Sucking the Forbidden Fruit: Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market
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What surprising animal is discussed at the start of the episode?
Sophie, have you ever seen a wombat in the wild?
I think you think I'm going to say yes and proceed to regale you with a great wombat story. But I'm really sorry to say I've never had an encounter with a wild wombat. What I have had is a very sustained relationship with that wonderful book, Diary of a Wombat, which is an Australian children's classic about the ordinary week in the mind state of the wombat, which is very charming. It's by Jackie French, a very charming children's book. But I have a feeling, Jonty, that you're going to bust out a wombat encounter.
Well, I wasn't necessarily expecting you to have a wombat encounter because one of the things I've been struck by since moving here to Australia is how many Australians have never seen a wombat in the wild. So I feel very privileged as a blow in, as a blow in to have had a wombat experience. That's wonderful.
Tell us about it.
Last year, I went with the family to Kangaroo Valley. And one night, as we were coming out of a restaurant, there was a wombat. And it was the most beautiful creature I've ever seen. Prior to that moment, my favorite animal, whenever anyone asked, admittedly, mostly my children. I mean, adults don't tend to ask what my favorite animal is. But whenever my children asked my favourite animal, I'd always say elephant. And since then, it's been the wombat because it was so delightful and sweet and it was bumbling around in the darkness. Just this huge ball of fur. We were very smitten with it.
That's beautiful, John T. And a great pivot from the elephant to the wombat, although elephants are, of course, themselves magnificent creatures. For the record, the animal I always say in those contexts is the badger, which I think has a kind of family adjacency to the wombat. But that's a really great choice. Wombats, of course, are intensely territorial, aggressive, fast moving and very savage animals.
The reason why we're talking about wombats, of course, is that they not only appear in today's poem, but they stalk the life of the poet as well, don't they?
That's right.
Wombats are going to feature very heavily.
They're the spirit animal of today's episode. This is The Secret Life of Books. I'm Sophie Gee, an emerging female poetess of the Victorian period. But sadly, despite my beauty and my power, my poetry is so full of quaintness and offences that I need to retire and exercise myself in the severest commonplace of metre until I can write in a way that the public will enjoy.
And I am Jonty Claypole. I am full of airs and graces, pulling wry faces, demure grimaces, cat-like and rat-like, rattle and wombat-like, snail-paced in a hurry. I am a goblin, Sophie.
Oh, that's splendid. So this week, Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti. Fairies, goblins, sexual repression, feminine hysteria, class anxiety, evangelism. If you are into high Victorian weirdness, then boy, oh boy, this is the slob episode for you. In 1862, incidentally, the same year that Emily Dickinson sent her poems to T.W. Higginson across the pond asking if they breathed, The same year that Charles Dodgson, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll, improvised a story about a girl called Alice going underground, Christina Rossetti, the daughter of an exiled Italian radical and the sister of a famous painter, published Goblin Market. What a year, 1862. So good. This long poem tells the story of a young woman called Laura who sucked and sucked and sucked the fruit globes of some... LAUGHTER
The fruit globes of some goblins. which is an unnecessarily erotic way, I'm not sure that's unnecessary, of saying that she ate some fruit and wasted away until she's saved by her sister Lizzie in what is a truly bizarre ceremony involving Laura licking sticky juice off her face. Yes, it's a sort of St. John's Ambulance mouth-to-mouth resuscitation tutorial in the high Victorian style, isn't it?
Yes, it's a sort of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation tutorial mixed with a porn site. It's just truly bizarre.
Sponsored by a fruit company.
Goblin Market was a huge success, seeming to capture something about the age, although nobody could say what.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What surprising animal is discussed at the start of the episode?
0:00–14:56
2
How does Christina Rossetti's background influence her poetry?
14:56–19:21
3
What is the narrative of Goblin Market about?
19:21–25:37
4
What themes of addiction and sexuality are explored in Goblin Market?
25:37–27:08
5
How does negative capability relate to Rossetti's poetry?
27:08–36:07
6
What role does the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood play in Rossetti's life?
36:07–1:16:02