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Saturday, January 4, 2014

Fantasy, Realism, and Rossetti! Oh my!: Thoughts on “Goblin Market”



If you ever have the opportunity to study Christina Rossetti in an academic climate, you will find more academic journal articles, essays, and even books written on “Goblin Market” than on any other of her many fine works.  Even when you do find a resource touching on another of her poems, it is frequently analyzed in light of or in conjunction with “Goblin Market.”

In other words, if you would like to learn about “Goblin Market,” prepare yourself for a feast.

As could be expected in academia, however, this feast is a cornucopia of contradictory ideas and interpretations.  Some suggest that “Goblin Market” is a metaphor for humanity’s fall and Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.  If you are of a Christian bent, you can easily see why someone might see this.  Laura’s fall comes through fruit; Lizzie’s pure behavior and self-sacrifice brings Laura back. There is even the beautiful sacramental language of “Eat me, drink me, love me” (473) which resonates with the Christian Eucharist.  Further research tells that Rossetti was heavily involved in the Anglican church, so this makes the Christian narrative interpretation quite believable.

Other interpretations build from the highly sensual language in the poem.  Some writers say that it is a metaphor for the emphasis that Victorians put on women’s virginal status and its role on the economic state of women in England.  This too is easy to see; Lizzie is saved by keeping her silver penny, a metaphor for virginity, while Jeannie dies “for joys brides hope to have” (315).  Research also informs us that Rossetti worked with the Anglican church to provide relief and healing to women who had been involved in prostitution.  This interpretation is also viable and supported with both literary and historical evidence.

The sensual nature of the poem has spurred even extremely prurient takes on its meaning; for example, Playboy once released a book with erotic photographs to go along with the poem. All you need to do is read “She sucked and sucked and sucked the more/ […] / She sucked until her lips were sore” (139-141) and you sort of get the idea.  All I can say is that they must have been trying to appeal to lonely English professors.

You can research “Goblin Market” until you are dizzy (and I have).  In everyone’s eagerness to explicate this poem into oblivion, however, I notice that no one ever stops to ask, “Hey, what if this was just a story she wrote?” Even if one did, the reply is obvious.  All stories have a deeper meaning—no story is “just” a story.  While Stanley Fish might insist that the readers create that meaning all by themselves, I tend to think that the meaning more or less comes from the author.

(However, my many issues with Fish and his extreme reader-response criticism are outside the scope of this blog post.  Perhaps another day I shall delve into the problems with the controversial idea that meaning is created and not found.)

A question which I also have never seen asked is this: “What genre is ‘Goblin Market?’” Answers to such a question would generally be either “literature” or “poetry.”  It is my proposition, however, that “Goblin Market” is fantasy.

I can almost hear the academic purists crying, "Blasphemy!" now.  “Fantasy? Are you mad?  It’s literature! It’s not fantasy, you Tolkien-toting hag! It’s a metaphor for reality!”

To which I reply, “What do you think fantasy is, anyway?”

I bring this up because there is an unspoken tendency in academia—and the writing world at large—that fantasy and science fiction aren’t “real” literature.  Just go to any English department and tell the professors that you are writing a novel.  Their faces light up at first, but then when you tell them it’s speculative fiction, they sort of look away as if embarrassed for you; a look that says, “Ah, you poor, pathetic purveyor of pulp fiction.”

Who knows, maybe I just went to the wrong college.*

However, I ardently insist that speculative fiction is literature.  And this is where the title of my blog comes in.

“Lamps and Mirrors” is a reference to M.H. Abrams’ theory of the mind as a lamp or as a mirror.  One of my favorite writers, G. E. Veith, Jr., takes Abrams’ metaphor and applies it to realism and fantasy.  Veith does not call realism and fantasy genres, however; rather, he describes them as modes of literature.  I find the term ‘mode’ to be far more accurate, because ‘mode’ suggests that something can change, whereas ‘genre’—literally meaning ‘kind’—is a narrow category with a fixed definition.

The problem today is that publishing genres have caused ‘literature’ to become synonymous with ‘realism,’ or, even worse, ‘the only stuff that intelligent people should read.’”  Veith, however, describes realism and fantasy by their function—as a mirror or as a lamp.

“Literature as a mirror,” he writes, “reflects the truth as it is” (118), thereby defining realism as a mirror.  Likewise, he compares fantasy to the lamp:

Literature as a lamp projects what is in the mind into tangible forms. […] When a lamp gives off light, it enables people to see not only itself but the external objects around it. Good fantasy does the same.  While projecting inner longings and fears, it also sheds a hard, objective light on the human condition (118).

However, the truth is that neither fantasy nor realism can be bottled into such constricted definitions; the modes of literature, while distinct in their attributes, can be fluid and transposable.  Veith emphasizes this by blurring their distinctions, saying that “fantasy can function as a mirror,” though its purpose is closer to a “fun-house mirror, whose exaggerations can help us notice what we normally ignore” (118). Orson Scott Card, a prominent writer of Science Fiction and Fantasy, also subscribes to this notion.

