Christina Rossetti's The Goblin Market

The "Goblin Market" is a narrative poem written by Christina Rossetti and illustrated by her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a Pre-Raphaelite artist; although the poem was completed in the April of 1959, the poem would not be published until 1862. Christina Rossetti is known to write poems for children, although some might find this to be questionable since the "Goblin Market” is known for its text, which is it’s frequently interpreted to feature sexual imagery, but what truly makes this poem an interesting piece is its unique use of the ‘fallen woman’ trope.

During the Victorian age, both class and gender roles were strictly and rather sharply enforced more than any other era of time compared to early centuries. There was once a time when women could work alongside their brothers and husbands in the family business or provide assistance in the shop in the case that their very home was in the same building as the place of business and still performed other domestic duties. However, as the nineteenth century continued to move forward, men began to commute to their work places, which would be factories, offices or shops, and women’s fashion evolved and unfortunately with the huge bell skirts it became a hazard to perform duties as sweeping. With the existing "Separate Spheres" no men saw an issue with that. Because of this concept, it was strongly believed

If a woman was too forward in the company of men, she is believed to be sexually active because it was believed a woman’s desire to get married was exclusively to be a mother, rather than to satisfy emotional and/or sexual desires. The term ‘fallen woman’ was coined to describe a woman who ‘lost her innocence’ by engaged in sex-related acts before (or during) marriage, since it was strongly believed such acts should solely remain within a