A critic's view of Goblin Market

Text:  “Modern Markets for Goblin Market” by Lorraine Janzen Koistra

“Goblin Market has always been an ambiguous text with a diffuse audience, but – modern marketing techniques have identified two distinct reader-s child and adult- and produced different meanings for each. The two most significant factors in this production of Goblin Market for a specific community of readers are the poem's genre and the addition of illustrations. Remarkably, the specific content of the poem seems to have had much less influence in establishing the target audience than either its fairy-tale genre or its visual presentation, for Rossetti's text is generally reprinted in full.1 It is not, then, textual changes which establish the implied child or adult reader for the poem, but rather the way in which the accompanying illustrations determine how, and by whom, this fairy tale is to be read. By echoing certain aspects of the text and muting others, the pictures transform the multivalent verbal text into either a children's fairy tale or an adult fantasy. The main difference between the two related genres and their differentiated audiences is the presence or absence of sexuality, for explicit sexual reference, in image or in word, has traditionally been taboo in children's literature.”

 

In this text, Koistra suggests that Goblin Market can have many apparent themes, including feminism, religion, sexual reference and adult temptation depending on the reader, and that it is catered to both child and adult readers. As a child reading the poem (or being read the poem) the story may appear to be nothing more than a fairy-tale about Goblin’s and the threat they pose. However, as an adult reading the text, they may see differently.

Adults reading the texts could see the correlation between the sin of temptation, perhaps taking a more religious view of the text as they are swayed by their religion and experiences. The poem to them may illustrate how temptation and want are bad and unnecessary things, and that the sin of temptation may lead to trouble. However, they may see the want for the fruits in the poem as lustful and as a result see them as a metaphor for sexual desire and how this can lead even the most innocent and pure away.

 

Despite the many different and opposing views, Koistra’s article implies that there is no one correct view, rather a collection of equally important meanings that vary depending on the reader or intended audience.

I agree with Koistra’s view as I agree that once the poem has been published or shared it is no longer the authors and is instead open to any interpretation of the text.

 

While this might seem to be a good way to emphasize the gender conflict between the "merchant men" and the sisters, Housman, in fact, elides the sexual politics of the poem in order to portray the goblins as grotesque doubles for the girls, hysterical projections of their own frustrated sexuality.