"Come Buy": The Crossing of Sexual and Consumer Desire in Christina Rossetti's "Goblin
Market"
Author(s): Victor Roman Mendoza
Reviewed work(s):
Source: ELH, Vol. 73, No. 4 (Winter, 2006), pp. 913-947
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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"COME BUY": THE CROSSING OF SEXUAL AND
CONSUMER DESIRE IN CHRISTINA ROSSETTI'S
GOBLIN MARKET
BYVICTORROMANMENDOZA
Almost a century and a half after its 1862 publication,Christina
Rossetti'scanonicalpoem GoblinMarketcontinues to captivatewith
its criticalyet ambivalentassessment of the overlappingspheres of
Victorianeconomics and sexualpolitics despite its deceptivelysimple
form. As is evident even in the earliest criticalresponses, the poem
has been traditionallyreceived as a facile children'sstory or didactic
fable with a fairlytransparentmoral component, yet the poem also
offers a nuanced evaluation of ascendant, mid-nineteenth-century
industrialcapitalism.Indeed, the seemingly straightforward
plot can
of
an
of
unseen
textual
exchange-an
process
only proceed by way
economythat,in commercewithconsumercapitalism,remainspartially
hiddenby the poem'sfantasticveneer.I attemptto trackthese hidden
forms of exchangeproper to the goblin marketand their relationto
the productionof desire-the desire of the characters,of the text, and
of the text'sprojectedaudience.
I arguethatthe poem'slanguageof economicsas well as its economics of languagerehearse a form of desire and a mode of enjoyment
based on self-negation.The paper is divided into five sections, each
offeringclose-readingsof the poem inflected ratherintimately,if not
somewhatidiosyncratically,
by Marxistand psychoanalytictheoretical
work. In the first,I trackbrieflythe traditionof treatingthe poem as
an allegory,arguingthat while Goblin Marketdoes in fact correlate
to variousVictoriansocial symptomsor conditions,the often hastyrecourseto an allegoricalreadingthreatensto reifythe poem as allegory,
thereby ignoringthe process of fetishismthat the text identifies and
at times criticizes.In the second section, I show how that process of
fetishismis intimatelyrelated to the body of the audience, both the
reader of the text and, to a lesser extent, the consuming Victorian
public. The third studies the poem's uses of gold, which Karl Marx,
a contemporaryof Rossetti, esteems as the material,albeit tenuous,
"expression"of the values of commodities.Though not alwaysin the
ways Marxtheorizes, gold does indeed play an importantpart in the
ELH 73 (2006) 913-947
@2006
by The Johns Hopkins University Press
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913
poem'sdialecticsof value-use, exchange,surplus,aesthetic,andmoral
value--especiallyvis-a-visthe goblinmen.The fourthattemptsto get at
what has been calledthe "centralmysteryof the poem,"Lizzie'ssilver
penny,which she "tosse[s]"to the goblins"fora fee."l If Lizzie'scoin
seems to affordher both the abilityto fend off the goblins'violence
as well as consumerpower in the face of those merchantmen'smysteriousterms of purchase,then the mannerof how it does so is at the
heart of the largerquestionsof economic and sexualagency.Finally,
in the last section, I returnto severalpassagesdiscussedearlierin the
body of the paper in orderto underscorethe productionof models of
consumption,desire, and enjoymentcommittedto the very denial of
pleasure,to the practiceof asceticism.Followingthe argumentmade
by Christina'sbrother,William,that her poetrywas "repletewith the
spiritof self-postponement,"we might locate the speaker'smoments
ofjouissance (crudely,enjoymentborn out of displeasure)not at the
happy--that is, normativeand normalizing-ending of the poem but
within the very processes of the mystificationof language and the
very moments of self-denialduringthe erotic exchangesat market.2
Ultimately,if Rossetti intended that the poem be read as a critical
renunciationof capitalistcommerceand sexuality,as criticshave suggested, then we must considerthat it is that very act of renunciation
that allows for the text's own production-and enjoyment-in the
firstplace.3
I.
There is a traditionof reading Goblin Market as an allegory of
variousVictoriansymptoms.By "allegory"I mean a form of narrative
that has a primary,seeminglyarbitrarysense that correlatesto a secondary,largernarrative,perhapsan actualevent, series of events, or
culturalconditionoutside of the text. And by "symptom"I mean an
intransigentinconsistencyor anomalythat belies the supposedcoherence of a structureor system-in this case, the supposedlyuniversal
practicabilityof the mid-nineteenth-centuryfree market.The poem
itself has been read, then, as registeringincreasingpublic concerns
duringthe Victorianera over female sexualityor purity,drug addiction, and uneven and oppressivedivisionof labor,all of which seem to
be resolvedneatly by the end of the poem. In the conclusion,Laura
reclaimsher sexual probity and kicks her drug habit, ostensiblyvia
the bravedeed of her sister Lizzie in the face of the goblins'insidious
business, and the two sisters are thus able to resume the heteronor914
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mativecourse of marriageand childbearing.4Lizzie'sheroic act-she
"hadto do with goblin merchantmen" (474)-staves off the threats
of deviant sexual behavior and hostile consumer traffic introduced
by the goblins, allowingfor the easy introductionof the moralof the
allegoryat the end of the poem.
This traditionof allegoresis,which has a didacticvalue proper to
bourgeois sensibility,seems to have started during the poem's earliest reception. Caroline Norton, in her 1863 review for Macmillan's
Magazineof the newly printed Goblin Market,pointed to this dual
natureof the text:
Is it a fable-or a merefairystory-or anallegoryagainstthe pleasures
of sinfullove-or what is it? Let us not too rigorouslyinquire,but
acceptit in all its quaintandpleasantmystery,andquickandmusical
rhythm-a balladwhich childrenwill con with delight.And which
ripermindsmayponderover,aswe do withpoemswrittenin a foreign
languagewhichwe onlyhalfunderstand.5
More recent critics have speculated as to whether or not the poem
had an actual didactic, moralizing function for the "sisters" at the
Highgate-basedpenitentiaryfor "fallenwomen,"St. MaryMagdalene
Home, where Rossetti was working as early as 1859, the year of the
poem's composition.' Lorraine Kooistra, moreover, traces briefly how
the allegorical nature of the poem led to its 1887 reprint in M. A.
Wood's A Second School Poetry Book, which was "used as a recitation
piece in the Middle Forms of High School for girls."'7Recent critics,
then, seem to have inherited the presumption of the poem's function
as allegory; surely, they say, inheriting Norton's transference, Rossetti
meant for this simple poem to stand for something.
The critical tendency to treat the poem as almost entirely allegorical, however, leaves any internal contradictions and narrative aporias
of the text unattended." The plot has its own symptoms, in other
words, its own points of internal negation or breakdown. Paradoxically,
as with all symptoms in relation to the structure or system in which
they manifest, these points of negation prove indispensable for the
narrativeto function seamlessly.Yet Norton'sappeal that we "accept
[the poem] in all its quaint and pleasant mystery" seems to have been
taken up uncritically by subsequent readers. Rather than completely
exploring the poem on a crude narrative level-that is, on the level of
plot-readers have been satisfied with a mere "half understand[ing]"
of the narrative, more inclined instead to conjecture or "ponder over"
hastily what it means vis-a-vis history. As I will demonstrate below,
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915
however, the mutually-inflectingwirings of commercial and erotic
exchangewithinthe poem prove far more tangledthan such readings
can brook and are often routed into a kind of short-circuitry.Purely
logisticalquestionsof plot and motivationremainunanswerable:What
kind of marketis the goblin market-that is, what are its means of
productionand what are its terms of exchange?How is Lizzie, unlike
her less fortunatesistersJeannieand Laura,able to resistthe alluring
advertisementsand the assaultof the goblin merchants?Why do the
goblins refuse the coin of Lizzie at the moment of purchase?Does
she acquiresome kind of consumeragency,as indicatedby that very
resistance?If so, what are its terms? And what really saves Laura?
If such questions remain unexplored,the recourse to an allegorical
readingseems an increasinglyquestionablehermeneuticpracticethat
threatensto reify or hypostatizethe poem as allegory.At stake, then,
is a failure to see the very processes of fetishism,as I will describe
later,that the poem worksto reveal.
Rossettiherself seems to have emphasizedreadingthe fairytale on
its own terms, insistingthat "thepoem was not an allegory,"that the
poem was onlya story,utterlywithout"anyprofoundor ulteriormeaning."9I don'tmean to suggest,alongwith Rossetti,that GoblinMarket
can remainan unproblematicallyautotelictext. Quite the contrary:it
remainsnecessaryto considerseriouslythe hidden laborof the poem,
to scrutinizethe text as one might a commodity.Ultimately,we might
be able to glimpse not how the poem phantasmatically
translatesthe
liberal
market
its
and
into
some
self-sufficient
bourgeois
symptoms
metanarrativebut ratherhow the poem itself operatesby way of and
circulateswithin that very system.
In the 1990s literarycritics began to look more attentivelyat the
various economies-political, sexual, and intertextual-staged and
exposed by Goblin Market. Perhaps in response to Terrence Holt,
who chargesthat criticsall too often discuss "the goblins ... and the
issues of sexualityand gender they seem to represent"without regardto "the market,"severalcriticshave pointed to the complicated
ways in which the poem's"issuesof sexualityand gender"are always
intimately intertwinedwith those of Victorianbusiness.'oYet even
in the attempt to situate the poem'svariousexchangeswithin larger
narrativesof Victorianculture, politics, and marketevents, readers
have generallycontinued to treat the plot as more or less coherent.
Nowhere do I find this critical"halfunderstand[ing]"of the poem's
storymore conspicuousthan in the discussionsconcerningthe conditions of Lizzie'sresistanceto the violent advancesof the goblin men.
