My biggest takeaway from reading Rosetti’s “Goblin Market” is my reading of Lizzie as a Christ-like or a substitute for a Christ-like savior to her sister. I had previously read this text in British Literature 2, but we analyzed their relationship more so through an LGBT/incestual lens rather than their bonding through their shared sin and trauma. I personally didn’t like focusing on this interpretation because I think it overshadows the struggle of Rosetti and other women in a patriarchal, Catholic society by trying to view it through a more modern angle. To me, the context of Rosetti’s devout Catholicism and the society she was brought in adds several layers of meaning to the relationship between sisters and particularly the sacrifice which Lizzie makes for her sister. Lizzie strives to do something good by purchasing fruit to bring to her sister, but finds out that this is not such a simple task, and it ends up coming at the cost of her “chastity” and bearing sexual trauma. She returns to Laura and says “Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeez’d from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me;
For your sake I have braved the glen
And had to do with goblin merchant men.” This reminded me of Catholic rituals and writings involving the blood and flesh of Jesus, and how consuming him was in a sense, trusting him and the sacrifice he made for the Catholic’s sins. Similarly, Lizzie makes a sacrifice and “braves the glen” so that her sister can feel absolved of her own depravity or lost innocence at the hands of the goblin men (mentally) and physically in the sense that she recovers from her illness by consuming the fruit juices, with the help of her sister and not deceitful goblins who were tempting and manipulating her.
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