Mill’s “The Subjection of Women” and Rossetti’s “Goblin Market”:

The “Woman question” in two texts of the 19th century

The “Woman Question” is one of the most important issues of the 19th century. Women

were subjected to the will of men, they were supposed to be the “angels of the house”, to be

calm, wise, protective, to be the conscience of men, who were supposed to have the effective

power over them. Women were thought to be intellectually inferior, even though they got an

education it was just for the sake of the household because they could not work, female jobs did

not exist. As a consequence they had no income, this fact making them totally dependent on men.

Most of them believed that their condition was decided by God and that it was therefore

irreversible. Even Queen Victoria, writing to her recently married daughter, was aware of the

state of women during her century: “ … still men are very selfish and the woman’s devotion is

always one of submission which makes our poor sex so very unenviable. This you will feel

hereafter – I know; though it cannot be otherwise as God has willed it so” (1581). Women had to

repress their natural desires and there was absolutely no freedom of expression of any kind for

them.

The issues of repressed desires and of lack of freedom are exactly what Christina

Rossetti’s poem “Goblin Market” tries to deal with. During the 19th century women were not

supposed to have desires, and according to Escobar, “Goblin Market” supplants this Victorian

truth, showing that women had those desires and that they were susceptible to them: “Rossetti’s

work undercut the domestic ideology of middle and upper-class Victorians, and functions to

subvert both the patriarchal values that governed Victorian England and their extension in

industrialism and capitalism.” (131)

 The poem represents two sisters who are two sides of a woman’s character: Laura, an

unconventional, impulsive woman, who longs for freedom and listens to her interior desires and

Lizzie, who tries to repress her desire and to dissuade her sister from falling into the goblins’

trap. The author presents two apparent extremes of a woman’s character, but after a close reading

of the text the reader discovers that even Lizzie betrays little signs of her natural desire and

attraction to the goblins and their fruits: “Laura bowed her head to hear,/Lizzie veiled her

blushes” (34-35). Desire is present in Lizzie, but it is Laura that exposes herself, listens to her

instinct and goes against convention accepting the invitation of the goblins to eat their fruit.

The goblins can be interpreted as symbols of men, maybe strangers selling goods in the

markets of the 19th century. They call and call until Laura gives up, she cannot resist anymore

and frees herself from the bounds of convention, eating the prohibited fruit and reminding very

much Eve’s original sin. The goblins as symbols of men have a kind of seductive power on her

mind already from the beginning of her adventure, and John Stuart Mill explains this kind of

power clearly in his essay “The Subjection of Women”. The philosopher writes: “Men do not

want solely the obedience of women, they want their sentiments. All men, except the most

brutish, desire to have, in the woman most nearly connected with them, not a forced slave but a

willing one, not a slave merely, but a favorite. They have therefore put everything in practice to

enslave their minds.” (1063). Lizzie was willing and desired to eat the fruits and she literally

became mad after having eaten them. The goblins had the control of her mind just before the she

ate the fruits, during her action of eating and the consequences are extended also in the future,

when she is unable to hear their voices and to eat their fruits.

The demon-like goblins consider Laura attractive and call her every day and at the end

she gains the longed pleasure from them. After that moment they do not call her anymore, maybe
because they do not find her attractive, maybe because they just wanted to enslave her mind in

some way and then leave her alone. Mill discusses this peculiar womanly situation in the

following way: “When we put together three things – first, the natural attraction between

opposite sexes; secondly, the wife’s entire dependence on the husband, every privilege or

pleasure she has being either his gift, or depending entirely on his will; and lastly, that the

principal object of human pursuit, consideration, and all objects of social ambition, can in

general be sought or obtained by her only through him, it would be a miracle if the object of

being attractive to men had not become the polar star of feminine education and formation of

character.” (1064) The goblins are the ones who can give Laura pleasure, she is dependant on

them in any sense. At the moment they do not want her anymore, when they are not interested in

her anymore she is just left falling, suffering and fading away. In his essay, Mill sustains that “…

women are brought up from the very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is

the very opposite of that of men; not self-will, and government by self-control, but submission

and yielding to the control of others.” (1063) : this is exactly what Laura experiences at her own

expense and what Lizzie experiences too, but wants to repress it in order to be able to remain

protected by social conventions.

Laura knows exactly what will happen after having eaten the prohibited fruits, because in

paying the goblins with one of her curls – the only “money she possesses – she pours a tear.

Hairs are typically women’s symbols for femininity and Laura sacrifices her femininity to the

goblins that will exploit it and after having done that, they will leave her without notice.

Laura “…no more swept the house, / Tended the fowls or cows, / Fetched honey, kneaded

caked of wheat, / Brought water from the brook: / But sat down listless in the chimney-nook /

And would not eat.” (293-298). She gives up all her conventional duties, she is no more the
classical “angel of the house” and she is depressed, she suffers more and more day by day.

According to Escobar, women suffered a lot if they failed in reflecting those images of the

“angels of the household”: “… Victorian women suffered terribly if they failed in this sacred

duty while those who upheld the feminine virtues were warned against tainting themselves with

the sin of a fallen sister.” (132) In this poem there are two woman suffering at the same time:

Laura, because she cannot hear the voices of the goblins anymore and Lizzie suffers with her

because her loved sister has left all the securities that conventional lifestyle could give her in

order to follow her desire.

Laura is not left alone in her suffering. She is helped by Lizzie that cannot stand still and

see her fading away. In Escoban’s article, the author writes of the redemption and restoration of a

woman who succumbed her desires (135). Christina Rossetti and her character Lizzie know how

Laura feels: it is a feeling that just a 19th century woman can understand, it is the depression

caused by continually repressed desires and by the lack of freedom, by the subjection of women

to men and by their impossibility to handle their lives as they wanted to. The realistic description

of Laura’s sufferings arises in the poem from this deep understanding and Lizzie’s act of courage

makes her appear like, according to Escoban, a “masculine woman” (146). She possess strength

of mind and body, all qualities that, during the 19th century, were supposed to be peculiar of men.

She is strong and refuses the goblin’s temptations and even when they insult her – they clearly

feel their pride offended, like men probably felt if refused by women – she “…stood / Like a lily

in a flood, - / Like a rock of blue-veined stone / Lashed by tides obstreperously” (408-411).

Furthermore, Lizzie never blames Laura for what she has done: maybe it is exactly what she

wanted to do too, but never had the courage to carry out the same action.
 Courageous Lizzie frees her sister – and other part of herself - from what Mill describes

as a logic of power that forces somebody to do something that this person does not voluntarily

want to do (1070). At the end of the poem the two women succumb the laws of convention, they

are married and have children, but Laura is able to tell her children what happened to her and her

sister remembering “Those pleasant days long gone / Of not-returning time:” (550-551). It is a

pleasant remembrance after all and precisely because of that Laura will be able to warn her

children effectively of the consequences of succumbing to desire.

 Works cited

Escobar, Kirsten E. “Female Saint, Female Prodigal: Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin

Market”” Religion and the Arts 2001; 5 (1-2): 129-54. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 13

October 2010.

Mill, John Stuart. “The Subjection of Women.” The Norton Anthology of English

Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton & Company,

2006. 1061, 1063-1064, 1070.

Rossetti, Christina. “Goblin Market”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed.

M.H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006. 1466, 1472,

1474, 1477

“The Women Question”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams

and Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1581.