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Morespecifically,readershaveneglectedto discussin strictlyeconomic
terms the mysteriousnatureof Lizzie'scoin, the "silverpenny"(324)
she "tosses"the goblins "fora fee" (389)."
Lizzie's"havingto do"with the goblin men consistsof each party's
attemptto set the termsof exchange.To saveher sisterLaurafromher
inexplicablewastingaway,Lizzieventures"bythe brook"at "twilight"
(326) with the intent of buyingand carryingawayfromthe goblinmen
the fruits she thinkswill alleviateher sister'sfatal condition.Though
the goblinsinsteadrefuseher termsof transactionand try to force her
to "[s]itdown and feast"(380) with them on their hithertoirresistible
fruits,she remainsable to endure the merchantmen'sviolentlyhard
sell. Yetthe text does not accountfor Lizzie'sabilityto refuse-it only
makes explicit what we've alreadyguessed, that those "evilpeople"
would soon grow "Wornout by her resistance"(437-38). The text
does, however,offer some hint: by having"puta silver penny in her
purse"(324) before her entry into the market,Lizzie somehow arms
herself fromthe goblins'pushyadvances.So whatis the secret behind
Lizzie'ssilverpenny?
In order to get at the nature of Lizzie'sconsumer agency by way
of her coin, we might first investigatethe terms of exchange of the
goblin marketbefore Lizzie tosses her coin into the fray.After the
poem begins by suggestingthat the marketis alwaysopen-"Morning
and evening/ Maids heard the goblins cry"(1-2)-it quicklybegins
to list, via the unison cry of the goblins, the market'swares:"Apples
and quinces/ Lemonsand oranges,/ Plumpunpeckedcherries,/ Melons and raspberries,/ Bloom-down-cheekedpeaches,/ Swart-headed
mulberries"(5-10). It is preciselyin the form of the list that we see
how the goblin marketproceeds by way of fetishism.At the moment
the goblins' fruits are introduced into circulation,at the moment
they are put into contact with each other both in the marketand in
the syntax,they "takeon the form of a social relation between the
products of labour."'2In the first volume of Capital, first published
just five years after Goblin Market,Marxfamouslynarratesthat the
imagined-indeed, fantastic-social relationbetween the productsof
labor,that is, commodities,arises as a substitutefor and a symptom
of laborers'alienationfrom both their labor and each other. Laborers are not only alienated from their work, which, as guaranteedby
a liberalmarket,has assumeda social form, but also from the things
produced by their work. Marx argues that capitalismcompensates
for this three-foldalienation-between laborerand laborer,between
laborer and her labor,between the laborer and the product of her
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917
labor-by providingthe illusion that the worker'sproducts,at least,
have some social relation,some "life of their own"(C, 165) vis-a-vis
other products.This compensatoryillusionis legitimatedpreciselyby
the promisethat the laborthat producedthe social objects itself had
a "peculiarsocial character"in the firstplace (C, 165). The products
of their labor,therefore,are fetishizedas they acquireon top of their
supposeduse-valuean imaginedsocial occupation.
It is in this way that the Marxianfetish remainsformallyhomologous to the Freudianfetish: the perverse subject of psychoanalysis,
like the alienatedsubjectof capitalism,is doomed to misrecognizethe
function of some thing as independent of that subject'sown relation
to it. In his readingof Marx'stext, SlavojZizek describes this "fundamental homology":"[T]he essential feature of commodityfetishism does not consist of the famous replacementof men with things
('a relationbetween men assumes the form of the relationbetween
things');rather,it consistsof a certainmisrecognitionwhich concerns
the relationbetween a structurednetworkand one of its elements:
what is reallya structuraleffect, an effect of the networkof relations
between elements, appearsas an immediatepropertyof one of the
elements, as if this propertyalso belongs to it outside its relationwith
other elements."'3Thus, as a perversesubjectof psychoanalysismight
misrecognizea foot, hair,or a shoe as the female'sabsent phallus,so
do subjects of capital misrecognizecommodities as social beings all
on their own.'4Both subjectsinsist on perceivingthe "structuraleffect" of their alienation-the fetishized thing-as self-evident, as if
its properties-sociality or the phallus-existed outside of their own
dialecticalrelationshipwith the thing.
The goblin'sparatacticlist serves as the site of the fetishism of
the fruits, as the site of their abstractionfrom their own physical
properties and origins of production. In order for the fruits to be
made exchangeable,their particularitiesmust first be abstractedso
that their value-and, later, their price-might be determined.The
goblins'opening catalogue,as RichardMenke points out, imbricates
"twenty-ninekinds of fruit in twenty-ninelines" ("P,"110), and the
effectof this rhetoricalpiling-upof merchandise
is, in the wordsof
Marx,the "guardianof the commodities... lend[ing]them his tongue"
(C, 189). Put differently,upon coming into representationat market,
Twice in the text the sisters indicate
the fruits become "produce."15
theiranxietyof the fruits'surplus-value,
which,for nineteenth-century Englisheconomist David Ricardo(and,later,Marx)resultsfrom
the capitalist'sexploitationof hidden, abstractedlabor-power:"Who
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knowsupon what soil they fed / Their hungrythirstyroots?"(44-45),
and "Shesuckedand suckedand suckedthe more/ Fruitswhich that
unknown orchardbore" (134-35). While fruits were of course not
productsof industriallabor as such, both economistsand agriculturists observed the increasinglydirect relation between manufacture
and agriculturein mid-centuryEngland.As contemporaryeconomist
Leonce de Lavergne,with an eye on marketdevelopment,then put
it: "[T]hedistinctionbetween agricultureand manufacturesis false:to
bringthe landinto cultivationis also a manufacture,andthe transport,
the sale, and the purchaseof agriculturalproduce is also a trade."'16
Marxmakes the relation more explicit. Turningthe statisticsof de
Lavergne'sown uncriticalaccount of agriculturallabor practices in
Englandagainsthim-Marx in fact snubs him as "ablind admirerof
England"and of capitalism-Marx arguesthat "the surpluslabourof
the English agriculurallaboureris related to his necessarylabourin
the ratioof 3:1, which gives a rate of exploitationof 300 per cent"(C,
670 n. 2)." Like the sisters, then, who question the location of the
fruits'home "soil,"one might also be left to conjecturewhat the labor
conditionsof the fruitpickers,packers,and preserverswere and what
form their ghostly labor-powerhas assumed.'"Laura also begins to
guess-indeed romanticize-the conditionsof those origins:"Howfair
the vine must grow/ Whose grapes are so luscious;/ How warm the
wind must blow / Thro'those fruitbushes"(60-63).19And later,after
havingtasted the fruit, she offers some further speculationon their
organicorigins-"'Pellucidgrapeswithoutone seed: / Odorousindeed
mustbe the mead/ Whereonthey grow,andpurethe wavethey drink/
Withlilieson the brink,/ Andsugar-sweettheirsap"'(179-83)-though
fromwhich the
the poem earlieradmitsthat the "roots"and "orchard"
remain
come
yet "unknown"(135).
goblins'goods
The verytreatmentof GoblinMarketas an allegory,then, threatens
to rehearsethe process of fetishism.Like the fruits,the poem seems
to "cloywith length of use" (134)-in this case, one "use"might be
its didactic function, its function as allegory.But such a use-value
might be better seen as a "structuraleffect,"the result of a particular
hermeneutic practice, rather than an "immediateproperty"of the
poem, "asif this propertyalso belongs to it outside its relation"with
the readingsubject. Menke proceeds with his criticismof allegoresis
from a slightlydifferent angle. Drawingfrom Marx,he suggests that
the goblins'fruits,with their "unknownroots,""standrevealedas pure
exchangevalue, pure commodity"("P,"126). Menke then arguesthat
by havingrevealedthe veryprocessof obscurationof the fruits'origins,
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919
the poem indicatesa self-reflexivityon its own mysticalnature,as both
commodityand allegory.More specifically,GoblinMarket"incisively
locates the play of surfaceand secret in the commodityand suggests
the perils presented by its inarguableallure. As the poem obscures
the roots of the goblin fruit, frustratesattemptsto pin down its own
allegory,anddemonstratesthe curiousattractionof suchobscurityand
frustration,it seems implicitlyto recognizethe mystifiedcharacterof
the commodity,and the way in which it simultaneouslyacquiesces
to ... and thwartsvision"("P,"126). Thus the languageof the poem
self-consciously-and, indeed, with a "lifeof [its] own"-alludes to its
own work of mystificationand to itself as an object of mystification.
Its content reveals its form: by showing, in its content, how commodities are fetishized,it leaves exposedhow it operates,in form, by
similarprocessesof fetishism.Put anotherway,the text baresits own
act of veiling, of the labor-powerexpressedby the fruit-commodity,
on a micro-level,as well as of some historicalcorrelativeor parallel
to its primarysense, on a macro-level.Like the tauntingspeakerof
Rossetti's"Winter:My Secret,"which points to its own functionas "a
shawl,/ A veil, a cloak, and other wraps,"the text thus revealsthat it
withholdssecrets.20
II.
Laura'sfetishisticromanticizationor aestheticizationof the fruit's
provenanceresults not only from the very form of the list but also
from the way in which the list is recited. The poem's own confusion of sexual and consumerexchangerepeats itself in the frequent
rehearsalof the goblins'phrase "Come buy,"in which payment for
the merchants'goods promises erotic climax.The goblins'cataloguing of the variouscommodities-a "spectaclede la marchandise,"to
be sure-both guaranteesand provides synestheticpleasure. Let us
listen in on the goblins:
"Comebuyourorchardfruits,
Comebuy,comebuy:
Applesandquinces,
Lemonsandoranges,
Plumpunpeckedcherries,
Melonsandraspberries,
Bloom-down-cheeked
peaches,
Allripetogether
In summerweather,920
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Come buy, come buy:
Our grapesfresh from the vine,
Pomegranatesfull and fine,
Tastethem and try:
Currantsand gooseberries,
Bright-fire-likebarberries,
Figs to fill your mouth,
Citronsfrom the South,
Sweet to tongue and sound to eye;
Come buy, come buy."
