Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market"

Title page of First Edition of "Goblin Market"

When the Laura and her sister Lizzie leave their homestead to go "with pitchers to the reedy brook," Lizzie starts to hear the "fruit-call" of the goblin men whose temptation Laura had earlier been unable to resist, having gorged herself on many delicious fruits.

Till Lizzie urged, "O Laura, come;
I hear the fruit-call, but I dare not look:
You should not loiter longer at this brook:
Come with me home ("Goblin Market, Lines 242-245)

A participant at our discussion on Monday the 19th observed that Laura and Lizzie had altogether different interactions with the goblin men.  Laura gave in to their "fruit-call," Lizzie stood firm while the men tried to force feed her. Laura pays for the fruit with a lock of her golden hair. Lizzie pays in coin, which the goblin me toss back at her when she rebuffs them.  Laura is a pleasure seeker, Lizzie a pleasure refuser.

When Lizzie returned to the ailing Laura, they shared the juices. Laura experiences some kind of "meltdown":

Her lips began to scortch,
That juice was wormwood to her tongue,
She loathed the feast;
Writhing as one possessed she leaped and sung,
Rent all her robe, and wrung
Her hands in lamentable haste,
And beat her breast,
Her locks streamed like the torch
Borne by a racer at full speed,
Or like the mane of horses in their flight,
Or like an eagle when she stems the light
Straight toward the sun,
Or like a caged thing freed,
Or like a flying flag when armies run ...

She fell at last;
Pleasure past and anguish past,
Is it death or is it life?  (Lines 493-523)

Laura is now freed from her past experiences. Her meltdown led to a catharsis.

The first line of the next stanza reads: "Life out of death."  Laura is restored to health. Lizzie's heed of the "fruit-call" of the goblin men turns out to be act of self-sacrifice, which becomes for Rossetti a shining example of sisterly love.

Christina Rossetti is said to have maintained that the poem is not a "systematic allegory." I do not, however, consider it to be either nonsense verse or a 19th-century fairy tale.  "Goblin Market" says something profound about the transactions that take place between males and females as they look for the perceived pleasures of life.

Postscript to "Bartleby the Scrivener"

Herman Melville in an 1861 photo

Participants in last week's discussion on "Bartleby the Scrivener" by Herman Melville offered a range of perspectives on this enigmatic short story.  I was particularly taken with one member's recollection of working for the B. Altman department store in New York in the 1940's. She described a throng of middle-aged men, many still sporting their green office visors, who came pouring out of the Altman's back offices at the end of the day.

Melville may have written almost 100 years earlier, however the class of men depicted in "Bartleby the Scrivener" is the same. They are clerical workers in the era before office automation. They copy documents, count money, keep books.

"Bartleby the Scrivener" portrays alienation in the workplace because of the repetitive, seemingly meaningless work many human beings do in their jobs day in and day out. Given economic necessity and a need in every society to preserve a status quo, this alienation becomes a taboo subject.

When I started my professional career, I worked for a number of years for scientific publishing concerns in Manhattan. I can remember discussing Melville's short story with co-workers. Bartleby's attitude (encapsulated in his famous rebuke to his boss when given the task of comparison copy reading : "I prefer not to.") resonated for us, for we were young men contemplating our future financial prospects and the quality of work life that went with them.

The one redeeming grace of the story, which keeps it from being a total "downer," is the growth in the narrator's compassion for Bartleby. At one point he offers to take Bartleby into his home, and at the end of the story he visits Bartleby at the Tombs prison in lower Manhattan and tries to arrange with a Mr. Cutlets (!) for him to receive better quality food. It is too late, however, for Bartleby is already asleep "with kings and counselors."

In the final analysis, the narrator and Bartleby have what can be described as an "impossible relationship." Bartleby simply cannot be helped. The famous last line of the piece, which the narrator tellingly intones in the vocative case, is "Ah Bartleby, Ah Humanity".  Is it uttered as a sigh of resignation, a cry of rebellion, or the voice of compassion?