Rossetti's Goblin Market

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Marxism is a materialist philosophy, a view that attempts to explain the effects of capitalism, the struggles between the oppressed and the oppressors and social class. Despite Rossetti’s poem often being claimed to be a sexually explosive piece that has its main focus on his the male figures dominate the female characters, my main focus is on its relations to the capitalist economy during the Industrial Revolution. Rossetti’s poem was written at a time where there was a rise of the industrial revolution and her being a writer surrounded by Gothic literature and influenced by Romanticism, her anxieties are reflected within Goblin Market. From the title, there is a contradiction in which the two words used in the title come together to create …show more content…

Her focus seems to be on the adverse effects on consumerism in particular when she describes Laura’s temptation and ‘poisoning’. In this society that reflects Rossetti’s own, money is representative of power and without it, you are weak therefore Laura is weak and is representative of the proletariat as she has ‘no copper…no silver’ for the fruit and is outside the middle class system, the greed that stemmed from the succumbing to the goblins cry is emphasized ‘she suck’d suck’d and suck’d the more….she suck’d until her lips were sore’ - suck'd is repeated to lay emphasis on the greed that consumed her. Rossetti’s emphasis on this can be linked to the epic poem ‘Inferno’ by Dante Alighieri in which greed and gluttony is the fourth circle of hell. This greed involved ‘perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen.’ And was one of the effects of the industrial revolution in which everyone desperately ‘wanted it all’ despite not needing it all. As an Anglican Eucharist, the greed would be uncomfortable to …show more content…

This irregularity reflects Rossetti’s uncertainty about her situation. It gives us an insight into the particular time Rossetti wrote the poem because it being loose creates the idea that she is writing in a period of ambiguity where she is experiencing things that she is unsure about. She says in the third stanza of her poem – “Who knows upon what soil fed their hungry thirsty roots?” – Which also suggests that Rossetti sees beyond the charms of the capitalist market through to the negative effects that it would have. It reflects her anxieties towards the rising revolution. As a pre-Raphaelite, the genre of her poem is also unclear as it crosses the line between fairy tale and gothic literature which could also reflect the disorder in her feelings towards the rising

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