Christina Rossetti's Radical Objectivity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12411787 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ashley Miller (0000-0002-6417-5753, Albion College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 143-156 |
| Publication date | 2018-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Victorian Literature and Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1060-1503 • E-ISSN: 1470-1553 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1060150317000365 |
| OpenAlex | W2790136326 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 17 |
For decades now, Christina Rossetti's poetry has proven to be a rich vantage point from which to explore the complexity of Victorian attitudes toward the material world. This is certainly true of her most famous poem, “Goblin Market.” Deliciously steeped in the sensual experiences it simultaneously condemns, “Goblin Market” is a poem invested – ambiguously, for most critics – in the relationship between humans and material things: the things they buy, look at, feel, taste. This is a relationship we tend to consider in terms of commodity culture and economic exchange. And such a reading makes sense: Rossetti's poem, a tale of two sisters whose domesticity is disrupted by the tramp of mysterious goblin men selling fruit from unknown climes, grapples in many ways with these exact terms. Laura (who barters a lock of hair for the goblin fruit and then begins to waste away from an insatiable appetite) and Lizzie (who saves her sister by bringing home an antidote in the form of fruit juice, which she herself has refused to consume) seem to embody the potential dangers faced by the female consumer. Indeed, so much has been written about the relationship between women and consumer culture in “Goblin Market” that it nearly qualifies as its own subfield in Victorian studies
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Commodity · Literature · Poetry · Sociology · Taste · Historical Art and Culture Studies · History · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Psychology · Thomas Hardy Literature Studies
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |