lynn, Steven. Texts and Contexts. 4th ed. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2005.
Mahmoudi, Yalda. “Critic to: Goblin Market (Christina Rossetti).” Caroun 29 March 2005. <http://www.caroun.com/Research/Critic/ GoblinMarket.html>.
Rossetti, Christina. Goblin Market. New York: Franklin Watts, Inc.,
Senaha, Aijun. “A Punishment Required: Pleasure of Pain in Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market.’” Hokkaido Daigaku Bungaku-bu Kiyo/Hoddaido University Annual Report on Cultural Sciences 48 (1999): 15-
BINARY OPPOSITIONS
