Evaluation of a valid critical review of Christina Rossetti’s poem ‘Goblin Market.’

The review being evaluated is by Lorraine Janzen Kooistra and is called ‘Modern Markets for Goblin Market.’  (Review found on JSTOR)

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  Rossetti’s best known poem tells the story of a girl called Laura, who exchanges a lock of her hair for luscious goblin fruit which almost results in her death. And her sister, Lizzie, braves the horrifying goblin market to retrieve the needed antidote for her sister without the loss of a golden curl or silver penny.
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• Sexual reference taboo in children’s literature.
• “Come buy” – children (juvenile), adult fantasies (pornographic), scholars (academic).
• 2 Distinct readers, adult and child. Meaning the poem will be interpreted in different ways to suit the reader.
• The illustrations of the poem have changed the genre and interpretations of the text.
• The pictures transform the text into adult fantasies or children’s fairy tales, depending on the reader’s interpretation.
• It’s a fable or fairy tale.
• OR perhaps it is an allegory against the pleasures of sinful love.
• Children’s Literature.
• Modern representations of Rossetti believe her to have been an isolated and repressed spinster with no sexual experience. This has led to the idea of innocence in the poem, and therefore making it appropriate for children.
• Sexual subtext for adults.
• ‘Goblin Market’ has been distributed in the modern day pornography market.
• In the last 20 years 2 explicit versions of this poem have been published for this market.
• It has also been published for academic markets.
• Pre- Raphaelite aesthetic.
• The reviewer for the Catholic World objected to the poem on the grounds that it was morally deficient in its symbolic portrayal of the conflict between sense and spirit because it failed to denounce (and properly punish) the human tendency to yield and temptation.