THE GOBLIN MARKET

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894) was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems. She is famous for writing Goblin Market and Remember, and the words of the Christmas carol In the Bleak Midwinter.
Christina Rossetti was born in Charlotte Street (now 105 Hallam Street), London, to Gabriele Rossetti, a painter and a political exile from Vasto, Abruzzo, and Frances Polidori, the sister of Lord Byron's friend and physician, John William Polidori. She had two brothers and a sister: Dante became an influential artist and poet, and William and Maria both became writers. Christina, the youngest, was a lively child. She dictated her first story to her mother before she had learned to write.
Rossetti was educated at home by her mother and father, who had her study religious works, classics, fairy tales and novels. Rossetti delighted in the works of Keats, Scott, Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis. The influence of the work of Dante Alighieri, Petrarch and other Italian writers filled the home and would have a deep impact on Rossetti's later writing. Their home was open to visiting Italian scholars, artists and revolutionaries. The family homes in Bloomsbury at 38 and later 50 Charlotte Street were within easy reach of Madam Tussauds, London Zoo and the newly opened Regent's Park, which she visited regularly; in contrast to her parents, Rossetti was very much a London child, and, it seems, a happy one.

SUMMARY:

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Two sisters, Laura and Lizzie, hear the sounds of the goblin fruit market from their house. At first they try to ignore the enticing calls of the goblin men, but eventually Laura decides to go out and see what's happening. Lizzie warns her not to, but Laura is too curious. The goblin men offer her their fruit, and Laura thinks it looks tasty. She doesn't have any money, but the goblins offer to take a piece of her golden hair instead. So Laura gives up some of her hair, gorges herself on goblin fruit, and heads on home to her sister.

But after eating all that goblin fruit, Laura starts to waste away. Lizzie gets worried and decides to go down to the market to see what's what. The goblin men try to tempt her the way they tempted Laura, but Lizzie stands firm. The goblin men turn violent and try to stuff fruit in Lizzie's mouth, but she squeezes her mouth shut, so they just end up getting juice all over her. Lizzie runs back to their house all covered in goblin fruit juice. Laura kisses the juice off her sister's cheeks and is miraculously, but painfully, healed.

Years later, Laura and Lizzie are both wives and mothers, and they describe their experience in the goblin market to their own children as a cautionary tale about the importance of sisterly love.