A Poem Of Bitter Repression Essay Research
A Poem Of Bitter Repression Essay, Research Paper
Goblin Market, written by Christina Rossetti in 1859 has been discussed in the visible radiation of many opposing readings ; these two are possibly the most important and often mentioned in critical essays. In this essay, I will look at the grounds back uping both claims and effort besides to find whether they are ~ needfully reciprocally sole. ~ When it was foremost published in 1862, Goblin Market was mostly seen as a moral fabrication aimed at kids. However, this individual reading proved to be limited and unequal with farther survey, particularly in relation to Rossetti & # 8217 ; s other plants, published around the same clip such as No, / Thank You, John ( 1860 ) and Up-Hill ( 1858 ) , for illustration. It would be hard to lose the women’s rightist undertones in these two verse forms, and much of Rossetti & # 8217 ; s other work. Whether her feminism is an look of resentment at her place in society or a more positive forward lookins fantasy and jubilation is more hard to determine, however.~ & # 8217 ; Whilst the latter verse form begins in the really embittered sounding lines: Does the route wind up-hill all the manner? Yes, to the really terminal. Will the twenty-four hours & # 8217 ; s journey take the whole long twenty-four hours? From forenoon to dark, my friend. ( 1-4 ) It concludes with the much more positive concluding poetry: Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? Of labor you shall happen the amount. Will at that place be beds for me and all who seek? Yea, beds for all who come. ( 13-16 ) ~ This much shorter verse form is a good illustration of the more general tone of much of Rossetti & # 8217 ; s work and of Goblin Market in peculiar. Particularly at the get downing and~ indeed~throughout t~em we see many illustrations of powerful bitterness and a derogative attitude towards the hobs which, if we accept them as being representative of patriarchate in general, could be seen to use to work forces as a group. The hobs & # 8217 ; fruit, which they are so despairing to acquire Laura and Lizzie to eat, is more than a metaphor for sexual experience, in my sentiment it represents conventional heterosexual love relationships and matrimony and the credence of one of the functions that society demands a adult female must take.~The fruit is highly, about unbearably attractive, and seems to offer nil but sugariness and pleasance. However, when it is tasted it instantly weakens the adult female eating it and makes her huffy for more ; she becomes complicit in her ain devastation. Eventually she will melt to a shadow of her former ego, and all she will be able to believe of will be fulfilling her ain overpowering impulse for more. There is doubtless a really animal and sexual usage of imagination in the descriptions of Laura eating the fruit: She sucked and sucked and sucked the more Fruits which that unknown grove dullard ; She sucked until her lips were sore ; ( 134-6 ) but Laura besides seems to be enduring the worst effects of an obsessional love matter: ( She ) knew non was it dark or twenty-four hours As she turned home entirely. ( 139-40 ) Once she has tasted the judicious delectations of the fruit she is entirely, like the adult female in the warning given by Lizzie: Do you non retrieve Jeanie, How she met them in the moonshine, Took their gifts both pick and many, ( 147-9 ) but who finally pined and pined off ; sought them by dark and twenty-four hours, Found them no more but dwindled and grew Greies ; Then fell with the first snow, While to this twenty-four hours no grass will turn Where she lies low: I planted daisies at that place a twelvemonth ago That ne’er blow. ( l54-61 ) Whilst Jeanie can easy be seen to stand for the typically Victorian image of the fallen adult female who later dies after her wickedness, there are besides mentions to her attendant sterility ( daisies on her grave fail to bloom.~ This is in my sentiment a metaphor for an rational or artistic sterility brought approximately by her compulsion instead than existent physical barrenness. Laura excessively shows that she is get downing to be besotted with the gifts of the hob work forces when she recounts the admirations of the fruit she has eaten to Lizzie and refuses to pay attentiveness to the warnings her sister offers. When she returns to the glen for more fruit and is unable to acquire any, it becomes clear that unless Lizzie acts rapidly Laura will travel the same manner as Jeanie, who died for her compulsion. Rossetti & # 8217 ; s reserves about romantic love are more clearly~expressed in A Triad V ( 1856 ) where she describes three adult females, one of whom is & # 8217 ; shamed & # 8217 ; by love, one who marries into & # 8217 ; soulless & # 8217 ; love and another who pines and dies for her beloved. They are described as being: All on the threshold, yet all short of life. ( 14 ) ~ ~ The hobs, with their seemingly alluring wares, are treated with contempt by Rossetti and with righteous misgiving by Lizzie, the evident heroine of the narrative ( the inquiry of whether Lizzie is the heroine or non will be dealt with shortly. ) The desultory descriptions of the hobs shows the acrimonious bitterness Rossetti feels towards these work