Poems by Christina G.

Rossetti (1830-94)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (who also supplied the title), illustration

from the 1865, 2nd edition of Goblin Market and Other Poems

Interpretations of Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market

(1862)

Illustrations of "Goblin Market"

A collection of illustrations showing some of the different
styles in which the poem has been presented to the public
down the years.

Ellen Raskin, "Laughed every goblin," from Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market,"
illustrated and adapted by Ellen Raskin (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1970), 18.
Illustration copyright 1970 by Ellen Raskin.

Arthur Rackham, "White and golden Lizzie stood," from "Goblin Market," by
Christina Rossetti (London: Harrap, 1933).

George Gershinowitz, "She kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth." Illustration
for Christinia Rossetti (London: Harrap, 1933).

Kinuko Craft, "White and golden Lizzie stood," Illustration for Christina Rossetti,
"Goblin Market: A Ribald Classic," Playboy 20.9 (1973): 117. Copyright 1973, 2001
by Playboy Magazine.

(Macmillanhttp://www.victorianweb.org/authors/crossetti/
gobmarket.html)
[N.B. Though a variety of possible interpretations are presented below none can be
independent of the stylistic experience of the poem, especially its tripping, frequently
trochaic measure and its irregular determination to keep rhyming. This irregularity

outraged Ruskin, but Professor Saintsbury saw it positively, arguing that Rossetti uses
a supple,dedoggerelised Skeltonic,and that the more the metre is studied the more
audacious may its composition seem. The closer interpretation recognises metrical
effects, the more readily will the poem seem an experience rather than an argument.]
Only when works of art are reduced to statements which propose a specific content,
and when morality is identified with a particular morality (and any particular morality
has its dross, those elements which are no more than a defense of limited social
interests and class values) - only then can a work of art be thought to undermine
morality. Indeed only then can the full distinction between the aesthetic and the
ethical be made (Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation (2001) p. 25).
All the following are recognised strategies for interpreting the poem; there may be
others. How many of them do you find compatible with the state of literary
excitation (to use Sontags term) the poem arouses? Can you see how each approach
relates to your reading experience? Are some, in your view, more convincing?
1. As the poem carries a manuscript dedication To M.F.R, Maria Rossetti, Christina
Rossettis sister, is seen as the key to this poem of sisterhood. It has been argued that
Maria nursed Christina through a life-threatening illness caused by her passion for
William Bell Scott while engaged to James Collinson; a related but incompatible
argument finds Maria preventing Christinas elopement with Collinson. In these
views Maria plays Lizzie to Christinas Laura and the poem is interpreted as a
biographical allegory; this and related interpretations have proved particularly
seductive for Rossettis biographers from the 1960s onwards.
2. The poems interest in sisterhood is given a contemporary lesbian-feminist turn.
Men, except for demonic goblin-men, are absent from the poem, which has at its
consummation a sharing of juices between consenting sisters (though it needs to be
conceded that that juice was wormwood).
3. The poems interest in saving vulnerable fallen sisters is linked to Rossettis work
at the Diocesan Penitentiary for Fallen Women, Highgate, which began in 1859, the
year of the composition of Goblin Market. In this reading the poem becomes a kind
of covert advertisement for Victorian good works.
4. The poem is related to the contemporary vogue for Nonsense Writing, though it is
unlikely Rossetti knew of the Nonsense Writings of Carroll and Lear as early as 1859.
As Nonsense Writing, of course, the poem retains all its power to shock and subvert.
5. The poem is seen as a lightly moralised fairy-tale, another form in vogue in midVictorian times, reflecting the influence first of Novalis and later of Hans Christian
Andersen. This interpretation also tends to stress the attractiveness of the poem for
children: it has been frequently anthologised in collections of childrens verse.
6. The poem is viewed as an allegory of sin and atonement, with the goblins
purveying forbidden fruit, Laura falling and Lizzie offering redemption after
gallantly resisting temptation herself. The crisis of the poem comes as Lizzie offers
herself in healing communion to her fallen friend: Eat me, drink me, love me.
Rossetti always asserted when questioned that the poem was without allegoric intent:

she may have been shocked to hear her poem construed as a sort of parody-eucharist.
Critics have inevitably compared Rossettis poem with other classic accounts of the
Fall, such as Miltons Paradise Lost.
7. The poem offers a critique of the fabric of Victorian society, picking up the
mercantile basis of marriage (what Tennyson called Marriage-hindering Mammon)
and the commercial character of much social interaction. As Jerome McGann has
argued the poems critique of contemporary materialism is so strong as to conve "the
need for an alternative social order".
8. The poem allegorises the predicament of art and artists, especially women artists,
in Victorian Britain. For Sandra Gilbert, the fruit represents Victorian women's
exclusion from the world of art. This reading is likely to stress the importance of
sisterhood, as gatherings of female artists were generally known at the time on the
model of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood.
9. Laura J. Hartman, among others, has pointed out the parallels between Laura's
experience and the experience of alcoholism and even drug addiction; this would
suggest a link to classic Romantic texts about addiction by Coleridge and De Quincey.
10. Other scholars most notably Herbert Tucker view the poem as a critique on the
rise of advertising in Victorian England, with the goblins utilising clever marketing
tactics to seduce.
11. The poem is seen as fundamentally grotesque, even perverse, linked with the
darker elements of Gothic, such as ghouls and vampire tales. Goblin Market was
reprinted in Playboy as"Goblin Market: A Ribald Classic," Playboy 20.9 (1973): 117,
complete with erotic illustrations. The text suggested that hidden between the lines
of this nice Victorian nursery tale lurk monsters from the Freudian night.' EIlen Moers offers
a gentler version of a similar reading: 'Rossetti wrote a poem unconsciously about the erotic
life of children.' Moers' approach makes it difficult to determine whether at the poem's crisis
Lizzie refuses to be raped or merely shuts her jaws 'like a child refusing its medicine' (Jan
Marsh). The intrepid sister probably does both. Considering the Keatsian lavishness of the
feast, the cloyingly abundant juices and the poem's wonderful moments of release from
bondage, John Bayley thinks the Victorians 'probably ... enjoyed the gluttonously intense
drama of 'Goblin Market' without knowing or caring how close to pornography the pleasure
was.' For instance:
Laura stretched her gleaming neck
Like a rush-embedded swan,
Like a lily from the beck,
Like a moonlit poplar-branch
Like a vessel at the launch
When its last restraint is gone

12. The poem is perceived as so fundamentally subversive that it is a case of Judge not, lest ye
be judged. Germaine Greer argues that the dark secret of 'Goblin Market' is guarded jealously
by the poet, aware that 'even the most unashamed of post-Freudian readers' are reluctant fully to
interpret the plot 'for fear that to unravel it would be to reveal more of the psychology of the
unraveler than it would the meaning of the poem itself. In this reading Rossetti has created a
time-bomb text, detonating in the face of any reader daring enough to uncover its depths. Other

Rossetti poems, especially (for modern readers) the signature-poem, 'Winter: My Secret', show
a related interest in secrecy.
13. Though clearly more than a fanciful tale, and unfolding a structure of 'temptation, resistance
and redemption' (Jan Marsh), 'Goblin Market' is one of a group of Romantic and post-Romantic
texts (such as St Agnes' Eve or The Ancient Mariner) where 'excitement and intensity carry the
poem, like Keats or Coleridge, through to the point where the moral no longer matters' (John
Bayley). This reading comes closest to Sontag's approach to 'a work of art' in Against
Interpretation: an experience not of conceptual knowledge but of 'excitation' with 'judgement in
a state of thraldom or captivation.'

The Sacred Poetry of Christina Rossetti

The greatest religious poet in English between Vaughan and
Hopkins
(Hoxie Neale Fairchild)

Portrait of Christina Rossetti (In the silent land)

Brian Clarke, 2007

THE DESCENT FROM THE CROSS.

Is this the Face that thrills with awe
Seraphs who veil their face above?
Is this the Face without a flaw,
The Face that is the Face of Love?
Yea, this defaced, a lifeless clod,
Hath all creations love sufficed,
Hath satisfied the love of God,
This Face the Face of Jesus Christ.
[He saith unto them: Behold the Man (John 19:4-5).]

[For now we see through a glass darkly; but then, face to face (1
Corinthians 13:12.]

DESPISED AND REJECTED.

My sun has set, I dwell
In darkness as a dead man out of sight;
And none remains, not one, that I should tell
To him mine evil plight
This bitter night.
I will make fast my door
That hollow friends may trouble me no more.
Friend, open to Me.Who is this that calls?
Nay, I am deaf as are my walls:
Cease crying, for I will not hear
Thy cry of hope or fear.
Others were dear,
Others forsook me: what art thou indeed
That I should heed
Thy lamentable need?
Hungry should feed,
Or stranger lodge thee here?
Friend, My Feet bleed.
Open thy door to Me and comfort Me.
I will not open, trouble me no more.
Go on thy way footsore,
I will not rise and open unto thee.
Then is it nothing to thee? Open, see
Who stands to plead with thee.
Open, lest I should pass thee by, and thou
One day entreat My Face
And howl for grace,
And I be deaf as thou art now.
Open to Me.