(3-9, 15-16, 19-21, 25-31)
The listing of the various fruits promises and provides pleasure, then,
as the list is both framed with the phrase assuring consumer enjoyment (again, "Come buy") and is itself visually alluring and poetically
seductive. The text incites one to consume conspicuously, to abide by
the appeal to one's senses uncritically.21The very arrangement of the
list mimics a masculinist erotic cadence, as it scans as an impressive
blitz of spondees and trochees, establishing the aggressive dynamics
of this speaker/interlocutor erogenous exchange: "Rare pears and
greengages, / Damsons and bilberries, / Taste them and try" (23-25).
It's not incidental, therefore, that the pivotal phrase "Come buy" is
itself very close to a true spondee. The beat of the merchant clamor
rouses a type of consumer delirium through the virtually incessant
stressing of each long syllable; anyone who comes into contact with
the "cry" (2) is meant to fall hysterically into the snare of the commercial and erotic transaction. So while the goblins claim that the
fruits themselves are both delicious and beautiful, the advertisement
itself similarly proves "Sweet to tongue and sound to eye." Moreover,
the "sugar-baited"(234) announcement of the fruits not only initiates
the movement of exchange in the goblin market, it might also make
the goods unnaturally sweeter. In an uncannily pertinent metaphor,
Marx locates this dulcineaic effect at the very beginning of the circulation of labor-products: "Commodities first enter into the process of
exchange ungilded and unsweetened, retaining their original homegrown shape" (C, 199).
The goblins demonstrate an uncanny prescience in providing something like postmodernist hype, or, at least, in the production of fervent
mass-consumer desire through the performance of advertising. It is
not just the taste of the fruits that Laura pines for but also the taste
of the very text sweetening them:
Victor Roman Mendoza
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921
Listeningever but not catching
The customarycry,
"Comebuy,come buy,"
With its iteratedjingle
Of sugar-baited
words:
Lauraturnedcoldas stone
To findthathersisterheardthatcry
alone,
Thatgoblincry,
"Comebuyourfruits,comebuy."
Dayafterday,nightafternight,
Laurakeptwatchin vain
In sullensilenceof exceedingpain.
Shenevercaughtagainthe goblincry:
"Comebuy,Comebuy;"(230-34, 253-56, 269-73)
Part of the pleasure from the goods within this goblin market remainsin the receptionof the sales pitch, part of the sweetness in the
words."It shouldbe noted here that while
"jingle,"the "sugar-baited
the term"jingle"did not circulateas a genre of productadvertisement
until 1937, the goblins (and Rossetti) display a keen understanding
of how hype produces desire in an increasinglyconsumer capitalist
economy.22Syntactically,Lauradoes not only fail to "come by" her
inabilityto eat the goblin fruits but also by her inabilityto hear the
goblin'sadvertisement.After a whole day of anticipatingerotic fulfillment in the marketplace,after "bow[ing]her head to hear"(34) the
customer-satisfying"customarycry,"she can only "Trudge... home,
her pitcher drippingall the way"(263).
The goblin'scommercialtext begs its own performance-its very
articulationpromisesto be as gratifyingas the fruitsthemselves.The
act of readingthen is intimatelyrelated to the act of eating. An oral
recitalof the singleline "Plumpunpeckedcherries"might,forexample,
mimicthe movementof the mouthin takinga bite into a large,plump
fruit:the two mouth-widening,mouth-filling"uh"vowels, framedby
the close-lipped "p"and "mp"consonants,are followed by a phrase
(". . .ecked cherries")whose dictionand vowel soundsmight simulate
a chewing motion.The very act of speakingthe line compels us to eat
it: the progressof the articulationof consonantstravelsfrom our lips
to the back of our teeth and tongue. Indeed, in this performanceof
eating-or gobblin'-the poem, we mightrecallthat the very form of
922
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the "spondee"itselfhasits originsin the Greekritualof consumption:it
is supposedto havebeen traditionally"'usedat a libation,'i.e., poured
to the accompanimentof the two long notes."23Thus, similarto the
way that the goblins later coerce Lizzie to "openlip from lip"so that
they may "crama mouthfulin" (431, 432), the text in this catalogue
entices you "tofill your mouth,"though far less violently,with its own
recitation.Likethe childrenwho might"con"the poem "withdelight,"
as Norton predicts, we are tempted to consume the text at the risk
of growing chemicallydependent on the pleasure it provides. This
pleasure out of recitationmight have been especiallybittersweetfor
Rossetti'scontemporaryaudiences,since, as Menke points out, 1859
proved a particularlylow-yieldyear for fruit harvestingin England,
and so "freshfruitwouldindeed havebeen largelythe stuff of fantasy"
("P,"109). Thus all the fruit that the audience might be left with was
that found in the poem qua commodity,which approacheswhat Jean
the fruit"morereal than real,"the
Baudrillardterms the "hyperreal,"
finalform of the fetish.24
III.
Lauragains in her transactionswith the goblins not only desire (if
one can reallycall the engenderingof desire contingent upon lack a
"gain")but concomitantknowledge:knowledgeof sexualpleasure-that
is, what it meansto "Come"by "buying"-as well as knowledgeof her
power as consumer.Because she alreadybears a form of exchangein
her body-her golden curls-she (mis)recognizesher infinite ability
to purchaseher sexual pleasure. But why does gold seem to afford
this power?
Marxdescribesgold as the expressedcondensationof the value of
commodities,as the tangible,universalequivalentto and embodiment
of their otherwise abstractvalue: "The first main function of gold is
to supply commoditieswith the materialfor the expressionof their
values, or to represent their values as magnitudesof the same denomination.... It thus acts as a universalmeasureof value, and only
through performingthis function does gold, the specific equivalent
commodity,become money"(C, 188). It would seem, then, that for
Marxthere is somethingabout gold that makesit a naturalsubstance
functioningas the embodimentof abstractvalue, "asif this property
also belongs to it outside its relationwith other elements."Hence the
"currencyprinciple,"implementedin the Bank CharterAct of 1844,
which insisted that the amountof currencyin circulationalwayscorVictorRomanMendoza
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923
respondto the quantityof gold in the country,also knownas the gold
content. But later Marxqualifiesthis seeminglyinherent capacityfor
gold to serve as an expressionof value by identifyingit as a fetish, as
a "structuraleffect"of the market.This misrecognitionoccurs in the
dialecticbetween commoditiesand gold. As Marxputs it, gold
is theabsolutely
alienablecommodity,
becauseit is allothercommodities
divestedof theirshape,theproductof theiruniversal
alienation.
It reads
all pricesbackwards,
andthusas it were mirrorsitselfin the bodiesof
allothercommodities,
whichprovidethe materialthroughwhichit can
come into beingas a commodity.(C, 205, my emphasis)
In something of a paradox,Marxsuggests that the very function or
use-valueof gold-moneyas a commodityembodyingvalue arisesout
of its imaginarysocial relation-its exchange-value-with other commodities.Goldachievesits identityas the positivecondensationof value
by "mirroringitself in the bodies of all other commodities,"by facing
negative expressions,"commoditiesdivested of their shape."Its very
function,then, as the embodimentof value-its use-value-originates
out of a fundamentalmdconnaissance-a misrecognitionof its relation
with otherthings.Thus, Marxdescribeshere, "asit were,"the tenuous
dialecticof what JacquesLacanmight call gold'smirrorstage.25
Yet vis-a-vis the fruitshawkedin the goblin market,gold does not
alreadycarry its identity as the expressionof collective, abstracted
value, as describedby Marx.In fact,gold does not appearin the poem
as money-form-at least in its conventionalsense, that is, as payment
in a transaction-at all. Rather,it appearsprimarilyas a use-value.
On one hand, gold-the physical thing-is used in the shape of a
servingdish for the goblin merchants'wares:"Onehauls of a basket/
One hauls a plate,/ One lugs a golden dish/ Of manypoundsweight"
(56-59). Thisvulgaruse of gold is laterrecalledby Laura,who dreams
of "melonsicy-cold/ Piled on a dish of gold" (175-76). The goblin's
use for gold, then, is not "to supply [the fruits]with the materialfor
the expressionof their values"but ratherto supplythe fruitsa literal
materialon which their abstractvalues might later be determined.
On the other hand, gold also wields a use-valuein the poem in a very
differentway:the text uses it as a referentin comparison,as a material
that lends its color and affectivequalitiesto other objectsby virtueof
naming.The sistersare repeatedlydescribedas having"goldenheads"
(41, 123, 126, 184, 191, 409, 540); the only gold that Laurathinksshe
has is "onthe furze/ That shakesin windyweather/ Above the rusty
heather"(120-22); duringher gatheringwork,"Lizziepluckedpurple
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and rich golden flags"(220); the gold on Lizzie'shead appreciatesby
the simile used duringher trialby the merchantmen: "Likea beacon
left alone/ In a hoaryroaringsea, / Sendingup a golden fire"(412-14);
Laura'sredemptionis markedby a new day,at the dawnof which"early
reapersplodded to the place / Of golden sheaves"(531-32). In these
passages,the use of gold arisesout of its citation:it is materialfirst-an
immanentthingwith physicalpropertiesandpracticalfunctions-and
then found commonlyoutside in natureand in the poem.
