Goblin Market

Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market focuses on two different types of people, the predators and the prey. In this poem the predators take away what society teaches us is our only value. In this victorian era for women this was a lady’s chastity (madonna or whore)

Today this poem could be applied to many areas of life. Lets look at this from the perspective of a teenage girl who lives in poverty (in the projects for example). What is this girls value? What does she have to offer? She has no money, no college degree, no career, no family. Yet society tells her that she can do it all. And she can do it all alone…..

The Goblin in this story is a man who is offering her a way to forget about her troubles. Use him he says to make yourself feel better. Your a strong woman he says and you can do whatever. You thought that he wanted you, but he really only wanted one thing. Now he’s gone. You’ve eaten the fruit and he’s no longer interested. Where is this girls value now? She’s given away the only thing she had to offer and has nothing to show for it and nothing left to give.

To the Victorians and to modern day Americans people are placed into boxes. Neat little boxes to describe every person. The girl in this story went from a madonna box and is now in a box labeled whore. The same is true for Victorian women/girls. This is a way that society controlled young women. By telling them that one they’ve been used no one will want them, no husband will have them, they now have no future prospects. Because their only worth was their virtue. A very harsh society we are indeed.