forces who wish to lure adult females into what she sees as suicidal, negative and dependent functions. She describes them as animals: One had a cat & # 8217 ; s face, One whisked a tail, One tramped at a rat & # 8217 ; s gait One crawled like a snail, ( 71-4 ) They are all somewhat different but all portion a bestial, really unsavory nature ~They base: Leering at each other, Brother with queer brother ; Signalling each other, Brother with sly brother. ( 92-5 ) Male confederacy is clearly being described here and their method of utilizing & # 8217 ; sugar baited ~ rds & # 8217 ; to lure Laura is every bit met with bitterness. The writer is clearly disdainful of the small work forces as we see in lines 329-336 where they are depicted as: Puffing and blowing, Chuckling, clappin~ , gloating, Clucking and gobbling, Mopping and mowing, Full of poses and graces, Pulling wry faces ( 333-8 ) when they believe Lizzie excessively to hold capitulated. Possibly the greatest grade of resentment towards the hobs is reserved by the writer until after Laura has tasted the fruit. When she is despairing for more the hobs are nowhere to be found. Once she has capitulated, she is no longer wanted. They no longer court her ; merely Lizzie can hear their calls. Laura is thrown into desperation: ( Laura ) gnashed her dentitions for baulked desire, and wept As if her bosom would interrupt. ( 267-8 ) All Laura can believe about is the fruit she can no longer acquire: She dreamed of melons, as a traveler sees False moving ridges in desert drought With sunglassess of leaf-crowned trees, And burns the thirstier in the sandful zephyr. ( 289-92 ) Her desperation is like one spurned in love, she will no longer eat and go useless ; she does no work on the farm and begins to blow off. She realises excessively late the error she has made and rues it: She gorged on resentment without a name: Ah! sap, to take such portion Of psyche devouring attention! ( 510-12 ) Here Rossetti portrays the adult female who has lost everything for love-her psyche has been consumed. ~his is the danger confronting adult females, in her sentiment. They must take either independency and self-respect, or dependance and loss of ego. Some critics, such as Gilbert and Gubar, have suggested that the acrimonious repression is in fact embodied by Lizzie, repossessing Laura for domesticity and taking her off from the freedom and creativeness that they believe the hobs & # 8217 ; fruit represents. However, in visible radiation of the acrimonious descriptions of both the hobs ( who, significantly, are all male ) and the painful description of the sorrowful, soulless province of Laura after trying their wares this would look to be a instead limited reading of the verse form in my opinion.~The fruit amendss Laura, causes her to blow off and disrupts the running of the farm that seems to clearly stand for female autonomy and harmoniousness. This is no ordinary vitamin D
omestic setting; the whole farm is run by the sisters with no interference from men-in fact they are not present at all, even at the end of the poem. Lizzie and the reclaimed Laura seem only to have daughters and although ‘now wives’ there is no mention of their husbands. Men are superfluous to their lives.~ They are certainly not longed for and the goblins’ fruit neither; it is seen as a dangerous addiction, it is surely not the freedom and independence that Gilbert and Gubar claim it is. In fact when Lizzie goes to the goblins to get more fruit for her dying sister but refuses to eat any herself she is met with the kind of abuse that women could expect (and often still can) when refusing the romantic advances of men: One called her proud, Cross-grained, uncivil; Their tones waxed loud, Their looks were evil. (394-7) and they eventually go on to try to force her to eat their wares by pushing them into her mouth and physically attacking her. This scene seems to closely resemble a rape, and whether we take it to represent an actual physical assault or the more widespread and intense pressure placed on women to conform matters not: Lizzie is clearly not refusing something which is desirable in the eyes of the author. This attitude towards men who won~t take no for an answer can be seen in Rossetti’s mocking No, Thank You,John (1859), where the female speaker of the poem is making it clear in what might well then have been considered very ~’ ,. unladylike tones that she is not interested in his repeated advances: Rise above Quibbles and shuffling off and on: Here’s friendship for you if you like; but love,- No, thank you, John. (29-32) The sisters are free before the goblins come along-the only domesticity is that which they choose and do for themselves. Rather than being returned to a situation of repression, when Laura is saved by Lizzie she is described in glorious terms as being: Like a caged thing freed, Or like a flying flag when armies run. (505-6) As a fantasy of feminine freedom and self-sufficiency Goblin Market is very powerful; Laura and Lizzie live alone, provide for all their own needs and are happy doing so: theirs is a picture of domestic bliss of the best kind. They have succeeded in creating a space outside patriarchy~ for themselves. Their world is completely free of any male influence and when the goblins appear