Indeed, gold growsnaturallyin the idylliclandscape,usuallyin the
form of uncultivatedflora:on the furze, a prickly,evergreen shrub
growingwild throughoutEngland and the continent;in the "flags,"
plants with sword-shapedleaves, by the "reedybrook"(216); in the
wheat,whichis then reapedandbundledinto "goldensheaves";and,in
turn, on the very heads of the sisters,who themselvesgrow,alongside
the golden vegetation,in the wild. Thus, instead of signalinggold as
alreadythe "specificequivalentcommodity,"the text uses it to stamp
value onto the idealizedidyllicnatureof the sisters'landscape.Goblin
Marketthreatensto stage, then, via use-value,an improbableobverse
of the crude formulaof supplyand demand:it is not that gold comes
to be universallydesiredbecause of its rarity, but ratherit is because
of its weed-like ubiquitythat it becomes fetishized.
Yet within the text'seconomics of language,gold does have other
"values,"which seem to be establishedover againstits "lengthof use":
its functionslead one to its aestheticand moralvalue.The sisters'hair
typifies purity,as implied by the fact that Laura'sgolden locks are
amongthe firstthingsto symptomatizethe violent,pollutingeffects of
the fruit:"Herhairgrew thin and gray"(277);the grain,in the sisters'
ostensiblypre-marketlifestyle,projectstheir fantasticself-sufficiency,
the couplingof purpleand"rich
theirindependencefromsurplus-value;
hearkens
royalpageantry;the emergence of the "golden
golden"flags
in
fire"(414) the face of the "hoaryroaringsea" (413) redoublesthe
jouissanceof Lizzie'sinviolablesanctity.The valuesof the text, in turn,
remainintertwinedwith the value of gold-so when the goblinsattack
Lizzie, "Madto tug her standarddown"(421), they are assaulting,in
part, the poem'sinternalgold "standard."
But why would aesthetic and moralvalue emerge in the form of
gold?Why,in the sisters'ostensiblycapital-free,self-sufficientway of
life, would gold seem to embodyvalue afterall?Preciselybecause the
poem rehearsesthe impossibilityof the coming-to-valueof gold: it is
not so much that gold providesthe materialexpressionof value by its
uses in the text but ratherthat the text cites these images of nature
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925
as "golden"to lend them its value alongwith its character,since gold
alreadyannouncesvalueby virtueof being gold. The fetishismof gold
is primordial.It is by referenceto the substanceof gold, then, thatthe
sisters'heads, the flowerson the furze, the flags Lizzie picks, and the
weather-proofbeacon acquiretheir marketvalue and, perhapsmore
importantly,their aestheticand moralvaluewithinthe economyof the
poem. Indeed,duringher transactionwiththe goblins,Lauranominates
gold as one of the formsof paymentshe lacks(see 120)-corroborating
the text'srecountingearlierthat"Laurastaredbut did not stir,/ Longed
but had no money"(105-6)-which suggests that even though the
sisters are entirelygreen when it comes to money-basedcommercial
exchange,they still act as if guided by a fetishisticillusion.
The gold foundthroughoutthe poem, therefore,exceedsthe poem's
dialecticsof value andvalues.The poem seems to establisha cleardisparitybetween the sisters'self-sufficient,non-exploitative,pre-market
space-where the sistersenact "onan economiclevel the hermeticism
of their domestic scene"-and the goblins' profit-making,violently
Yetthe text'suses of gold,with its presumption
capitalist,mobilefair.26
of a priori value,vex this temporaldivisionby dramatizinga fetishism
of gold before the adventof capitalismor what amountsto the same
thing, the prolepticnaturalizationof the gold standard.As we found
in the goblin'sservingware, gold turns up not just in naturebut also
within the bodies of produced objects. On the night of Laura'sfall,
the two sistersfall asleep in each other'sarms:
Golden head by golden head,
Like two pigeons in one nest
Folded in each other'swings,
They lay down in the curtainedbed:
Like two blossomson one stem,
Like two flakesof new-fall'nsnow,
Like two wands of ivory
Tippedwithgoldforawfulkings.
(184-91)
The text here assumesthe form of the "curtainedbed"by tuckingthe
two sistersin amongsimilesgarneredfromnature,therebyprivatizing
theirsleep by the samepoetic devices.The verycurtainingor screening
of theirslumber-a processof mystificationto be sure-has two immediateeffects. First,the submersionin similesuspendsthe animationof
the scene, an almostekphrasticarrestof movementmade starkagainst
the second effect, the incessantmotionof time drivenby the "Like"-s.
Time itself is curtainedhere. The similes conjuredmove us not only
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from springto winter in a matter of two lines, but also immediately
to some obscured,archaic,"awful"scene. The art-objectsLauraand
Lizzieare metonymicallylikenedto here-the ivorywandstippedwith
gold for "awfulkings"-foreclose on the possibilityof identifyingthe
poem'shistoricallocation,therebyintensifyingthe fantastic,ambiguous
natureof the sister'sworld.This feeling of historicaldefamiliarization
is intensifiedwhen the terms of productionpointed to by the text are
accountedfor.The seeminglyuse-valuelessapparatusesforgedfor the
call to mind
obscure"awfulkings"(whorecallShelley's"Ozymandias")
a system of production still bound to a fetishistic master/slave-or
"awful"king/artisan-dialectic. The point here is that even the work
done for the awful kings-completed out of commission,tribute, or
enslavement-presumes the aestheticvalue of gold. Gold is therefore
shown to be fetishized even before the emergence of surplus-value
properto capitalism,before, that is, the "de-fetishizationin the 'relations between men' was paid for by the emergence of fetishismin the
'relationsbetween things'-by commodityfetishism"(S, 26).7
Still, one also finds in Goblin Marketanotherexchangeby which
things golden come to serve as the positive embodiment of value.
As seen earlier,Marxsuggests that this "firstmain function"of gold
emerges at the moment when gold "readsall prices backwards,and
thus as it were mirrorsitself in the bodies of all other commodities."
In Goblin Market,Rossetti foregroundsthis spectacle as well, avant
la lettre, though in something of a more literal manner:if held to a
mirror-that is, if "readbackwards"-the "body"of the word"golden"
might be seen as the imperfect reversalof "goblin."To "readbackwards"in this way does not seem like such a leap consideringthat the
verytrope forvisionin the poem-"peep" (49)-is itself a palindrome,
a fact all the more significantconsideringthat until Dante Gabriel,
Christina'sbrother, suggested "Goblin Market,"the poem went by
Christina'soriginaltitle, A Peep at the Goblins.28Treating"golden"
and "goblin"as a kindof antimetabole,as a materialreversalof vision,
helps uncoverways in which the goblin brothersand maiden sisters
relate not so much as abstractdoubles but as the very materialterms
in the poem'seconomics of language.Moreover,the poem'slanguage
of values-moral andaesthetic-work to mystifyandreveala language
of economics on loan or even "purloined"from a properlyVictorian
commerciallexicon.Yet that very workof mystification-of "curtaining" the scene-remains itself undraped. The text's self-conscious
acts of mystification-its veiling of productiveorigins and meaning,
its paratacticmode of marketing,its occlusion of plot-confess its
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927
ambivalentcollusionwith and participationin the marketit might at
other momentsseem to criticize.
IV
If, as suggested earlier,gold exceeds the poem's system of value
and values, then what place does Lizzie'ssilverpenny occupy? How
does it functionin this economy?And where-or, rather,when-did
it come from? Even more than do the ivorywands tipped with gold
for awfulkings, Lizzie'ssilverpenny vexes the poem'stemporallocation-the penny itself seems to be both ancient and modern. Menke
esteems Lizzie'sacquisitionof the coin as "thecentralmysteryof the
poem," fancyingthat this acquisitionis accomplished"by a sort of
primitiveaccumulationbeyond the purviewof Goblin Market,with
its determined separation of the domestic and commercial economies"
("P,"127). He qualifiesthis conjecturein a gloss: "Marxclaims that
the mysterious'so-calledprimitiveaccumulation. .. playsin Political
Economy about the same part as originalsin in theology'"("P,"146
n. 63). As alreadyseen, however,despite whatever"determin[ation]"
the poem might have in separatingthe domestic and commercial
economies, such a distinctionproves unstable. Lizzie'ssilver penny
symptomatizes the impossibility of sustaining this division; to tease out
an analogy made earlier, the silver penny comes to hold the place of
the broken or shorted circuit. Menke's suggestion that Lizzie gets hold
of it "by a sort of primitive accumulation" merely begs the question;
his choice of words--"mystery" and "sort"-repeat the very form of
the symptom that the silver coin determines. (And this repetition of
form is precisely why Menke is right.) Yet why might the symptom
take the form of the silver penny?
The conjectural readings offered below are not provided to suggest that the poem's complex performance of intertextual economic
play,whichthe silverpennybest embodies,can be fullyaccounted
for.Rather,they are meantto underscorethe indeterminacy
of the
sourceof Lizzie'sandthepoem'smoney-a condition,perhaps,resulting fromthe processof exchangeproperto capitalismitself:"Since
every commodity disappears when it becomes money, it is impossible
to tell fromthe moneyitselfhowit gotintothe handsof its possessor,
or whatarticlehasbeenchangedintoit. Nonolet ['It(money)hasno
smell'], from whatever source it may come" (C, 205, Marx'stranslation). And it is in this way that Lizzie's silver penny-and, in fact, all
money-eludes historicization.
