466-68 471-72) This erotic language has been used to support readings of the poem as a sexual fantasy and an examination of the sexuality and cruelty of children (Moers 95). Eat me, drink me, love me / Laura, make much of me.” (1661. Never mind my bruises, / Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices /. Finally, when Lizzie returns home, battered and bruised, she invites her sister’s embrace: “Come and kiss me. When she refuses to eat, they “Held her hands and squeezed their fruits / Against her mouth to make her eat” (1659.

349) and then invite her to “Bob at our cherries / Bite at our peaches” (1658. First they “Squeezed and caressed her” (1658. Once Lizzie decides to seek the goblin men, their taunts carry heavy sexual overtones as well. 136) and physically pays for it with a lock of her hair. Laura consumes the fruit ravenously, “She sucked until her lips were sore,” (1654. The nature of the goblins’ fruit is extensively detailed and described as luscious and succulent. The argument for the poem’s erotic and sexual nature made by Cora Kaplan is supported by the language of the poem (61). Although scholars have failed to agree about something as elemental to the poem as its themes, “Goblin Market” is generally viewed as one of Rossetti’s greatest works. Since the language of “Goblin Market” suggests a variety of meanings, critics rarely agree on what the poem is about.

The biographical aspects which have been examined by critics as means toward achieving a greater understanding of the poem include Rossetti’s love affairs, her work with the Oxford Movement’s “women’s mission to women” (Carpenter 426) in which she helped “rehabilitate” prostitutes, and her association with her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. In attempts to decode what is often described as the poem’s revolutionary text, critics have looked to Rossetti’s life for interpretive keys.

Despite Rossetti’s statements that she meant nothing profound by the tale, its rich, complex, and suggestive language has caused the poem to be practically ignored as children’s literature and instead regarded variously as an erotic exploration of sexual fantasy, a commentary on capitalism and Victorian market economy, a feminist glorification of “sisterhood”, and a Christian allegory about temptation and redemption, among other readings. “Goblin Market”, an early work considered to be one of Rossetti’s masterpieces, was intended simply as a fairy tale. Interpretations of Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market”

The goblin market