Cristina Georgina Rossetti is an English poet born in London, England on December 5, 1830. She is known for her works in romantic and children poems. She was home schooled by her mother (Frances Polidori); she came from a well-educated and respected family. Her siblings also became poets and artist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, and Maria Francesca Rossetti. Due to her fathers (Gabriele Rossetti) illness at the age of 14, Rossetti suffered a nervous breakdown and left school and started falling very ill. She was engaged twice but both marriages never happened due to religious reasons. She was in many of Dante's painting and was the model for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's Virgin Mary painting and again for Paolo de Matteis's Annunciation. She wrote her first poem at the age of 7, which appeared in a magazine and continued writing. Later on in her life she started suffering from many illnesses. A fatal heart attack in 1870. In 1893 she had breast cancer but got the tumor removed but in September 1894 she suffered from a recurrence. She later on passed away on December 29, 1894.
The plot of the poem is that two sisters (Laura and Lizzie) are at home, and they hear the noises coming from the goblin market. They try to ignore the sounds and noises coming from the market and from the goblin males at the market. But Laura goes out to see what’s going on, even though Lizzie tells Laura not to go. A broke Laura goes to the market and the goblins offer her the fruit but she has no money so the goblins give her the fruit in exchange for her golden (blond) hair. So Laura gave the goblins a lock of her hair and eats the fruit and returns home to her sister but on her way home the fruit takes effect and makes her wider away into a old women and surely into a bag of bones. The worried sister Lizzie goes out to check up on her sister at the market. When she gets there the goblins offer the fruit of a lock of her hair. Lizzie turns the offer down, which makes the goblins angry and they start getting out of hand and try to force feed Lizzie the fruit, but Lizzie keeps her mouth shut and gets juice all over her. Lizzie gets away and runs home covered in juice where she sees Laura. Laura seeing Lizzie covered in juice and kisses/licks the juice off of Lizzie and Laura starts to heal slow and painfully. Later on in life Laura and Lizzie are mothers and warn their children at the goblin market and the power of sisterly love.
There were a lot of symbols in Goblin Market. One of the most common was Fruit, which was found. Fruit symbolizes temptation like the forbidden fruit in the bible, which also counts as a sin. It's as a temptation because Laura could hold back and stay home but she left to get some fruit. Another symbol was the lock of hair, which symbolizes money because Laura used her hair as money to buy some fruit. The moon was another word that keep on popping up in the poem, from moonlight to moonlit which makes me think it symbolizes addiction like how werewolf’s are to the moon.
The archetypes in goblin market were the goblin’s, which can be indenifed as evil sin or/and even tricksters, for giving the fruit to Laura and trying to feed Lizzie. Laura can be portrayed as a prostitute/junkie for trade herself (lock of hair) for goods (fruit) also for licking Lizzie for the fruit it seems like a drug and Lizzie can be portrayed as a mother looking out for her sister.
To me Goblin market is seen as a story about two sisters, one was the smart one then other one was the naive/adventurous one who was too curious and went exploring more then she should and got in trouble while her sister had to save her but is but in danger also, and threw this whole ordeal the power of sisterhood overcomes everything they went through.
Sites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina_Rossetti
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archetypes
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