One skill that the 3rd-5th grade class works to develop throughout the school year is applying their growing theological minds to the things they read. Beyond simply comprehending and retelling a story, students work to draw analogies, make distinctions, and pick up on themes. This classical history year, we spent a lot of time exercising these skills with Greek and Roman myths and legends. Also this year, 3rd-5th students had plenty of opportunity for considering in what ways many narratives and figures in the Old Testament are types of Christ. Along with literature and religion, poetry also offers another avenue for students to practice this skill. One poem bursting at the seams for this exercise is Christina Rossetti’s famous “Goblin Market.” In this article, I’ll conclude my little series on selected Rossetti poems by walking through “Goblin Market” and highlighting a few excellent themes that my students (or any reader) might discover there.
“Goblin Market” tells the story 0f two sisters, Laura and Lizzie, and their encounters with the wicked “goblin market” near their home in the country. The poem is gripping in an eerie sort of way, but its beautifully Christian themes overpower its oddness, giving it something of the flavor of an authentic, pre-Disney-fied fairy tale. The poem opens with the cry of the goblin merchants for maids to come and buy their tantalizing fruits: “Sweet to tongue and sound to eye; / Come buy, come buy.” Laura and Lizzie, while out and about near the river, hear these cries but know that the goblins’ wares are harmful. “Their offers should not charm us, / Their evil gifts would harm us,” Lizzie tells her sister, before shutting her ears and eyes and running back home. Laura, on the other hand, lingers to look at the curious goblin-men and finally purchases their fruit with a lock of her golden hair. After devouring an otherworldly feast—“she never tasted such before”—Laura returns home and is gently rebuked by Lizzie, who reminds her of their other sister Jeanie. Jeanie had once eaten the goblin-fruit, pined away, and finally died. Laura, unconcerned, simply replies that she will go back tomorrow for more fruit, to eat and to share with Lizzie.
Our young Christian students wouldn’t need much prompting to pick up on the first big theme here. The good-looking fruit is forbidden, sold by evil deceivers, and brings death to those who eat it. But there’s more, the more you dig. Rossetti masterfully expounds on the effects of this fall into sin: Lizzie wakes the next morning “with an open heart… warbling for the mere bright day’s delight,” while Laura goes about “in an absent dream,” shirking all her duties and only “longing for the night” when she can return to the market. When the sisters return to the riverbank that evening, however, Laura’s hopes are shattered: Lizzie can hear and see the goblins, but she cannot. Laura can no longer buy the fruit to satisfy her craving, and she returns home heartbroken. She tries to plant a seed that she’d saved from her original purchase, but it does not sprout. Her obsession for the fruit becomes her torment. Instead of offering the promised satisfaction and pleasure, sin enslaves her. She becomes ill and grey and listless.
Lizzie wishes to help her beloved sister, but fears “to pay too dear” for the goblin fruit, thinking again of Jeanie’s fate. Finally, when Laura is near death, Lizzie returns to the riverbank to buy fruit to bring back for her. For the first time, Lizzie looks for the goblin-men, listens to their cry, and politely asks to purchase some fruit for her sister. The goblins, laughing, insist that she stay and eat with them. Lizzie refuses this offer, saying she just wants to buy. Upon this resistance, the grinning goblins become hostile and fierce. They rush and attack Lizzie, trying to force her to eat their fruit. Bullied, scratched, and beaten, Lizzie stands firm with her mouth tightly shut, “Like a lily in a flood,” and “uttered not a word…/ Lest they should cram a mouthful in.” Still, during this onslaught, she “laughed in heart to feel the drip / Of juice that syrupped all her face,” which, for all their ferocity, they cannot make her eat. At last, the goblins tire of their efforts and flee, defeated. Lizzie is dazed, but has passed the trial. She is soon unafraid, “windy-paced,” inwardly laughing as she runs up the garden, calling to Laura: “Did you miss me? / Come and kiss me. / Never mind by bruises, / Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices / Squeezed from goblin fruits for you… For your sake I have braved the glen / And had to do with goblin merchant-men.”
Again, the theme of the story of salvation is very apparent in these scenes, almost to the point of analogy. Lizzie endured temptation and suffering to win the “juices” that will save her dying, fallen sister. And again, Rossetti’s details are wonderful to unpack: Lizzie suffers silently, destroys the enemy by enduring their torments, and runs home victorious through a garden. Young students delight in making such connections with the narrative of Christ’s death and resurrection—while of course, with satisfaction, noting the obvious differences (that Lizzie is a girl, that she didn’t actually die, and so forth).
To quickly summarize the end of the story, Laura is greatly distressed, thinking that Lizzie will be subject to the same fate as she. When she kisses her sister’s juice-stained face, she becomes frantic and renewed in her anguish: “Swift fire spread thro’ her veins, knocked at her heart, / Met the fire smouldering there / And overbore its lesser flame.” Lizzie’s sacrificial love burned away her sin-corrupted desire and showed it for the horror that it truly was. Laura no longer suffers mere regret and pain, but she truly repents in contrition and faith, knowing what her sister did for her. Laura soon falls into a death-like unconsciousness, until— “Life out of death”— she awakes in the morning. Her innocence is restored. She is brought to life, sweetness, and light, made to be just as she was before she ate the fruit. The poem’s conclusion mildly states that “Afterwards, when both were wives / With children of their own,” Laura and Lizzie would tell the story of Laura’s redemption from the fruits of the goblin-men, bidding their children to likewise lift and strengthen each other when one strays. This disarming conclusion keeps the biblical analogies from being overbearingly direct, and also leads the reader to consider the implications of the Gospel on Christians’ everyday lives together.
Much more could be said about these themes and analogies, but that’s the whole point: Poems like “Goblin Market” are ripe for thinking over again and again! Especially when crafted by Christian poets like Rossetti, the themes and analogies are often put there intentionally, like treasures waiting for thoughtful readers to discover. It is exciting to lead young students on their first encounters with such rich poetry—and exciting to take on the adventures yourself!
May your summers be filled with beautiful reading and pondering!
In Christ,
Miss Hahn
