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Feminism in Goblin Market: the Economics of the Victorian Woman

October 11, 2021

academia, capitalism, criticism, economy, feminism, Gothic, literature, poetry, society, Victorian

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.

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The Meaning of Dracula’s Castle

October 20, 2019

Criticism

academia, criticism, Dracula, Gothic, reality, Victorian, vision

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Note: the following article on the meaning of Dracula’s castle is a modified excerpt from my article “Philosophical Idealism and Vision in Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Photographs, Sight, and Remote Viewing as Tools of Reality Rendering”. Word and Image: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches. Tampere, Finland: Tampere University Press, 2014.

Feel free to also take a look at my other academic publications.

The importance and meaning of Dracula’s castle in the novel becomes evident for a variety of reasons. In general temporal terms, the castle of Dracula serves as a generic reminder and connects with the Gothic tradition.

Examining the text itself, the novel essentially begins and ends with the castle. In fact, the novel ends in the castle twice: the first time in Mina’s last journal entry, describing the seeming destruction of Count Dracula in his home ground (D, 401) and the second in Jonathan Harker’s note, revealing their pilgrimage of sorts to the very same place seven years later (D, 402).

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Theorizing Time in the Victorian Era

November 7, 2018

Criticism

academia, criticism, time, Victorian

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Note: the following article on time in the Victorian era is a modified excerpt (pp. 29-35) from my doctoral dissertation, “Time is Everything with Him”: The Concept of the Eternal Now in Nineteenth-Century Gothic, which can be downloaded (for free) from the repository of the Tampere University Press. For a list of my other academic publications, see here.

Theorizing Time in the Victorian Era: Changing the Scientific Paradigm

Theorizing Time in the Victorian era changed due to a series of scientific breakthroughs. Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology, written in the early 1830s, as well as Charles Darwin’s 1859 On the Origin of Species, forced a reevaluation of history, suggesting the past had to be reconsidered.

In addition, the mid-century discovery of the second law of thermodynamics added further anxiety in relation to history and the future.

It was interpreted to imply the extinction of human life due to the exhaustion of usable energy – the so-called heat death of the universe. Suddenly, the existing definition, meaning, and destination of human existence seemed to be lacking. A dark, unfathomable past lay on the one side, while a rather ominous and equally uncertain future lay on the other.

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