A Literary Analysis Of 'Goblin Market'

"Goblin Market" centers around one girl who has a love for the wonderful, but does not realize that the wondrous is often disguised as the wonderful. While these two terms seem the same, wonderful is rooted in naivety and wondrous exposes the ways of the real world in a cruel way. Laura falls prey to the disguise that the wondrous puts on, and at the end of the poem, her entire belief system has been altered for good. Laura's ideas were based on the songs and stories she would have heard when she was younger, which places the goblins in a sense of the wonderful, though they are incredibly dangerous. The reader can see Laura shift from innocence to distrust and brokenness through the similes scattered throughout the poem as she starts out as something out of a romantic tale to a broken shell of a woman. Fairy tales that seem wonderful in the sense of gaiety, like how the goblins seemed at first, are reflected in the fourth stanza, while after the goblins have become more of the wondrousness of monsters, the simile in the third to last stanza shows how Laura has changed from the naive to being harshly reminded of the real world, no matter how fantastic it seems.

The wonderful in "Goblin Market" is expressed in the early

parts of the poem, where the goblins seem enticing and friendly to Laura. This is an opposite reflection of fairy tales, as goblins are often portrayed as malicious and harmful to small children. Because of this generalization, the reader becomes uneasy as Laura becomes more and more entranced with the goblins and their wares, especially as when they all start speaking, "[sounding] kind and full of loves / In the pleasant weather" (Rossetti, 79-80). Laura's fascination with the goblin men show that she has paid attention to the songs and fairy tales, which is exemplified when Laura says that she and her sister Lizzie "must not look at goblin men" and should never buy their fruits (42-43). However, Laura has not proven that she knows all the parts to the songs, as she keeps looking upon the goblins and starts desiring to buy, and eventually does, their fruits, even knowing that these spell danger for her and possibly her sister too. This proves her naivety, for she believes in the lies that the fairy tales have spun for her. In truth, happy endings are hard to find, and accepting things from strange people usually bodes some form of harm to that person. These stories have warned against accepting these favors and wares, and now Laura has just become part of another cautionary fairy tale. Naive people believe that even the worst people have some ounce of good in them, even if those people character is inherently bad. These naive people usually end up hurt, and the reader can tell that Laura will be one of those people.
This naivety is shown in the fourth stanza of "Goblin Market," as Laura is compared to a multitude of objects that are portrayed as romantic or beautiful in the songs and stories. These comparisons portray Laura as the maiden who will be taken advantage of, and even though the reader feels unease towards the goblins and their current gaiety, these comparisons set the story of "Goblin Market" up to be yet another standard tale. At this point in the poem, there is no reason why a knight in shining armor should not come riding up at the moment when everything seems lost and save Laura from her fate, brought on by her naive ways. The simile in this fourth stanza reflects the ideals of the maiden struck by the enchantment of the wonderful:
Laura stretch’d her gleaming neck
Like a rush-imbedded swan,
Like a lily from the beck,
Like a moonlit poplar branch,
Like a vessel at the launch
When its last restraint is gone. (81-86)
The imagery of Laura stretching her neck, especially since it is gleaming, is a sensual one, but also reflects her innocence, as she does not realize how doing something as simple as that could be considered far too mature for someone her age. This feeds into the idea of the maiden stereotype, just as delicate things such as swans and lilies show that she is beautiful on the outside, and suggests a hint of virtue in her character. Even though it can be assumed that it is not nighttime, the idea of Laura being moonlit also has a romantic connotation, as many chance meetings with a one true love or the wonderful happen at night. Finally, the reader can tell that Laura is planning to meet with the goblins and partake in their fruits by the way she is compared to a "vessel at the launch / When its last restraint is gone" (85-86). Since Lizzie is not around to stop Laura from making a grave mistake, Laura will start on her new beginning, just as a ship does after its first christening. There are no inhibitions for Laura, and she unwittingly starts moving the pieces around for her to end up in distress. As Laura is so naive, and believes in the stories' accuracy, she thinks that everything about true knights saving maidens in distress and the idea that there is always good in the world for someone who believes in purity is true. Laura blindly places her trust in the wonderful, just as she is compared to being a wonderful maiden so early on in the poem.