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The trope of the silverpenny bears its own moral,economic, and
religiousvaluesoutsideof the text andseems to be traffickedinto Goblin Marketfor them. In Christ's"Parableof the Lost Coin,"the silver
coin standsin as the foundor redeemedsinner:"[W]hatwomanhaving
ten pieces of silver,if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and
sweep the house, and seek diligentlytill she findit? Andwhen she hath
found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbourstogether,saying,
Rejoicewith me; for I havefoundthe piece which I had lost. Likewise,
I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over
We might esteem Lizzie'sown penny,
one sinner that repenteth."29
then, as both the silver coin lost and found by the "woman"in the
parableand, by somethingof a reverse metonymy,the parableitself,
the transparentand cautionarytale circulatingas portablepropertyin
a Christianethos.30WhatLizziearmsherselfwith, then, mayin factbe
the knowledgeof and, more importantly,the faith in the redemption
that the parableexemplifiesand therefore supplies. The correspondence-indeed, the complicatedsystem of exchange-between the
parableand Goblin Marketremainsbeyond the focus of this paper,
thoughthe criticaldifferencesshouldbe highlighted.WhereasLuke's
parablemakes transparentthe moral of the tale, Rossetti'spoem, as
suggested earlier, self-consciouslyfrustratesvision itself. Relatedly,
while the "woman"can "rejoice"for findingher lost coin, Lizzieseems
never to have to look for it in the firstplace, and is thereforebarred
by the text from her own rejoicing,her ownjouissance.
The historyof the silverpenny in England-only a crude sketchof
whichcanbe offeredhere-further imbricatesthe alreadyconfounded
provenanceof Lizzie'scoin.31First introducedin the eighth century,
the silverpenny'svalue-and desirability-coincidedwith the precious
metal it was made of, and, for this reason,it became one of the most
esteemed-and most hoarded-denomination coins in circulation.By
1797, however,duringthe reign of George III, the silvermaterialwas
replacedwith copper-not insignificantly,the body of the new penny
had to be doubled in weight so that the supposedlyinferior metal
would comply with the promised value imprintedon its face."2The
mintingof silverpennies, however,continuedin the formof "Maundy
coins,"coins ceremoniouslytossed out by a monarchto the chosen
poor during a processionon the Thursdaybefore Easter.Originally,
this Maundyobservance(whichis the subjectof one of Rossetti'slater
devotionalpieces) consisted of the hand-washingof the feet of those
poor by prominentdignitariesand ecclesiastics,in ritualisticimitation
of Christ'sown humble act of ablutionduringthe Last Supper.By the
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929
fifteenth century,however,this performanceof noblesse oblige was
replacedalmostentirelyby the distributionof Maundymoney.33Here
then might be seen the convergence of one type of fetishism-the
relationbetween masterand slave-with another-the "relationsbetween things."That is, a fundamentalfetishisticmisrecognitionthat
conceals "real"social relationshas merelyshifted, from a relationship
of unquestionedpatronageand servitudeto one where the products
of labor seem engaged in their own social relations.
If read as Maundymoney,then, Lizzie'spenny offers her a form of
resistancebased not so much upon faith in the promise of redemption, which the coin-qua-parablemight provide, but rather upon
faith in a more secular symbolic authority.The silver penny, as a
commodity,participatesin an imagined networkof social relations.
Unlike the fruits, however,the silver must undergo furtherabstraction in capitalism:money can only function as the condensationof
exchange if, first, its social characteris abstractedfrom the metal it
is made of and, second, it is abstractedinto a "universallyequivalent
The stampingof the penny'svalue onto the body of the coin
form."34
guaranteesthis second abstraction-the veryconditionof the physical
body of the coin, thus, comes to bear no consequence on the coin's
value.35Yetthe Maundyceremony,whichborrowsfromcapitalismthe
alreadyabstractedsilverpenny, abstractsit yet again:since the silver
penny is now only minted specificallyfor the ritual,it no longer functions as standardcurrencyin normativecapitalistexchange.Instead,
it functions to sustain symbolicallythe contractthat Christinitiates
and that the monarchis thereafter obliged formallyto repeat. The
fetishism of the silver penny, therefore, is altogether distinct from
that of ordinarymoney:not only does it conceal real social relations
between persons-as does the copper penny in normativecapitalist
exchange-but it also concealsanotherscene offetishism,the mystical
reciprocalbond between patronsand their subjects.
Regardlessof whetheror not Lizziedoes introducea Maundysilver
penny, however,her act bespeaksher as the characterwith the most
faith in capitalism-indeed, her very agency emerges from veiled,
nonequivalentmodesof exchangeandthe affectedsocialrelationspracticed therein.As Laura'sconditionhas her "knockingat Death'sdoor"
(321), Lizzie "weigh[s]no more/ Better and worse"(322-23), "put[s]
a silver penny in her purse" (324), and heads for the brook, where
the goblin meet her excitedly,"hobbling,/ Flying, running,leaping,/
Puffing and blowing,/ Chuckling,clapping,crowing,/ Cluckingand
gobbling,/ Moppingand mowing"(331-36). "Fullof airsand graces,/
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Pulling wry faces, / Demure grimaces" (337-39), the merchant men
assault her, not only with their customary cries and tantalizing wares,
but, first, with a retailer's obsequious, affected affection: "Hugged
her and kissed her, / Squeezed and caressed her: / Stretched up their
dishes, / Panniers, and plates" (348-51). Establishing a cozy retailer/
consumer relation, they then reiterate their "sugar-baited"jingle, to
which Lizzie's sisters have earlier surrendered. "Mindful"of Laura and
Jeanie's impulse buys, however, Lizzie arrives with a plan to purchase
(having "for the first time in her life /... listen[ed] and look[ed]"
[327-28]), and therefore returns the merchants' sly "civil[ity]" (395)
by assuming the part of customer. Yet Lizzie here also dons the role
of monarch, if only provisionally, as she rehearses the ceremonious
pomp of a sovereign during Maundy day:
"Goodfolk,"said Lizzie,
Mindfulof Jeanie:
"Giveme much and many:"Held out her apron,
Tossedthem her penny.
(363-67)
Herself now "Full of airs and graces," Lizzie does not only take up this
character by "toss[ing] her penny" to the goblins but also by demanding that her new allegiant subjects-the "Good folk"-fulfill the terms
of the dialectic she sets into motion. Her injunction ("Give me much
and many") obliges them to act in accordance with the reciprocity
constituting such a relation, reinforced by her having "Held out her
apron" to catch their provisions. Thus the silver penny Lizzie tosses
need not be an actual Maundy coin after all, as the Maundy ritual
itself, like the Parable of the Lost Coin, circulates freely as a text with
abstracted value. In other words, it matters less that she tosses an actual
Maundy penny than that she cites the Maundy ceremony through the
performative gesture of the toss. So although they deny the demand of
their new sovereign, the goblins nonetheless respond appropriately to
the dialectic she establishes: "'Nay take a seat with us, / Honour and
eat with us,' / They answered grinning: /'Our feast is but beginning....
Sit down and feast with us"' (368-71, 380). As Lizzie shifts the terms
of the relation, then, from one between customer and retailer to one
between sovereign and subject, a curious thing happens: the goblins
for the first time articulate a collective subjectivity not directly invested
in commerce. Instead, in this collective imaginary self, they act more
interested in carrying out hospitality fit for royalty. Lizzie's coin helps
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931
sanctiontheir interpellationby lending her its symbolicauthority.If,
as seen earlier,the Maundysilverpenny,as fetishizedcommodity,veils
both the social relationsbetween persons as well as anotherform of
fetishism-the "maundatory"
relationbetweenrulerandsubject-then
"of
Lizzie, "Mindful,"here,
Jeanie,"uses the silver penny to veil the
terms
of
the
commercial
relationdeterminedearlierbeerotic,
very
tween the goblins and her sisters. Lizzie acquiresa sense of agency
in the goblin market,therefore,by provisionallydisplacingone form
of fetishismwith another.
The goblins act, almostpathologically,as if the dialecticalrelation
instated by Lizzie, one that conjures up some ancien regime, were
an "immediateproperty"of their exchangeratherthan a "structural
effect." When the good folks withhold their much and many from
Lizzie, theirjustificationof this denial of her rightfulproduce hinges
on the fruits'extraordinary
rate of bodilydecay,on their ratherliteral
"Half'-life.As the goblinsput it:
"Suchfruitsas these
No mancancarry;
Halftheirbloomwouldfly,
Halftheirdewwoulddry,
Halftheirflavourwouldpassby.
Sit downandfeastwithus,
Be welcomeguestwithus,
Cheeryouandrestwithus."
(375-82)
Howeverincomparablypleasurable,addictive,and desiredtheir fruits
might be within the marketplace,they decompose, accordingto the
merchantmen, after they are exportedfrom the scene of exchange.
Whetheror not the goblins'disclaimerhere is reliable,it is telling that
they admitthe possibilityof the fruits'corporealcorruption-and, thus,
depreciation-vis-a-vis Lizzie'saffected sovereignty-a phantasmatic
sovereignty,as suggestedearlier,bracedby the silverpenny.For if the
goblins index the value of a commodityalongsidethe condition-or,
more precisely,the corruptibility-of its materialbody,then the fruits
they push cannot possibly equal the value of Lizzie'ssilver penny.36
Owing to the abstractionsthat make it money in the first place, the
coin seems to bear some "bodywithin its body,"to have been issued
not merelyout of silverbut out of some "sublimematerial,""exempted
from the effects of wear and tear"(S, 18). Zizek describesthis structuraleffect of moneyin his discussionof its "materialcharacter"-not
"theempirical,materialstuff that moneyis made of,"but rather"that
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other 'indestructibleand immutable'body which persistsbeyond the
corruptionof the body physical.""Thisimmaterialcorporalityof the
'bodywithinthe body,"'he continues,"givesus a precise definitionof
the sublime object"(S, 18). While the goblins may not in fact recognize this abstract"bodywithinthe body"of the coin, they nonetheless
behave as if they do. By admittingand complyingwith the fetishistic,
phantasmaticrelationestablishedby Lizzieandsupportedby the toss of
her coin, they are perhapsactingas if the tossed coin were a "sublime
object."By confessingthe fruits'susceptibilityto depreciationresulting from their "wearand tear,"they seem to revealtheir terrorof the
unassailablevalue of the silver penny, as if it indeed consists "of an
immutablesubstance,a substanceover which time has no power,and
which standsin antitheticcontrastto any matterfound in nature."37
Lizzie's fetishizing tactics, however, may have worked too well.
