In this post we have tried to condense the huge critical debate – and various interpretations – of ‘Goblin Market’ into one short article. That feverishly odd ‘aguish’ has indeed hardened into ‘anguish’, the anguish of the not-known. Who knows? The fruit in the Garden of Eden offered life in the form of pleasure and worldly knowledge (including carnal knowledge, or awareness of one’s own sexuality) but it also led to death, the death of paradise. The eye is apt to stumble over ‘aguish’, wanting to correct it to ‘anguish’ but, like the word itself, we are caught in a feverish world we can only half-comprehend, much less analyse. She kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth. Words themselves are unstable, ripe (like the fruit) to enchant us and then unsettle us with their cunning: The unpredictability of the line lengths, rhymes, and rhythms of ‘Goblin Market’ echoes the unpredictable fairy-tale world of the goblins. The poem’s metrical form invites comment and analysis: its rhythm is irregular and songlike, as with so many of Christina Rossetti’s poems, though they are usually more regular in their use of metre and rhythm, and their rhyme schemes tend to be slightly more ordered. Lizzie’s Christlike nature is emphasized by her instruction to Laura: “Eat me, drink me, love me.” This echoes Christ’s words to his disciples at the Last Supper, during which he told them to eat his body and drink his blood.The art critic John Ruskin (who coined the phrase ‘pathetic fallacy’) said that in ‘Goblin Market’ Rossetti was ‘violating the common ear for metre’.
Lizzie’s act of self-sacrifice also aligns her with Christ, who experienced the pain of crucifixion and death in order to save the world from sin. Lizzie, aligned with Mary, saves her fallen sister, Laura, who is aligned with Eve. In light of the poem’s many biblical resonances, it is also possible to read this moment of mirroring as alluding to the traditional Christian belief that Mary was the second Eve who reversed the curses brought on humanity by the first Eve’s disobedience to God. This mirroring or replication of experiences, which might seem like a minor detail, is significant it suggests that Lizzie’s sacrifice will undo or reverse the damage caused to her sister by eating the fruit, bringing them back to the idyllic, peaceful lives they previously enjoyed. Lizzie’s mental daze mirrors Laura’s after meeting the goblins and eating their fruit for the first time.
0 kommentar(er)
