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I’ve been going through a… Goblin Market phase recently, as you might recall. So, I decided to write a brief, accessible post on feminism in Goblin Market. Christina Rossetti’s poem is rich in symbolism, and an interpretation related to feminism and economics couldn’t be absent.

Academic criticism has explored feminism in Goblin Market – a lot – so I’m certainly not breaking any new ground here. After all, this post is based on my BA thesis and therefore isn’t exceptionally deep or analytic to begin with. However, I still think there are intriguing viewpoints in it, with important repercussions for our times, too.

Is feminism in Goblin Market about sex? Is it about control? It’s about these and more. Nonetheless, my focus is mostly on economic independence: how the Victorian woman (and, by association any woman) is as free as her ability to provide for herself and set the rules of the (economic) game. The lessons from the Victorian era are still applicable today, and feminism in Goblin Market is, I’d argue, pertinent to many of our contemporary discussions.

Feminism in Goblin Market: It’s the (Goblin) Economy, Stupid

Note: I assume you are familiar with the poem. If not, feel free to read it first.

Goblin Market involves two sisters – the cautious Lizzie and the impetuous Laura – and some mysterious goblin merchant-men who sell fruits. Laura thoughtlessly buys from them and becomes sick. Lizzie then has to help her, without becoming sick herself.

The title of the poem itself is a first indication that a reading relevant to economics and the marketplace is possible. Considering also the first word, “goblin”, as readers we have clear signs that the exchange taking place in the poem is far from honest. The connection between economics and women in particular is also easy to make, since the relevant roles are well prescribed in the poem: The sellers are specifically referred to as men and the buyers are women.

The first lines of Goblin Market are as important as the title in creating an atmosphere where consumerism appears to be a dominant element:

Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
“Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:

GM, 1-4

Elizabeth Campbell argues that the opening of the poem “suggests the cyclical rhythms of women in conflict with the linear pull of the market” (399), while the phrase “come buy” appears three times in the first four lines and the echoing “come buy, come buy”, on nine occasions in the poem (Brandt, 60).

The “Evil Gifts” of Goblin Merchant Men

Lizzie refers to the goblin fruits as “evil gifts” (GM, 66), which becomes an interesting moral viewpoint considering her reference to another woman, Jeanie, who once bought the fruits with fateful consequences:

She thought of Jeanie in her grave,
But who for joys brides hope to have
Fell sick and died
In her gay prime,

GM, 312-316

These lines – especially the one referring to “joys brides hope to have” – have been analyzed numerous times, and most scholars attach a sexual meaning to them, for example as a distinction “between the two sorts of love, that which is domestic and legitimate, and the other, which is outlawed” (Packer, 379). However, I argue that a different reading is possible, namely one where these “joys” could allude to financial security.

The Economic Feminism of Goblin Market: Marriage and Financial Security in the Victorian Era

Education and employment were not easily accessible for women, and most of the employment opportunities were unattractive and not at all profitable. In fact, the only possible occupation an unmarried middle-class woman could earn a living with was as a governess. However, a governess could not expect much employment security and the wages were only minimal.

In a sense, Jeanie’s fatal mistake was her attempt to circumnavigate the established patterns and the exchange system, by aiming at financial independence and direct access to the goods – “joys brides hope to have”. Lizzie fears this will also happen to Laura. Unfortunately for the women of the poem, the goblin market is run by men. As a result, the transactions are not fair. The goblin market is simply unjust for women.

Apparently, the goblins have established a very peculiar system of marketing regulations, as they offer their products to Laura even if she does not have money to pay for them, while they refuse to Lizzie, even though she pays with her silver penny in advance.

A Market Men Dominate

In this context, the core problem of the poem is that the goblin market is structurally not fair for women. Its rules and regulations change according to the desires of the male goblin sellers:

[I]f you buy the fruits of this orchard… then you will surely die. But at this point in the poem, temptation is everything, and the goblin fruits represent something that the women want, even if it is something they know they cannot have: a place where the fruits are produced, a place in, and a place of, the economic action.

Campbell, 399

Indeed, the transaction between the goblins and Lizzie reveals that the male goblin merchants are not interested in the sisters’ money, but in keeping them under their marketing control and influence. As with Laura, the goblins insist that Lizzie should taste their fruit in their presence, and when she refuses, she essentially threatens the very foundation of the goblin market, that is desire for the fruit.

In Goblin Market There Is No Room for Female Financial Independence

As is often the case in such frameworks of economic exchange, in Goblin Market (and obviously society at large), the real issue is about consumer desire. The goblin sellers seem less interested in money and more eager to secure “the sisters’ compulsive and continued consumer desires”, with Laura experiencing withdrawal symptoms once she has no longer access to the market (Lysack, 159).

What both married and unmarried women of the Victorian era had in common was consumer desire, and in any capitalist economy, this desire is virtually always irrelevant to one’s money. What changes is perhaps the product availability, the quality of the products, or the possibility to temporarily satisfy the thirst for purchasing the products.

However, in a goblin market there is no room for female financial independence, and the sisters’ survival does not alter that. In the end, they have not succeeded in securing a steady, fair and unconditional – within the reasonable market expectations – access to the products. The poem seemingly “reaches the limits of its ability to conceive their relations to the market. Rossetti’s women must consume and be consumed, or declare an impossible independence of all economic relations” (Helsinger, 907).

Works Cited

Brandt, Katja. Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market”: Milton Revised or Revived? Åbo, Finland: Åbo Akademi University Press, 2006.
Campbell, Elizabeth. “Of Mothers and Merchants: Female Economics in Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market’”. Victorian Studies, Spring 1990.
Helsinger, Elizabeth K. “Consumer Power and the Utopia of Desire: Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market’”. ELH, Vol. 58, No. 4. (Winter, 1991), pp. 903-933.
Lysack, Krista. “Goblin Markets: Victorian Women Shoppers at Liberty’s Oriental Bazaar”. Nineteenth-Century Contexts Vol. 27, No. 2, June 2005, pp. 139–165
Packer, Lona Mosk. “Symbol and Reality in Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market”. PMLA, Vol. 73, No. 4. (Sep., 1958), pp. 375-385.
Rossetti, Christina. “Goblin Market”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. M.H. Abrams (ed). New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc, 1990. Cited as GM.