Goblin Market Essay

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Summary of Goblin Market lecture, March 18, 2013 KEYWORDS: PRE-RAPHAELITE; MORAL; ALLEGORY; ANGEL IN THE HOUSE; CARPE DIEM; SLANT RHYME/ HALF-RHYME; MASCULINE RHYME; FEMININE RHYME Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) was the sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who was a famous pre-Raphaelite painter—that term is used to describe Rossetti and his circle, as well as later 19th-century artists influenced by them—they looked back to earlier art forms and to an imagined pre-industrial past Christina Rossetti was devoutly religious, and Goblin Market, first published in 1862, can be read as conventionally Victorian in its moral lesson: the good sister is the one who resists temptation, does not stray from the path, and accepts her womanly duties gladly Laura is said to be “Like a vessel at the launch/ When its last restraint is gone,” suggesting the dangers when women are not appropriately confined or restricted Evening by evening Among the brookside rushes, Laura bow’d her head to hear, Lizzie veil’d her blushes: Crouching close together In the cooling weather, With clasping arms and cautioning lips, With tingling cheeks and finger tips. “Lie close,” Laura said, Pricking up her golden head: “We must not look at goblin men” Laura and Lizzie both react modestly (blushing) to the goblins’ cries, but note that by the end of this section, Laura is “pricking up” her head even as she repeats the warning not to stray When she does stray, a simile likens her to, among other things, a boat being cast out into the current: 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. The repetition of “Like”, followed by the “when” creates a sense of irresistible forward motion There is a slant rhyme right before that line; a “slant rhyme” or half-rhyme is consonance on
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