Along the same veins as the wonderful is the wondrous. The only difference between these two terms is that while both depict fantastic things, the wondrous in this case is perceived as more deadly and should not be trifled with. The wondrous in stories is usually used to alert the maiden to the real world, where there are no true knights and magical creatures are not always harmless. This puts the maiden into her position of being in distress. Even as Laura becomes sicker and sicker from not having this fruit, there is no knight coming along to save her and destroy the goblins. In fact, this imagery of fruit brings into mind other stories centered on fruit with an element of the wondrous. Such tales include the story of Adam and Eve and Hades and Persephone. Both Eve and Persephone, while not always portrayed as damsels in distress, both fall prey to a magical fruit, the apple and the pomegranate, which bring trouble to the characters. Eve brings the downfall of man, and Persephone has to leave two people she loves, her mother and Hades, for half of the year. Laura is being forced to leave her sister after she eats the fruit and die from lack of the fruit, just as Jeanie did (147-162). This is the downfall that Laura will face, and she will bring Lizzie with her. The wondrous is wrapped in a thin layer of skin, just like any other fruit, but it is rotten to the core.
In the third to last stanza, the simile focuses on how this experience has changed Laura from a harmless girl to a grave woman who has lost her innocence. Laura's belief system has been completely transformed after her experience, and the idea that the songs are not really true, but used as a tool to lure in the careless is a terrifying one, even to someone who has lived it. This can be exemplified through the similes in the passage, where every comparison reveals her staggering loss:
Sense fail'd in the mortal strife:
Like the watch-tower of a town
Which an earthquake shatters down,
Like a lightning-stricken mast,
Like a wind-uprooted tree
Spun about, (513-518).
All of these parallels are things that have either lost their purpose, or lost their hold on the world. Just like all of these things portray a desperate loss of strength, so too has Laura lost her ideas of right and wrong in the stories. In truth, real people are goblins, and they are selfish and greedy. When these people do not get their own way, they lash out, becoming true monsters to counteract the true knights in the stories. These actions and ideas result in the downfall of the innocent, and create broken people like Laura who are emotionally ripped to pieces when their whole belief system changes too rapidly. Laura has undergone extreme trauma, and she will never return to her old self, just as all of these similes have lost their way and died.
Laura's belief system has been challenged in an incredibly harsh way, after she nearly dies and only her sister saved her. The stories she believed in were built on simile just as she was in "Goblin Market," and the poem shows how her first belief system concerning the wonderful and the wondrous was a dangerous one, and explains that her new belief system based on wariness of the real world is much safer. Laura even goes so far as to call the goblins "The wicked, quaint fruit-merchant men," remembering that while the goblins do have a certain charm to them, the first and foremost characteristic is their evil ways (553). Laura's belief system was shown clearly though simile, and her reaction to the wonderful and wondrous is also the reader's way of reacting to those two terms. After all, the reader is willingly partaking in this tale, and using simile shows the reader that just as Laura can be compared to these innocent imagery and then broken things, so too can the reader be compared to those images. The reader can lose their wits to the wondrous, and just as the reader lives in real life, there are no true knights to save the reader from evil creatures. Thus, "Goblin Market" is largely a cautionary fairy tale, warning the reader to be aware of the dangers outside, as usually the nicest things are the most hazardous.
As "Goblin Market" is largely based on the stories that Lizzie, and the reader, has read, it is surprising that Lizzie has fallen to the goblin's ways, expecting a true knight to save her.

Instead of a handsome knight to save the day, real people who are aware of the dangers, like Lizzie, are the rescuers. Because Lizzie waited until the last possible second to save her sister, Lizzie became the knight, and Laura's beliefs were changed. The similes throughout the poem show how this ordeal has altered Laura and her belief systems beyond repair: before she was free and sure of herself, like the ship about to sail. Now Laura is adrift like the uprooted tree, just as the reader will be if they do not heed this tale of the wonderful and the

wondrous.