Eat me, drink me, love me; Laura, make much of me: Lines 467-473 This sounds very similar to what Jesus said “”Take, eat, this is my Body which is given for you…. Drink ye all of this; for this is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you” are Christ’s words in the Prayer of Consecration in the Communion liturgy. I think also Rossetti is been subversive towards her brother and the brotherhood, I think she is making sly comments on how they treat women and prostitutes and also his wife.
Rossetti describes the Goblins “Brother with queer brother”, and “brother with sly brother” lines 94 and 96. By using fruit to tempt the fall of the women it is automatically linked to Eve. Yet what we have to remember is that Eve ate an apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. I think that also Rossetti is trying to say that women in this era was not educated enough, not because of their own choice but because it was a patriarchal society, and if females did try and want to better themselves they were seen as wrong and unfeminine.
I think that is also the reason why at first this poem was seen as a mere fairy tale for children. It was easier for women to make the men believe that there literature was aimed at children then it was for adults. The education that women were supposed to have was not of “academic education available to men, but moral education”. (Victorian Web Website 2009). By lines 563-568 I think Rossetti is trying to put across as though females don’t need males to survive, you only need your sisters love, not just your biological sister but sisters as in all females.
Once Lizzie had sacrificed herself to the Goblins and went home to Laura and let Laura feast upon the Goblins juices that was on her body she became better, her hair came back to its natural colour and she became well again 538-543. It makes you believe that it is the fruits juice that remedies her, but it could well be seen as though it is her sister’s love and affection that makes her well. There is no mention about males after the Lizzie and the Goblins inclining that you don’t need males to make you whole and to save you.
Christina Rossetti shows by a number of ways which I have illustrated in ways in which this poem can be seen as subversive. I think that she did not believe that fallen women should be scorned if they redeem themselves, as god himself still accepts sinners. For Rossetti to even write a poem like this and for it to be popular would be subversive as women writers were not in the literary canon, but by this influential poem and many others she eventually made it into the literary canon under Christina Rossetti, and not Ellen Alleyne.
Bibliography Grass, Sean C 1996. “Natures Perilios Variety in Rossetti’s “Goblin Market””. Nineteenth-century literature, vol 51, no. 3, pp 356-376. Mendoza, Victor Roman 2006. “”Come Buy” The crossing of sexual and consumer desire in Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market”. ELH Baltimore: Winter, vol 73, iss 4, pp 913-948. Rossetti, Christina (ed. ) 1994. Goblin Market and other poems, Dover Publications. Stern, Rebecca F 2003. “”Adulterations dectected” : Food and Fraud in Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market””.
Nineteenth-century literature, vol 57, no 4, pp 477-511. Tucker, Herbert F 2003. Rossetti’s Goblin Marketing: Sweet to Tongue and Sound to Eye. Representations, No 82, pp 117-133. www. answers. com [Accessed 10 January 2009] http://www. victorianweb. org/authors/crossetti/scholl. html [Accessed 10 January 2008] http://www. helium. com/items/1118490-goblin-market-sexuality-in-the-goblin-market- femine-roles-in-the-goblin-market? page=3 [Accessed 18 December 2008] http://www. victorianweb. org/authors/crossetti/christensen1. html [Accessed 18 December 2008]