Indeed, one of the greatest values of speculative fiction is that creating a strange imaginary world is often the best was to help readers see the real world through fresh eyes and notice things that would otherwise remain unnoticed (61-62).

Conversely, “Even realistic fiction as a human expression and an active interpreter of the world it comments upon can serve as a lamp” (Veith 118), largely in part because “the wonders of the real world can outdo our wildest imaginations” (Veith 119).  

So where is the line drawn between fantasy and realism?  They are discrete yet mysteriously interwoven.  This blurring of distinctions is why, though the title of my blog is “Lamps and Mirrors,” the subtitle is “Where Literature and Speculative Fiction Meet.”  If I were to list the genres respectively, speculative fiction would be first and then literature would be second.  (Note that I use the publishing industry standard of ‘literature’ as synonymous with ‘realism’ and substitute ‘speculative fiction’ for ‘fantasy.’) This is because I agree with Veith’s conclusion that “For all its impossibilities, fantasy can paradoxically be very realistic psychologically and spiritually.  By the same token, realism, when pursued far enough, can include the fantastic” (146).  

This is why I once again submit that “Goblin Market” is fantasy.  Fantasy and realism, while distinct, are not mutually exclusive.  In “Goblin Market,” Rossetti’s lamp of imagination takes us to a strange, delightful world filled with fantastic little goblin men.  Her gorgeous description of “ratel- and wombat-like” (342) fills our mind's eye with wonder and enchantment.  The malevolent transformation of the goblins into vicious assailants against good-willed Lizzie sparks our imaginations with a glimpse of the fantastic heroine, “white and golden” (409) where she stands.  To say that “Goblin Market” is not fantasy is an insult to Christina Rossetti’s inimitable skill. 

However, fantasy and realism are not so distinct.  Academics say that “Goblin Market” is a metaphor, and indeed it is: a comparison without the use of ‘like’ or ‘as.’  The definition of fantasy as a lamp might say that this is indeed all fantasy is—a grand metaphor using the unfamiliar and imagined to describe the real.  In fact, fantasy is nothing more than a recombination of what already is:

Writers of fantasy are often said to be “creating” what does not in reality exist. […] The most outrageous monster conceivable is only a new combination of what already exists. A dragon is simply a giant reptile, with perhaps the wings of a bat and the fire of a blast furnace added on. […] Try to imagine a monster which owes nothing to what is real. […] Try to imagine a new shape of a new emotion. Try to imagine a new color.  The mind must work in terms of the existing created order, of which it is a part. […] Fantasy is tied to reality… (Veith 119)

Veith is not the only writer to suggest that fantasy is not just a bunch of imaginative gobbledygook which writers pull out of their rear ends.  Card also emphasizes the importance of researching the real world in order to write effective fantasy and science fiction.

Speculative fiction is not an escape from the real world, and writing it is not a way to have a literary career without having to research anything! Speculative fiction instead provides a lens through which to view the real world better than it could ever be seen with the natural eye (62).

Hence, we see that all of Rossetti’s goblins are compared to animals, a motley assortment of creatures from all over the world.  Wombats would have been an exotic creature for the Victorian Englishman to consider at the time—which reinforces the notion that even the real can be fantastic.  

Of course, the creatures of “Goblin Market” are not the only things which draw from reality.  This is why “Goblin Market” can be interpreted in so many different ways.  It is echoic of Christian doctrine, or Victorian society’s attitudes toward sexuality, or whatever particular theory one to which one might subscribe. (It might even be echoic of graphic sexual material, but I submit that Playboy released their illustrated version in highly poor taste, working to sell sex rather than increase an appreciation of literature.  I personally find their doing so deplorable—and yet highly ironic in light of “Goblin Market”s possible description of sex as something monetized.)

To ask what genre one might categorize “Goblin Market” as, in my opinion, is really a bit of a moot point.  Rather, we see that its mode of literature is fantasy—a lamp which sheds light on the realities before us.  Tricky as literary modes can be, however, we also see that it behaves in accordance with reality.  

This concept is what drives this entire blog.  It is an intersection of the literary modes, a bold contradiction to the publishing and academic world that literature and speculative fiction can be one and the same, the place where literature and speculative fiction meet. 

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Works Cited:

Card, Orson Scott. How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. Cincinnati: Writers Digest, 1990.

Rossetti, Christina. “Goblin Market.” Goblin Market and Other Poems. Ed. Candace Ward. New York: Dover, 1994. 1-16.

Veith, Gene Edward, Jr. Reading Between the Lines: A Christian Guide to Reading Literature. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway,1990.

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*I'm talking about all of my professors except for Douglas J., who taught a class on speculative fiction. Thanks for that, Mr. J.; you taught me to be fearless in my love of all things Science Fiction and Fantasy.

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Share your thoughts on genre, literary modes, or whatever you have to say about "Goblin Market" in the comments. 
 

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