Jonty Claypole

Men who are very, very charming until they think that a woman isn't interested in them when they turn aggressive.

And so she turns them down.

She says, I'm not going to eat your fruit.

And the poem goes, they began to scratch their pates, no longer wagging, purring, but visibly demurring, grunting and snarling.

One called her proud, cross-grained, uncivil.

These are the things, by the way, that men used to call women if they wouldn't put out, as the phrase used to be.

Their tones waxed loud, their looks were evil, lashing their tails, they trod and hustled her, elbowed and jostled her, clawed with their nails and so on.

So I think the name Lizzie is very, very deliberate.

Also, there's a fetishisation of hair in this poem.

And the Pre-Raphaelites were obsessed by Lizzie Siddle's hair.

This dazzling copper hair.

And in fact, there's a sort of mid-Victorian male obsession with hair.

I noticed in Bleak House, which we're about to launch our new book club into, there's a very sinister character who keeps women's hair in a sack.

underneath his shop.

It's one of many truly dark details in the book.

And in the poem, it's Laura's golden hair that attracts the goblins and she has to cut off a lock and give it to them in order to get the fruit.

Another smoking quill here is there is in the poem when Laura has gone into this state of sex and opium withdrawal after the goblin incident and is wasting away, thinking only of the goblins and their fruit.

The other sister remembers the story of Jeannie, who was a woman who gave in to the goblins before and remembers what happened to Jeannie.

And I think, again, this is a reference to a long poem that her brother, Dante Gabriele Rossetti, was writing called Jenny.

The narrator of the poem picks up this prostitute called Jenny, goes back home with her, but doesn't do anything because in the poem he's positioning himself as the virtuous male.