Then I cried out upon him: Cease,

Leave me in peace:
Fear not that I should crave
Aught thou mayst have.
Leave me in peace, yea trouble me no more,
Lest I arise and chase thee from my door.
What, shall I not be let
Alone, that thou dost vex me yet?
But all night long that voice spake urgently:
Open to Me.
Still harping in mine ears:
Rise, let Me in.
Pleading with tears:
Open to Me that I may come to thee.
While the dew dropped, while the dark hours were cold:
My Feet bleed, see My Face,
See My Hands bleed that bring thee grace,
My Heart doth bleed for thee,
Open to Me.
So till the break of day:
Then died away
That voice, in silence as of sorrow;
Then footsteps echoing like a sigh
Passed me by,
Lingering footsteps slow to pass.
On the morrow
I saw upon the grass
Each footprint marked in blood, and on my door
The mark of blood forevermore.

[[Despised and Rejected (Isaiah 53:3): He is despised and

rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with
grief. Prophecy of the Messiah, held to refer to Christs
solitude on Good Friday.]
The first Passover is described in Exodus chapter 12: one
lamb was slain for every household and the mark of blood
painted onto the lintels and doorposts. This was done in
order that the angel of Death would not slay the first-born
son of the Jewish households, but only those of Pharoah's
people, whom God had warned He would judge. "When I see
the blood, I will pass over you." In Rossettis poem it is
unclear whether the mark of blood remains a mark of
favour or has become a brand of permanent judgement.]

From Ecce Ancilla Domini! (The Annunciation) by Dante

Gabriel Rossetti (1849-50)
This early Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood picture features the artists sister
Christina as the model for Mary, seemingly both surprised and detached.

Good Friday
Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy blood's slow loss,
And yet not weep?
Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;
Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon-I, only I.
Yet give not o'er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;

Greater than Moses, turn and look once more

And smite a rock.

[And smite a rock (cf Exodus 17:1-7). Moses, desperate to cure his
peoples thirst, listens to his instructions from the Lord: 17:6 Behold, I
will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt
smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people
may drink. Rossettis speaker imagines Christ, the greater Moses, will
strike her to bring forth the water of eternal life, finding her flesh as
tough as the rock in Horeb. But there is also a (gentler) reminiscence
of Matthew 18:1213, the Parable of the Lost Sheep: 12How think ye?
if a man have a hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth
he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and
seeketh that which is gone astray? 13And if so be that he find it, verily
I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and
nine which went not astray. This clustering of Biblical references is
very characteristic of Rossettis poetry: where possible she prefers to
use the images and even the words of scripture to her own.]

In Progress

Ten years ago it seemed impossible

That she should ever grow so calm as this,
With self-remembrance in her warmest kiss
And dim dried eyes like an exhausted well.
Slow-speaking when she had some fact to tell,
Silent with long-unbroken silences,
Centered in self yet not unpleased to please,
Gravely monotonous like a passing bell.
Mindful of drudging daily common things,

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Patient at pastime, patient at her work,

Wearied perhaps but strenuous certainly.
Sometimes I fancy we may one day see
Her head shoot forth seven stars from where they lurk
And her eyes lightnings and her shoulders wings.
Holy Innocents

THEY scarcely waked before they slept,

They scarcely wept before they laughed;
They drank indeed death's bitter draught,
But all its bitterest dregs were kept
And drained by Mothers while they wept.
From Heaven the speechless Infants speak:
Weep not (they say), our Mothers dear,
For swords nor sorrows come not here.
Now we are strong who were so weak,
And all is ours we could not seek.
We bloom among the blooming flowers,
We sing among the singing birds;
Wisdom we have who wanted words:
here morning knows not evening hours,
All's rainbow here without the showers.
And softer than our Mother's breast,
And closer than our Mother's arm,
Is here the Love that keeps us warm
And broods above our happy next.
Dear Mothers, come: for Heaven is best.

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The Holy Innocents (feast day 28th Dec.) The Holy

Innocents appear to the Holy family as they fl ee into Egypt
(Holman Hunt) C19 Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool Matthew
2:7-23, Jeremiah 40:1

[13 And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in
a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt,
and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to
destroy him.14 When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and
departed into Egypt: 15 And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be
fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I
called my son.16 Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was
exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and
in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he
had diligently enquired of the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken
by Jeremy the prophet, saying, 18 In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and
weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be
comforted, because they are not. (Matthew 2 13-18)]

On Yarmouth Beach, Norfolk--drawing by Christina Rossetti

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