Indeed, the goblins seem no longer able to recognize a relationality
outside of the affected sovereign/"Goodfolk"dialectic, to detect a
realitynot supportedby Lizzie'sprojected fantasy.Such persistence
of the goblins'
in their misrecognition,indeed, marksthe "pathology"
behaviorcited earlier.After the civil goblin folk invite Lizzie to join
them and share their feast of fruits, she politely declines ("Thank
you"[383]), attemptsto bring the talkto a close ("Sowithoutfurther
parleying"[385]), and, "mindful"(364) now of Laura("onewaits/ At
home for me" [383-84]), resumesthe languageof commerce:"Ifyou
will not sell me any/ Of your fruits tho' much and many,/ Give me
back my silverpenny/ I tossed you for a fee" (386-89). Turningthe
discussionback to the business she came for, the purchaseof fruits,
Lizzie attempts,then, to "de-fetishize"the relationshe introducesin
the first place-to return to the Marxianfetish, the "socialrelation
between things."Yet the goblins do not resume this capitalistrelation, and, after callingher "proud,/ Cross-grained,uncivil"(394-95),
proceed to attackher with the unrelentingmob violence of gangrape:
"Theytrod and hustled her,/ Elbowed andjostled her,/ Clawedwith
theirnails.... cuffedandcaughther,/ Coaxedandfoughther,/ Bullied
and besoughther,/ Scratchedher, pinched her blackas ink,/ Kicked
and knockedher,/ Mauledand mockedher"(399-401, 424-29). Such
violence can only ever amountto an impotent acting-out,to be sure:
impotentnot only because, as we see later,Lizzieis able to escape and
"[go]her way"(448) to Laurawith only "asmart,ache, tingle"(447),
but, more importantly,because the goblins'assault,markedby such
insipidverbs, seems the most aestheticallyuninspired,unimaginative
wayof confrontingthe unbearablesublimeobject."3It'snot surprising,
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933
therefore, that their impulsive recourse to aggression is marked by their
own poetic silencing in the text: the acts marking their assault, piled
on top of each other like the fruits they bring to market, are mere
specters of the language they "charm"(65) with earlier.
Lizzie's resistance is mediated by money as well as by an economic
use of language. Whatever agency the coin affords her allows Lizzie
not only to resist as consumer but also to fend off violent sexual assault. Yet Lizzie does not just wield money-she is money. Or, more
precisely, she is, as the text asserts twice, "tender" (299, 405). Before
Lizzie "put a silver penny in her purse," the text cites her as "Tender Lizzie" (299), characterizing her, on one hand, as "kind, loving,
gentle, mild, affectionate"-the traits of a normatively proper Victorian woman-which is precisely why she "cannot bear / To watch her
sister's cankerous care" (299-300).39 Similarly, she could be described
here according to another, more obsolete definition as "one who tends,
or waits upon, another; an attendant, nurse, ministrant." But, on the
other hand, the poem also cites her here as "money," "as currency
prescribed by law as that in which payment may be made"-that is,
as "legal tender." The poem therefore abstracts Lizzie in two distinct,
and distinctly bourgeois, ways: she becomes both feminine ideality
and the very material of capitalist exchange.
Goblin Market's uses of this term "tender" illustrate how economically efficient-indeed, how miserly-the text's own work of partial
veiling itself can be. Lizzie's very agency in the face of the goblin's
assault, moreover, might very well be the profit from such efficiency,
as still another meaning of "tender" is precisely that which arrives to
fend off the goblin merchants. The very phrase "merchant man" (70)
is purloined from a properly Victorian lexicon, the textual economy no
longer simply outside the phantasmatic space of the poem. "Merchant
man" not only describes the occupation of the goblins, as in a conventional usage of the phrase, but it also cites, as Menke points out, the
figure of the goblin as a ship of commerce, as "'a vessel employed in
conveying freight or passengers, as distinguished from a national vessel,
and from vessels in the revenue service, coast survey, etc'; a private
commercial ship involved in the movement of people or goods; that
is, a trading ship" ("P,"116).40 Menke then speculates on the mystified origins of the goblins qua trading ships-treating them, rightly,
as fetishized commodities themselves, he suggests that "it seems more
than coincidental that the homelands of the exotic animals ["wombat,"
"ratel,""parrot"(75, 76, 112)] associated with the goblin men describe
the Southern hemisphere in general and Britain's colonies there in
particular" ("P,"117-18).
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This understandingof the "merchantman"as a commercialship,
foreignor not, ought to be read, I would suggest,in conjunctionwith
the poem's characterizationof the goblin men as foot-soldiersof the
market.41As suggested earlier,the masculinist,spondaiccadence of
the goblin'scustomary"jingle"induces a kind of customer hysteria.
Such a reaction from advertisingis hardlyaccidental,especially for
the mid-Victorianfemale shopper,which Lauraseems to be, at least
in part, modeled after. As Rachel Bowlby stresses, "[T]he existence
of such supposedlynatural,irrationalurges in customerswas actually
the result of a rigorouslyrationalentrepreneurialscheme."42It's no
wonder,then, that the "penny... / Bouncingin [Lizzie's]purse/...
was music to her ear" (452-54), since its "jingle"(452) may have served
as a means of wardingoff the goblins'own. The poem underscores
earlyon the aggressivenessof the merchantcapitalistby characterizing,
notablyin trochees, the goblin movementsas martialin nature:"up
the mossy glen / Turnedand trooped the goblin men";"Whenthey
reached where Laurawas / They stood stock still upon the moss,/
Leeringat each other/ Brotherwith queer brother;/ Signallingeach
other"(87-88, 91-95). The poem resumes this soldierlytenor, as we
see later,in the descriptionof Lizzie'sfortitudein the face of goblin
violence: "Likea royalvirgintown ... Close beleagueredby a fleet/
Mad to tug her standarddown"(418, 420-21).
If the goblin "merchantmen,"thus, might be seen as both a capitalist and a militarycompany,then it is with the arrivalof "Tender
thatthey are fendedoff. A thirdmeaning
Lizzie,"or Lizzieas "Tender,"
of "tender,"also traffickedinto the poem's textual exchange from a
lexicon,is thatof a maritimecraft,"a
properlymid-nineteenth-century
smallvessel used to attendon largevessels, as in supplyingprovisions,
Though in maritime
landingpassengersmails;.., a dispatchboat."43
referred
to
a
"tender"
"vessel commissioned to
traditionally
speak
attend men-of-war,chiefly for supplying provisions and munitions
of war, also for conveyingintelligence, dispatches,etc.," by the midnineteenth century,it had come to signify,under the authorityof the
British Royal Navy, a "vessel commissionedto act (in any capacity)
under the ordersof anothervessel."44It is as somethingof a dispatch
boat, then, that Lizzie is deployed to the rescue of Laurain the face
of the goblins'"fleet"of "merchantmen,"which is preciselywhy the
goblins,in theirimpuissance,"[s]tamp"(405) on Lizzie's"tenderfeet"
(405), and so on her poetic measureor "standard."
Finally,the poem
acts miserlyin that it partiallyhoardsthese other senses of "tender"
like stashed cash, in some reserve tucked awaybehind the narrative
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surface.Suchsavingseems all the moreworthwhilesince"tender"itself
not only servesas a materialcondensationof exchangebut simultaneously suppliesprovisionsand conveys intelligence-all, perhaps,in a
"kind,loving, gentle, mild, affectionate"manner.Thus, it is through
this very circulationwithin the poem that money or tender possesses,
in not an altogetherdifferentway,a "bodywithin a body."
Is Lizzie'scoin, then, the sublime object in the economy of the
poem? The assault of the goblins "At last" (437) finishes when the
"evilpeople" (437), "Wornout by her resistance"(438), finallyheed
Lizzie'sdemand and "fl[i]ngback her penny" (439). Yet the penny
hardlyhas the effect of the "sublime"in the text. As discussed earlier, its sudden appearancein the poem-"Lizzie weighed no more/
Better and worse/ But put a silver penny in her purse"-does not
bringabout Lizzie'sjouissance,as it does, for example,for the woman
who "rejoices"in the Parableof the Lost Coin. (Indeed, there seems
more possibilityforjouissance in the anxiousmomentsbefore Lizzie
turns to the penny,in the "weigh[ing]"of "Betterand worse.")In the
same way, the silverpenny does not incite the unbearablefeeling of
simultaneouspleasureand terrorin the text itself, as indicatedby that
very sudden-yet entirelycasual-appearance.45In fact, the inversion
might be true: precisely because the languagedetailingthe appearance of the silver penny is so blase-precisely because the language
here neither struggleswith pleasure and displeasurenor laments its
own limitationas a mode of representation-the text forecloses on
the possibilityof the coin being the sublime object.
