Christina Rossetti’s poem “Goblin Market” is intriguing because of its endless ways of interpretation. One such take on the poem is how it reads as a cautionary tale for fallen women. For example, in “Goblin Market,” Laura ends up eating the goblin’s fruit and becomes a fallen woman. Eventually, this consumption of the fruit makes Laura deathly ill and Lizzie worries her sister will die if she doesn’t receive more fruit. To save her sister, Lizzie goes to the goblin men to pay for their fruit. However, the goblins don’t want her money. They, instead, ty to force Lizzie to eat the fruit herself, thus turning her into a fallen woman as well.

The way the goblin men try to force the fruit into Lizzie’s mouth is analogous to a rape scene. The goblin men do everything in their power to wear Lizzie out and persuade her to eat the fruit. They mock her, beat her, and literally try to force her to eat by pushing the fruit against her mouth. Eventually, they give up and leave Lizzie in what appears to the condition of a rape victim:

In a smart, ache, tingle,
Lizzie went her way;
Knew not was it night or day;
Sprang up the bank, tore through the furze,
Threaded copse and dingle.

Lizzie aches and is compared to a corpse. She also doesn’t know if its daytime or nighttime, even though she is walking outside. This corpse-like and disoriented state is similar to how a rape victim would feel after being assaulted. Based on a fallen woman type reading of the text, Lizzie is most likely in shock after being assaulted by the goblin men. When Lizzie returns home, Laura exclaims:

Lizzie, Lizzie, have you tasted
For my sake the fruit forbidden?
Must your light like mine be hidden,
Your young life like mine be wasted,
Undone in mine undoing
And ruined in my ruin,
Thirsty, cankered, goblin-ridden?

In this passage, Laura implies that, just like her, Lizzie has been raped by the goblin men. Because they were raped, Lizzie implies, their “light, “or virginity, is gone and their youth and innocence wasted away. However, despite their fallen state the two sisters both end up marrying and having children later in life. Usually, in Victorian Literature, a fallen woman was unfit for marriage and ended up dying. But this doesn’t occur in “Goblin Market.” I believe that Lizzie and Laura were able to marry because they had each other. Jeanie, a girl mentioned in the poem who also ate the goblin’s fruit, “should have been a bride” but ended up dying instead. Like Lizzie and Laura, Jeanie was a fallen woman, but she didn’t have anyone to save her and so she died as a fallen woman. But Lizzie and Laura had each other to fall back on. Laura had a savior in Lizzie and Lizzie was able to save Laura. Rossetti’s poem makes it clear of the importance of sisterly bonds and how this bond has the power to overcome Victorian clichés, like having a fallen woman die. This strong bond between Laura and Lizzie is depicted in the illustration for the cover of Rossetti’s Goblin Market and Other Poems, drawn by her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Rossetti, Christina Georgina, and Florence Harrison. Goblin Market: and Other Selected Poems.

Calla Editions, an Imprint of Dover Publications, 2018.