Jonty Claypole

They were given new names.

And Christina Rossetti completely believed in this as a project.

She was a sister there.

And the rather grim reading of Goblet Market and the conventional ending, which ends on this hymn to sisterhood, is that it is a hymn to the sisters like ourselves, the Christian women who are volunteering to lift up the fallen women like Laura.

But of course, if that's what...

Rossetti had done, and there were many, many poems written in the Victorian era which take that very direct, didactic, one-dimensional, hectoring note.

What makes Goblin Market so fascinating is it is totally conflicted, because although on one hand, Christina Rossetti is on the side of the sisterhood, of the penitentiary, of the reforming fallen women, she's also completely drawn, and through the poem, I think, trying to work through

this sensual craving for the goblin fruit and the life that Laura chooses.

And the ending is actually radical because Laura sucks on the fruit.

She's a fallen woman.

She does not end up dead underneath the arches as the pre-Raphaelites would have her.

She actually takes an antidote and goes on to be happily married and have a large household of children.

So it's also very subversive.

It's just an amazingly conflicted poem.

Yes, and we have to keep reminding ourselves the fallen woman.

There is no such thing as a fallen woman.

It is a construct.

It's a makeup.

But Sophie, we can't end with the fallen woman.

We've got to end with the wombat, Sophie.