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We must not look at goblin men
Jan. 6th, 2007 12:33 pmOur first work in Victorian Lit was to read Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market.' I read it for the first time when I was about fifteen, and my god I was so obsessed. Fairies and goblins and sibcest yay.
The goblin men are obviously sexual—fruit is the ripened ovary, Eve’s apple, the seed and the womb. And they’re sweet and sticky and round and smooth and yielding. But the goblins are also inhuman, intensified. “Men sell not such in any town.” The goblins are a masculine sexual force, outside that of mortal men. Their animalistic aspects reinforce this identification. Animals signify the earthy part of sexuality, and the sinful part. Tails reference the genitals, cats sensuality.
So Laura is tempted by a sort of heightened male sexuality, and indulges in it. And it just about kills her. It saps her energy, drains her vitality, and leaves her emotionally wrecked. She wants more, but they just won’t call. Tongue out of cheek, I think that there is significance to her frustration at her inability to control her “sexual” relationship. She can’t hear them, she can’t do anything about her physical cravings.
It’s the kiss of her sister that saves her. Lizzie dares the goblin men, facing but resistant. Temptation is literally covering her. And drinking the juice off of her sister’s body proves the cure that Laura needs. The sisters just so very explicitly sexualized.
Maybe the incest provides some sort of liminal space for the girls’ sexual selves. By refraining from congress with men, they remain pure. This purity is essential—when she accepts the goblin fruits, Laura loses her life-force and becomes old, asexual and infertile. The flowers on Jeanie’s grave won’t bloom. The two girls who lose their innocence to the goblins find in sexuality only barrenness, not the more common fruition.
And that incest is not only positive but healing—Lizzie’s kiss saves Laura from the negative sexuality of the goblin men. Rossetti seems to be saying that desire between them is not only pure but purifying, which is puzzling. This is incest here--the least pure thing imaginable. The powerful taboos that cluster around incest.
Perhaps it’s the connotations of childhood evoked by siblings that provides the positive influence. Kisses between sisters can be at once chaste and erotic, virginal and sexy. Little girls kiss all the time, without blame or desire, but Rossetti uses lover’s words to describe familial embraces. Using a pair of sisters allows for a very direct discussion of female sexuality, one that I don’t imagine would fly very well in Victorian society without the double taboos of lesbianism and incest to distance the sex from the girls.
Either way, damn does it hit my kinks. This is going to be a fun term.
The goblin men are obviously sexual—fruit is the ripened ovary, Eve’s apple, the seed and the womb. And they’re sweet and sticky and round and smooth and yielding. But the goblins are also inhuman, intensified. “Men sell not such in any town.” The goblins are a masculine sexual force, outside that of mortal men. Their animalistic aspects reinforce this identification. Animals signify the earthy part of sexuality, and the sinful part. Tails reference the genitals, cats sensuality.
So Laura is tempted by a sort of heightened male sexuality, and indulges in it. And it just about kills her. It saps her energy, drains her vitality, and leaves her emotionally wrecked. She wants more, but they just won’t call. Tongue out of cheek, I think that there is significance to her frustration at her inability to control her “sexual” relationship. She can’t hear them, she can’t do anything about her physical cravings.
It’s the kiss of her sister that saves her. Lizzie dares the goblin men, facing but resistant. Temptation is literally covering her. And drinking the juice off of her sister’s body proves the cure that Laura needs. The sisters just so very explicitly sexualized.
Maybe the incest provides some sort of liminal space for the girls’ sexual selves. By refraining from congress with men, they remain pure. This purity is essential—when she accepts the goblin fruits, Laura loses her life-force and becomes old, asexual and infertile. The flowers on Jeanie’s grave won’t bloom. The two girls who lose their innocence to the goblins find in sexuality only barrenness, not the more common fruition.
And that incest is not only positive but healing—Lizzie’s kiss saves Laura from the negative sexuality of the goblin men. Rossetti seems to be saying that desire between them is not only pure but purifying, which is puzzling. This is incest here--the least pure thing imaginable. The powerful taboos that cluster around incest.
Perhaps it’s the connotations of childhood evoked by siblings that provides the positive influence. Kisses between sisters can be at once chaste and erotic, virginal and sexy. Little girls kiss all the time, without blame or desire, but Rossetti uses lover’s words to describe familial embraces. Using a pair of sisters allows for a very direct discussion of female sexuality, one that I don’t imagine would fly very well in Victorian society without the double taboos of lesbianism and incest to distance the sex from the girls.
Either way, damn does it hit my kinks. This is going to be a fun term.