Rossetti A05

Question 1

Lynda Palazzo, 2002, about Goblin Market

Answer 1

‘Rossetti has radically rewritten the fall of Eve in terms of the social and spiritual abuse of women’

Question 2

Rossetti’s view on women, from her religious writings in ‘Seek and Find’

Answer 2

‘In many ways the feminine lot copies very closely the voluntarily assumed position of our Lord… women must obey: and Christ learned obedience’

Question 3

C.M. Bowra, 1949

Answer 3

‘Her idea of love turned inexorably to the idea of death… in this association we can surely see her instinctive shrinking from the surrender which love demands’

Question 4

Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar, 1979

Answer 4

• ‘Rossetti loses herself in the aesthetic of renunciation, experiencing an almost extreme self-pity and self-congratulation at her self-denial’
• ‘That genius and sexuality are diseases in women, diseases akin to madness, is implied in ‘Goblin Market’ both by Laura’s illness and by the monitory story of Jeanie’

Question 5

Gaynell Galt, 2010

Answer 5

‘Rossetti convinces her audience that she is a woman whom the conventions of society could not shake’

Question 6

Virginia Woolf, 1930

Answer 6

‘Your God was a harsh God… No sooner have you feasted on beauty with your eyes than your mind tells you that beauty is vain and beauty passes’

Question 7

Bocher, 2006

Answer 7

• ‘Being a woman in Victorian Britain meant that you were doubly judged: by both men and God’
• ‘Rossetti’s love of God always trumps the love of another human’

Question 8

Aline Downey

Answer 8

‘In poems such as Good Friday and Shut Out, she explores anxieties, inadequacy and suffering, examining existential fear and mistrust of her own moral compass’

Question 9

Suyu Chen, 2017

Answer 9

‘The fruits of the goblin market are exotic non local products… Lizzie carries the juice from the fruits on her body to her sister… this suggests importation and colonisation’