Goblin Market Themes

The world of "Goblin Market" is a woman's world. We never meet any male characters, and the only sign that men exist at all comes at the very end, when we're told that Lizzie and Laura have become...

Although Christina Rossetti always insisted that "Goblin Market" was a poem for children, it's hard for readers to miss the erotic imagery and sensual language that pervade the poem. Critics and re...

Some critics, like Laura J. Hartman, think that Laura's experience at the "Goblin Market" is similar to drug addiction. This reading makes some sense. After eating the fruit, Laura can't think abou...

Whether you read Laura's binge on the goblin fruit as a sexual escapade or as the beginning of a descent into chemical addiction and withdrawal, the poem certainly seems to want us to read it as so...

The real violence in the scene in "Goblin Market" where Lizzie gets beat up by the goblins makes many readers uncomfortable. If eating the fruit is interpreted as a loss of virginity (see the "Sex"...