So what are the goblinsterrifiedof? While Lizzie'ssilverpennyhas
appeareda viable candidate,there seems to be a still more "sublime
object"in and of this exchange,anotherthing whose body is made of
an "immutablesubstance,""exemptedfrom the effects of wear and
tear"-Tender Lizzie herself. When Ziz-ekdescribesthe "immaterial
of money,the "other'indestructibleandimmutable'body"
corporeality"
which exceeds and outlives the physicalbody it inhabits,he uses an
appositesimile to illustratethis sublimematerial,to "giveus a precise
definitionof the sublime object":"[T]hisother body of money is like
the corpse of the Sadeianvictimwhich endures all tormentsand survives with its beautyimmaculate"(S, 18). Zizekhere helps us see how
Lizzie mightstandin as the sublimeobjectof the poem. On one hand,
Lizzie can indeed be read as bearingthe "otherbody"of a Sadeian
victim/subject:while the goblins"trodandhustledher,/ Elbowedand
jostled her,"while they in fact tear what she wears ("Toreher gown
and soiled her stocking,/ Twitchedher hairout by the roots"[403-4]),
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she nevertheless "endures all torments and survives with [her] beauty
immaculate." In this sense, Lizzie still occupies the two bodies of the
sovereign-one mortal, one eternal-thereby unwittingly acknowledging the fetishistic relation maintained by the goblins.
own correlation of the
On the other hand, the very form of
how that object
sublime object with the Sadeian body demonstrates
Zi.ek's
of the sublime cannot, by "definition," be defined-how its content
eludes immediate representation. In this particular case, the "precise
definition" of the sublime object can in fact only be approximated,
announced in the form of something else it is "like." Zifek's simile
form is rehearsed at the sadistic scene at market:
White and golden Lizzie stood,
Like a lily in a flood,Like a rock of blue-veined stone
Lashedby tides obstreperously,Like a beacon left alone
In a hoaryroaringsea,
Sendingup a golden fire,Like a fruit-crowned orange-tree
White with blossomshoney-sweet
Sore beset by wasp and bee,Like a royalvirgintown
Toppedwith gilded dome and spire
Close beleagueredby a fleet
Mad to tug her standarddown.
(408-21)
Lizzie'snobleandfearlessshowof fortitudein the face of the gob-
lin violence is itself associated with other unruly, terrifying, "awful"
scenes-scenes that even in and of themselves might be experienced
as "sublime" or, more precisely, read as representative approximations
of the object of the sublime.
Tender Lizzie, then, might be seen as "sublime" not just in the
stanza's form but also in its content. The very images invoked by the
similes wax more complicated in social organization as the stanza
proceeds. Starting with the relatively simple life-form of a lily in a
flood,throughthe orange-treefearinginvasion"bywaspand bee,"
colonialspaceof a "royalvirandendingwiththe proto-metropolitan
stanzaperformssomething
town"
threatened
the
a
naval
mob,
by
gin
of an acceleratedDarwiniandramaof progress,wherenot onlythe
"good"agentgets an organizationalupgradebut so does its antagonist.
The hyphens after each image mark both the end of each evolutionary stage as well as its immediate contiguity with the next, while the
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937
increasing number of lines it takes to convey each phase underscores
this developmental outline. Yet in the face of this meta-narrative
Lizzie remains still as a statue: "White and golden Lizzie stood." The
similes she is likened to, therefore, exceed her physical action. And
they exceed her material body in its temporal specificity as well. Lizzie
comes to occupy a temporal space both everywhere and nowhere, a
radically non-historical space opened up, retroactively, by the very acts
of historicization and symbolization the stanza rehearses. The stanza
recasts Lizzie in sublime material. The materialization of the "impossible jouissance" (S, 71) of the scene-its "sublime object"-is not,
then, Lizzie, exactly, but the "Lizzie within Lizzie," the "immaterial
corporality" of "Tender Lizzie."
V
The material content of the passage rehearsing Lizzie's fortitude
over against the violent advances of the goblin men produces still
another sublime object-one born out of the act of reading itself.
While the images conjured by the "Like"-smight make one breathless
if encountered in nature, a recitation of the text, whose punctuation
allows little time for caesura, might also leave one, as Lizzie is later,
"windy-paced" (461), "quite out of breath with haste" (462). Whereas
"Lizzie [would] utter... not a word; / Would not open lip from lip"
(430-31), the poem incites one to do so-to read, and therefore eat,
the stanza-now wormwood to the tongue-beyond the pleasure
principle. The text, then, in its very struggle to represent and symbolize the object of the sublime, recasts a reciter herself into a "sublime
object": it affords her a Sadeian body. A recital of the text might, with
its asphyxiating tempo, leave one gasping-might "[l]ash"at the lungs
"obstreperously"-but the reader nonetheless survives with a body
immaculate.46 Lizzie, then, might not be the only one to "laugh...
in heart to feel the drip / Of juice that syruped all over her face"
(433, 434). For in this other scene of erotic, textual exchange-that
between the poem and its reader-the "sublime object," the Lizzie
within Lizzie, may in fact be realized in the reader's own effected
jouissance after all.
Indeed, if the text of Goblin Market might be said to "desire" anything, then the paradoxical object and cause of that desire is thejouissance of the reader. Whether such readerly enjoyment is plucked out
of the goblin merchants' paratactic list of fruits as compensation for a
low-yielding harvest, "con[ned] with delight" from the symptoms of a
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plot,orpurloinedfroma textualeconomybehindthe
not-fully-coherent
two
dialecticallydivergent,thoughequallyfantastic,productive
poem's
spheresthroughthe act of criticalinterpretation-this enjoymentgives
rise to other desires and new forms of bittersweetgratification.
To conclude, I would like to returnbrieflyto a passage discussed
earlier,one thatpredictsformallythe representationof TenderLizzie's
act of enduranceas the sublime object:Lizzie and Laura'sretiring.I
will offer here two readings,one of the passageitself and one of Dante
Gabriel Rossetti'sown renderingof it. As suggested earlier,the bed
scene is openly"curtained"
by imagesthe sistersarelikenedto: "Golden
head by golden head,/ Like two pigeons in one nest/ .... They lay
down in their curtainedbed / Like two blossomson one stem, / Like
two flakes of new-fall'nsnow."It is precisely this act of curtaining
with similes that bringsabout two instancesof the paradoxicalenjoyment procured out of displeasure,the properlyLacaniandefinition
ofjouissance. On one hand, the images conjuredby the simile form
partiallyobscurea potentiallyerotic-and, to a reader,eroticallygratifying-scene, in which Lizzie and Lauralie "Cheekto cheek and breast
On the otherhand,as in the
to breast/ Lockedtogetherin one nest."47
scene representingLizzie'sfortitude,a recitationof this passage,with
its considerablescarcityof punctuation,might stimulatethe readerto
breathlessanticipation.Yet as the passagedoes not, in fact, represent
a consummatederotic exchangebetween the two sisters-indeed its
explicitsisterlyintimacyforecloses on the erotic-it rouses about an
enjoymentborn out of unfulfilled"passionateyearning,"in which a
reader might very well, like Laura,symptomatically"gnash.. . her
teeth for baulkeddesire"(266, 267).
Thisjouissanceis disavowed,however,on the frontispiecefor Goblin
Marketand OtherPoems,where Christina'sbrotherDante providesan
illustrationof this scene (see figure1).48In Dante'sdrawing,where we
can only "peep"at the sisters from above the waist, the two lie with
their eyes closed, held fast in one another'sarms.Though one seems
to have climbedon top of the other as one seekingsolacein the other's
consoling arms and cheek, the sisters remain indistinguishablefrom
each other: they have very similarhair,as Laura'sgolden locks seem
not yet to have "dwindled"(278), and look equally content in their
slumber.And as one critic suggests, "The faces of the girls, turned
towardseach other, revealingopposite sides, seem nearly identical,
as if two halves of the same physiognomy."49
While Dante'sdepictionof the sisters'actualembracemightnot deviate largely,on a narrativelevel, fromChristina'spassage,the framing
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939
Figure 1. Courtesyof The BancroftLibrary,Universityof California,Berkeley
of this impressionoffers some telling interpretationon his part. The
"curtain"enveloping their bed shares a pattern of a single, repeated
flower of indistinctvarietywith what looks to be their blanket,which
remainstucked just below their arms.Yet we also find a very similar
flower,in fullerdetail,on the other"curtain"of the tableau:the border
framingthe illustration.As this border resembles a window,with the
flowersetched on the cornersof its pane, we can, like the moon and
stars,"gazein at" (192) the sisters.Thus, what is an openly curtained
scene in Christina'stext-a scene self-consciouslycovered up, that is,
by simile-is rendered here as a scene whose curtainis opened entirely.Dante'stext, in its act of drawinga curtaindrawnback, makes
public-in the poem'scommodity-formno less-an otherwisedistinctly
privateact. The illustrationattemptsto relieve Christina'sown text of
any ambiguityconcerning the prospect of Laura and Lizzie'serotic
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interests, as if what Christinamight have in mind-and so might be
thinly curtainingby the queer obviousnessof presumablynon-erotic
sororallove-either Dante "cannotthink"(173)of or remainsotherwise
too "awful"for him to bear. Not unlike a goblin, then, Dante stamps
impotentlyon the text'sambiguouslytender scene.
Dante'sillustratedreadingof this passage,however,produces another ambiguity,from which we might swindle, as Lauradoes at the
end of the poem, a little "Lifeout of Death" (524). Interruptingthe
drawing'simpulse towardsPre-Raphaeliterealism, a small, circular,
inset image hovers, like a comic strip thought-bubble,by the heads
of the two sleeping sisters.This anomalouspicture might be read, in
Freudianterms, as the "manifestcontent"of a dream whose latent,
unconsciousmeaning remainsyet to be discernedthroughinterpretation.50Bearingthe image of the goblins carryingtheir fruits downhill-and ostensiblyin the directionof the sleeping girls-the image
mightbe then revealingwhat the sisters(or at least one of the sisters)
reallyand secretlydesire:that the goblinsbringthe fruitto them. Yet
such a readingis hardlyinterpretive,the desire supposedlyunveiled
farfromunconscious-indeed we've knownthatthis kindof merchant
service is exactlywhat Laurahas sought and listened for all day long.