chaos ensues-they are a threat to the harmony in which the sisters live. They appear to have been perfectly happy before the arrival of the goblin men and do not seem to have felt they lacked anything: Laura rose with Lizzie: Fetched in honey, milked the cows, Aired and set to rights the house, Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat, Cakes for dainty mouths to eat, (202-6) ~ The sisters are portrayed as being in harmony with nature: Wind sang to them lullaby, Lumbering owls forebore to fly, Not a bat flapped to and fro Round their rest: Cheek to cheek and breast to breast Locked together in one nest. (192-7) All they need is around them; they have no need of outside interference and do not even use money of which they have very little; the only thing Laura has to trade for the fruit is herself, her hair. This is significant as it is firstly symbolic of women’s lack of economic power and also important if we look at the biblical imagery of the poem: Laura loses her strength after cutting her hair like Samson but unlike him she has betrayed herself. In trading part of herself she loses all her power and independence: ” I have no copper in my purse, I have no silver either, And all my gold is on the furze That shakes in windy weather Above the rusty heather.” “You have much gold upon your head,” They answered all together: “Buy from us with a golden curl.” (118-25) They have no need of money until the goblin men come along and only then need it to protect themselves and obtain what~ Laura now must have. Food and accommodation are certainly not the only things that the sisters are self-sufficient in, however. They seem to be emotionally and spiritually replete and only the interference of the male goblins serves to disrupt this. The sisters plunge from an idyllic state to misery and danger once Laura has tasted the forbidden fruit, dr ~ing clear parallells with the biblical story of the Fall. Lizzie, however, does not have to join Laura like Adam must join Eve in the BibleV Through her strength she is able to save Laura and bring her back into the metaphorical Garden of Eden. Her willingness to sacrifice herself and go through danger and physical abuse to save her sister shows an immense degree of female solidarity which the author clearly believes to be essential if women are to gain power and strength in society and to live fulfilling lives. The rich sensual language and images used have led to suggestions that the sisters can also exist sexually without men. Some critics have seen Goblin Market as a lesbian text and it is not difficult to see why. Throughout the poem, there are descriptions of the sisters in terms of physical beauty: Laura reared her glossy head, (52) and Laura stretched her gleaming neck (81) and both sisters are physically very close: Golden head by golden head, Like two pigeons in one nest Folded in each other’s wings, They lay down in their curtained nest: (184-7) They are protecting each other from the evils of the world outside and can save each other from the soulless life the outside world has designated for them. Perhaps the most erotic moments in the text are after Lizzie has had her encounter with the goblins and she comes home covered in the juice of the forbidden fruit. Her invitations and Laura’s responses could easily be construed as very sexual in nature: Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices Squeezed from goblin fruits for you, Goblin pulp and goblin dew. Eat me, drink me, love me; Laura make much of me: (467-72) and Laura responds equally passionately: She kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth.(492) Whether or not the text is lesbian, it is clear in my opinion that Laura is saved from the dreadful existence she faces by her close relationship with Lizzie; through her sacrifice she is able to be reborn and regain life from the death that awaited her because of her mistake. Through ~v/ their mutual self-sufficiency in every area of life they are able to live fulfilling, happy lives and through their solidarity they are able to help each other in times of trouble and despair. Like a foam topped waterspout Cast down headlong in the sea, She fell at last; Pleasure past and anguish past, Is it death or is it life? Life out of death. (519-24) Though they eventually become wives themselves, once again there is no mention of their husbands and the advice they give their children below would seem to indicate that they have only daughters. Feminine freedom and self-sufficiency are the fantasy of the author of Goblin Market and strength and female solidarity are seen as essential to achieving them: For there is no friend like a sister In calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, To fetch one if one goes astray, To lift one if one totters down, To strengthen whilst one stands. (561-6) Goblin Market is a celebration of female strength and solidarity and bitter repression seems to be what the goblins are offering any unwary young women who come along, rather than the state Laura and Lizzie live in. 1/’BIBLIOGRAPHY Gilbert, S. & Gubar, S. / The Madwoman in the Attic NeW York 1979) Rossetti, C / Goblin Market (1859) ~No, Thank You, John.~ (1860) A Triad (1856) Up-Hill (1858) All in Norton Anthology of English Literature, 6th Edition, Vol.2.
