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Goblin Marketp. 1589
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Female Stereotypes

• LizzieAngel in the House
• Placid, content, like a royal virgin town
• Resists temptation
• Content with domestic duties
• LauraFallen Woman
• Like a leaping flame, a restless brook, a
  vessel at launch when its last restraint is
  gone
• Succumbs to temptation
• Sick of domestic duties

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Symbols

• Forbidden Fruit
• Forbidden experience (lines 40-45)
• Illicit sexualityerotic imagery, punishment
  typical of fallen women (lines 141-162)
• Goblin Men
• Temptation of evil gifts (line 66)
• Men who sexually seduce and abandon women

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Symbols

• Lauras golden curl
• Symbol of femininity, female sexuality
• Item of salewoman selling herself on sexual
  market

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Symbols

• Lizzie as Christ figure
• Deliberately enters the realm of evil (the glen)
• Passively endures attack
• Sacrifices herself for her sisters redemption
  (lines 396-421)

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Symbols

• Lizzie as female hero
• Imagery of attack is suggestive of rape
• Heroism depicted in erotic terms (lines 408-421,
  464-474, 491-523)
• Tension between spirituality and sensuality

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Sensual Imagery vs. Message of Self-Denial

• Reinforces Victorian domestic ideal
• Lizzies heroism is based in self-denial
• Lizzie and Laura become wives and mothers (lines
  543-567)

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Sensual Imagery vs. Message of Self-Denial

• Critiques Victorian domestic ideal
• Laura is redeemed
• Lauras longing is sympathetically portrayed
• Erotic imagery suggests intense desire and
  dissatisfaction with self-denial

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Lesbian Subtext

• Erotic imagery of the sisters relationship,
  message of female solidarity
• No biographical evidence that Rossetti was
  lesbian
• Subconscious expression of lesbian desire?

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Lesbian Subtext

• Repressed sexuality of Victorian culture emerging
  in safe imagery of sisterly affection
• Expresses longing and deprivation that accompany
  the Victorian domestic ideal