Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market: the Women's Body and Its Different Meanings.

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Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market: The female body and its different meanings. Goblin Market is Christina Rossetti's most famous work, well-loved by the critics and subject of different interpetrations.The poem, written in 1859 is the ideal field for contrasting perspectives: the woman body can be seen as a conduit to God and at the same time like herald of female sexuality in Gothic fiction. Stressed by Rossetti's good use of language, both perceptions are widely accepted even if one should consider them completely divergent. As Humphries says in his “The uncertainty of Goblin Market”: 'Rossetti's writing repeatedly pivots upon contradictions and obscurity'[1]. The composition is about two sisters 'one who falls and the other who saves'[2]. Laura becomes addicted to some poisoned fruits offered by obscure creatures, the goblins, and soon she will get sick and hopeless about her future. Lizzie, her sister, deceiving the evil supernatural beings will redeem her. It's very important for us to know something about Rossetti's background before talking about different interpretations of her work. First of all we need to consider the debate about religious practice and the importance of religion for Christina: 'Religion played a major role in the formation of Rossetti as an individual, and it is oftentimes reflected in her poetry. I would venture to say that religion is a very strongly felt presence in “Goblin Market,” which some critics believe is a Christian allegory'[3]. Her poetry, her fairy tales characters, her use of grotesque can be related to a movement called “Gothic Revival”: 'it's an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England [...] In England, the centre of this revival, it was intertwined with deeply philosophical movements associated with a re-awakening of High Church or Anglo-Catholic self-belief concerned by the growth of

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