Blog entry 2.1 "Goblin's Market or the Creepy Garden of Eden"

The Goblin's Market or the Creepy Garden of Eden

    The author of this poem, Christina Georgina Rossetti, was born in 1930 in London. Some of her most famous work is the poem I will be writing about here: Goblin's market, Remember and In the Bleak Midwinter. Knowing that her father was also a poet, we could assume that she was inspired by him and carried on his work. It seems, to me, that the fact that Christina's mother was a nun and with the second sister they both got deeply interested in Anglo-Catholic movement, Christina was strongly influenced by her family, for instance the poem Goblin's Market could be interpreted as a creepy version of the Adam and Eve story. Christina also volunteered in a “house of charity” which seem to have been a strong influenced for this poem, the passage were to Laura gets sicker and sicker and her sister has to do the one thing she refused to do until then is a very good example of the “Fallen women” she help and probably got close to. In this blog entry I will focus on the symbolic and archetypes present here, how they give a great power to this poem and how these elements of our culture put together in this poem can make it a very disturbing work.

As I read this poem, one thing struck me, the fact that this poem has all the elements of the Adam and Eve story: The malefic fruit, the two characters with one staying away from the fruit and the other one succumbing to temptation and the fatal consequences of eating the fruit.

In this poem the two characters are called Laura and Lizzie, two sisters who walk by a goblin's market and hear their calls: “Come buy, come buy”. Laura succumbs to the temptation while her sister Lizzie tries to keep her away from it. Having no money Laura uses a chunk of her own hair to trade, but after eating the delicious fruits her health slowly starts to degrade. After seeing her sister become dangerously sick Lizzie decides to go back to the Goblin's market to buy more the antidote, more fruits, to cure her poor sister who cannot hear or see the goblins anymore. Once there, Lizzie proposes to pay with real money and that when we understand how the spell works, by trading in a part of herself to get fruits Laura had given the Goblins her health and youth. Lizzie has to fight through the goblins who are trying to force-feed her; she finally makes it out of this trap and goes back to her sister to save her from a certain death. Laura being saved, the two sisters go on and have a long life with their respective family.

The symbols in this poem could all be found in the Adam and Eve scene, from the fruit to the snake being here embodied by the goblins.

I will start with “the fruit”. This is the first element that made me compare this poem to the Garden of Eden. The very complex description of this fruit and its malefic consequences, which looks delicious but is deadly, is extremely close to the role of the fruit from Adam and Eve's story. This symbol is pretty clear here, the fruit as the decadence of humanity or the end of purity according to the bible. The trade Laura makes is very interesting symbolically. She gives up a piece of her hair, which is our cosmic connection, to pay for the fruits. The evil is, in this poem, represented by a group of goblins, all with different faces and looks: Cat, rat, snail and wombat. These animals bring a notion of magic (for the cat) and creepiness or ugliness (rat and snail), but then the poem follows with: dove, love, pleasant, kind; giving the opposite impression about these characters. This description gives the goblins a very evil look but a pure and kind personality. Again, I can't help comparing these goblins to the snake: a scary and creepy body with the skills to sounds and appear kind and caring.

The archetypes present in this poem are all also to be found in Fairy tales, or the Heroic Monomyth theory.

In fact, a fairy tale’s structure would almost always be: A character in danger (mostly princesses), an evil character or monster (usually a dragon or any creepy and scary creature), the savior (whiling to do go through any danger for the endangered princess, usually out of love), a enchanted place or scene and finally the happy ending with love, marriage and lots of kids.

Christina Rossetti here, proposes us a very disturbing and sexual fairy tale on the base of Adam and Eve theme:

The enchanted place: a very random back country scene made unreal by the presence of goblins.

The princess in danger: also one of Young's basic archetypes is here Laura who succumbs the temptation. In this poem Laura also takes on another role: the Fool. By eating the fruit knowing something evil will probably come out of it.

The Savior/Hero: Lizzie here takes on this very important role, she starts of as the prudent almost coward character but ends up as the strongest one who save her sister only out of love. Here is an interesting scheme showing the steps Lizzie takes towards becoming the hero:

In this circle our hero goes from being called to adventure but takes a little while to decide and jump in, then she passes straight to the danger and almost death, which changes her without being said, the change being in our opinion of her. She finally returns. The Known and Unknown notion are also followed as shown in the scheme since Lizzie doesn't know what to expect.

Evil: The goblins, taking on all the archetypes possibly given to this notion of evil: Destroyer, pervert, murderer, betrayer... and much more. They all act as one same person becoming an archetype not only representing many other archetypes but also many symbols.

The happy ending: Once Lizzie saves Laura the ending becomes the perfect fairy tale happy ending with a La Fontaine moral: Frustration could save you.

It seems like what Christina wants us to get here is the original sin moral, but pushed further. By mixing a creepy poem with the Adam and Eve story but also adding this fairy tale’s structure, the author created an even stronger story full of archetypes and symbols. Each action, each description could be broken down into many different meanings. The religion, the decadence Christina has been close to explodes in this poem.

But to me this poem reminds us of the hope still possible for human. Even though the bible describes Eve eating the fruit as the end of purity, the author here goes against this idea and makes it a fairy tale like happy ending with the two main characters getting married, lots of kids and happiness.

Citations:
- Wikipedia: Christina Rossetti