Goblin Market: feminist interpretation

Last lesson we were spilt up into groups to explore five possible interpretations of Goblin Market: erotic, feminism, marxism, redemption, or moralistic. It was quite interesting because it really hit home that a poem is just what you make of it and that there's no definitive answer to anything, only opinion derived from objectivity.

My group covered feminism, which I think is a pretty strong interpretation because it is a bold underlying theme that runs throughout the poem and because there are several aspects to it which further firm its validity.

Firstly, men are portrayed as the antagonists in the poem. In their physical description they are seen as animalistic and inhuman - "one had a cat's face...one crawled like a snail" - and are even linked with connotations associated with the devil; Rossetti writes "their looks were evil, lashing their tails." Furthermore, the men are vicious, very aggressive and violent as they were "grunting and snarling" at Lizzie's refusal before they "clawed her with their nails" and "tore her gown...stamped upon her tender feet". There are no other male characters in the poem which means that the goblin men are symbolic and arguably could represent all men. This gives a strongly negative image of men and links to the feministic idea that men are the root of all evil. The negativity is added to because of the major contrast to the females in the poem who are portrayed as being innocent, angelic and quintessentially good; the detriment of the men exaggerates the goodness of the women.

Secondly, female-female relationships are very much praised throughout the poem, for example the women are described as being "like two blossoms on one stem, like two flakes of new-fallen snow" which conjours up images of beauty and togerness. Also, nature approves of and looks out over the women; "the wind sang them a lullabye, the moon and stars gazed over them...round their rest" which creates an image of untouchable perfection around the women and suggests that their relationship is purely natural and is what nature intended. This supports the feminist idea that pure love can only be experienced between females, especially because of the juxtaposition between the intimate sisterly love and the destructive relationship of the sisters with the men.
Another point is that women are portrayed so positively. Physically, they have "golden hair" which draws parallels with the golden glow of an angel's halo, and "glossy heads" which infers youth and health, but more significantly the heroine of the poem is female and she triumphs over men, who were "worn out by her resistance." This shows how women have the strength and resilience to withstand evils and to succeed over men and the idea of their strength is enhanced by the fact that it was Lizzie on her own rivalling numerous men but she still succeeded.

Furthermore, in the last stanza there is the line "for there is no friend like a sister" which projects sisterhood to be above even friendship. The positioning of this line is important: it suggests that feminism is the message of the poem because it is the final idea that the poet leaves the reader with for reflection and it rounds up the poem by reinforcing the previous underlying feminist themes.