The Half Sisters & Goblin Market

Both Geraldine Jewsbury, in her novel The Half Sisters (1848), and Christina Rossetti, in her narrative poem "Goblin Market" (1862), use the device of a pair of sisters for exploring the nature of women and expanding their audiences' understanding of women, their capacities, and the limitations placed on them by convention. Women, generally speaking, were viewed as either good or bad, with the domestic and un-domestic or, perhaps, the dutiful and undutiful, as the terms of the definition. Within these two categories individual differences among women were usually described in terms of their location on a horizontal continuum of goodness and badness and only two vertical characteristics made much of a basis for differentiation: class (with the associated question of wealth) and nationality (perhaps associated with the question of religion as well). The essential element in the good/bad distinction was the question of female chastity. It mattered little, for instance, that a woman was well-born and wealthy or poor and a superior housekeeper and mother if she was unchaste, or even particularly immodest. Variation in class approaches to the particulars of behavior were, of course, important and what was immodest in a working-class woman in terms of dress or excessive education, for example, might not be considered immodest in a middle-class woman who would, instead, be enjoined from taking an unwarranted interest in the practical business of the world outside the home or fr

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that, in conventional terms, a marriage will join their worlds and a marriage entails a far more equal exchange than the gift of fruit, which in no way obliges the goblins/men. What they learn from the experience, as Lizzie already suspected from the example of Jeanie who died before her wedding, is that men will pursue their own advantage and that women must do the same. The sisters embody two reactions to the world--one judicious and suspicious of gifts, the other open and filled with a desire to experience pleasure. Each of the sisters, in addition to exemplifying the variety among women, assumes traits that were held to be specifically male yet, thereby, acquires a deeper understanding of the nature of the social world and its bargains--and the nature of those who construct these agreements, or violate their terms, at their own convenience. Laura gives in to her sensual appetites in a manner that is proscribed for women, while Lizzie reasons and displays immense bravery and strength in rescuing her sister. This in itself offers a view of women as beings who have the full range of human traits--including both strengths and weaknesses. Sexual desire, for example, is symbolized by the strategies of the goblin men and Laur

Category: Literature - T