So is this inset image in fact a dream? Or is it some other window
throughwhich the goblin merchantsmight also "gazein at them"?Or
might it be a coin, whose face, in juxtapositionwith the sisters'own
circular-shapedrepose, adds even more significanceto the reversible,
antimetaboliccaption"Goldenhead by golden head"?
As the very form of the image seems to remainout of reach, especially vis-a-vis the rest of the illustration,the meaning of the image
remains undecidable.But it is precisely from this moment of indeterminacy-of the withholdingof meaning-that one can purloin a
And it is fromthis paradoxicalarrivalof
little interpretivejouissance.51
in
pleasureout of displeasure the act of interpretingDante'stext that
we see that the inset illustrationhas in fact been makingmanifestthe
sisters'"unconscious"desire all along. If we considerthe inset image
the text of a dream,what the sistersmight dreamof, what they might
unconsciouslydesire, is the form of gratificationout of dissatisfaction-the form of jouissance. For reading the drawingalongside its
correlativepassagein Christina'spoem, we find that what the sisters
dreamof here is not in fact the goblins'deliveryof fruitsto them but
the goblins' withholding of their wares: "Backwardsup the mossy
glen / Turnedand trooped the goblin men" (87-88, my emphasis).If
we considerit a coin, we might recall Marx'simage that gold "mirrors
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941
itself in the bodies of other commodities"-the commoditiesin this
case being the illustrated"sisters"that Gabriel,as their "guardian,"
"lends his tongue" to. And the coin does indeed "readbackwards"
the desire of the sisters: as the goblins actuallyclimb "[b]ackwards
up the mossy glen,"and therefore awayfrom the sister'sheads, they
are redeployed-turned or troped-against the promise of pleasure
itself, both the sisters'pleasureas consumersand the goblins'own as
purveyors.
In Goblin Market,then, we find that ChristinaRossetti'sdistinct
hasits rootsnot onlyin her strictdevotional
"aestheticsof renunciation"
observancesbut also in her practicesat market.52Indeed Christina,
like Lizzie, mightverywell participatein capitalistexchangeprecisely
because of its appropriationof the ethic of religiousself-denial.While
these two lineagesmay seem unrelated,for Marxand MaxWeberthe
practice of Puritanicalasceticism,the economic denial of the sins of
the flesh, remainsin fact integralto the spiritof capitalismmotivating
desirewe see in Rossetti's
industryand circulation.The "unconscious"
passage, here, broughtupstage by Gabriel'sillustration-that is, the
desire to withdrawoneself from the object of pleasureor to have the
object of pleasure withdrawnfrom the self-belies a fundamental
contradiction,if not symptom,in the practiceand science of capitalism. On one hand,to deny oneself pleasurevia exchange,throughthe
consumptionof commoditiesby spending,freezes the very terms of
the circulationof goods. Withholdingone'sown materialof exchange
from the marketthreatensto immobilizeit. Yet, on the other hand,
accordingto Marx,such a withdrawalfrom pleasure,especiallyfrom
pleasure drawnfrom commoditiesand from spending on commodities, constitutes the "cardinaldoctrine"of political economy, of the
religion of capitalism."Politicaleconomy, this science of wealth,"
traces Marx,"is ... simultaneouslythe science of denial, of want, of
thrift, of saving."53The saver,the ascetic non-consumer,therefore,
is the "trueideal"of politicaleconomy,of "thisscience of marvelous
Weber works this idea out further,suggestingthat one's
industry."54
"pleasurein culturalgoods"can only prove "tolerable"if it heeds one
basic condition:"[T]heymust not cost him anything."55
Preciselyas a
resultof this asceticism,then, does politicaleconomybecome, "despite
its worldlyappearance,""a true moralscience, the most moralof all
the sciences,"as Marxcynicallyand ironicallyadmits.56To deny the
body pleasure-to save-is the ethicalthing to do, even at the riskof
the market,for such a renunciationdisciplinesthe workingbody.
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As we have seen throughout,this adherenceto asceticismremains
akin to the structureof Goblin Market'soverallambivalencetoward
consumer capitalism.Such a practice of denial is indeed why Lizzie
saveswhat might very well be the coin lost and found by the woman
in Christ'stale-she "must,"to borrowfrom Weber'sappositesimile,
"likethe servantin the parable,give an account of every penny entrusted to [her], and it is at least hazardousto spend any of it for a
purpose which does not serve the glory of God but only one's own
The poem, like Lizzie, does not "comeby"buyingbut
enjoyment.""57
text'sown expenditure,therefore,of its hoarded"TenThe
by saving.
der"is toleratedpreciselybecause it is performedagainstthe pleasure
principle inherent in the act of consumptionwe have seen elicited
by the goblin market.Thus, if the trait of asceticismmarksthe "true
ideal"disciple of politicaleconomy,as Marxargues,then the poem's
variousexercises of denial perhaps make ChristinaRossetti a rather
exceptional,and altogethernot unwitting,study.
of California,Berkeley
University
NOTES
I am indebtedto SharonMarcusfor her keen criticalresponsesto this essay.
'Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market,in The PoeticalWorksof ChristinaGeorgina
Rossetti:WithMemoirand Notes &c. (1904;repr.,London:Macmillanand Co., 1906),
lines 367,389. Hereaftercited parentheticallyby line number.All citationsof Rossetti's
poetry are to this edition. The claim that the fourth episode comprisesthe "central
mystery"of the poem was made by RichardMenke,"ThePoliticalEconomyof Fruit:
Goblin Market,"in The Cultureof ChristinaRossetti:FemalePoeticsand Victorian
Contexts,ed. MaryArseneau,AntonyHarrison,and LorraineKooistra(Athens:Ohio
Univ. Press, 1999), 104-36. Hereafter abbreviated"P"and cited parentheticallyby
page number.
2 William Michael Rossetti, "Memoir,"
in Poetical Worksof Christina Georgina
Rossetti,lxvii.
3This performanceof self-negationmight be a tactic demandedby exigenciesthe
Victorianliterarymarketoften placed on women writers.See SharonMarcus,"The
Professionof the Author:Abstraction,Advertising,andJane Eyre,"PMLA110 (1995):
206-19.
4
Regrettably,I cannothere providea morethoroughreadingof the poem'sreflection
Rossetti's
on-and directinvolvementin-female prostitution.See JanMarsh,"Christina
Vocation:The Importanceof GoblinMarket,"VictorianPoetry32 (1994):232-47.
5CarolineNorton, quoted in Kooistra,"ModernMarketsfor GoblinMarket,"Victorian Poetry32 (1994):250.
6 See, for example,Marsh,"Rossetti'sVocation,"and ChristinaRossetti:A Literary
Biography(London:JonathanCape, 1994), 229.
7Kooistra, 252.
8 David
Bentley,for example,suggeststhat the receptionof the poem as allegorical
results from Rossetti'sdidacticintentions:"Inwhatevercontext it was or is heard or
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943
functionof testingandstrengthening,
read,GoblinMarketservesthe Christian-humanist
not merely an audience'sreadingskills,but also their moraland spiritualawareness.
If it was not read at the St. MaryMagdaleneHome, one cannot help but think that
it should have been" (Bentley,quoted in Marsh,"Rossetti'sVocation,"244). Marsh
herself then goes on to "confirm"Bentley's"criticalintuition":"My conjecture...
is that Goblin Marketwas not written explicitlyfor the girls or Sisters at Highgate,
but was promptedby the prospect or challenge of workingthere, and was perhaps
composed, or at least begun, duringthe period between Christina'sinitial approach
and formalinduction"(244).
9 Rossetti,quoted in Marsh,A LiteraryBiography,229.
10TerrenceHolt, "'MenSell Not Such in AnyTown':Exchangein GoblinMarket,"
VictorianPoetry 28 (1990): 51. For other readingsof the poem's economics, see
Elizabeth Campbell,"Of Mothers and Merchants:Female Economicsin Christina
Rossetti's'GoblinMarket,"'VictorianStudies33 (1990):393-410; MaryWilson Carpenter, "'EatMe, Drink Me, Love Me': The ConsumableFemale Body in Christina
Rossetti'sGoblinMarket,"VictorianPoetry 29 (1991):415-34; ElizabethHelsinger,
"ConsumerPower and the Utopia of Desire: ChristinaRossetti's"GoblinMarket,"
ELH 58 (1991):903-33; Kooistra;and Menke.
11Campbell,for example,calls Lizzie'spenny "simplya mediumof exchangeused
to gain somethingof realvalue, power"(407).
12 KarlMarx,Capital,vol. 1, trans.Ben Fowkes(1867;repr.,London:Pelican,1976),
164. HereafterabbreviatedC and cited parentheticallyby page number.
13
Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London:Verso, 1999), 23-24.
HereafterabbreviatedS and cited parentheticallyby page number.
14 Zizekpresentsan inversionof this formalhomology:
"[I]nMarxisma fetishconceals
the positive networkof social relations,whereas in Freud a fetish conceals the lack
('castration')aroundwhich the symbolicnetworkis realized"(49).
15 Note that the OED registers a more frequent use of the word "produce"as
and naturalproductscollectively,as distinguishedfrom manufactured
"[a]gricultural
goods"(OED,2nd ed., s.v."Produce,"4) in the mid-nineteenthcentury,andespecially
afterthe Europeanrevolutionsof 1848,duringwhatEricHobsbawmhascalled"theage
of capital"(TheAge of Capital,1848-1875 [1975; repr.,New York:Vintage,1996]).
16 Leonce de
Lavergne,The Rural Economyof England, Scotland,and Ireland
(Edinburgh:WilliamBlackwoodand Sons, 1855), 152.
17 Marx'scriticismof de Lavergneis
perhapsrooted in the latter'sflatteryof the
capitalistic"gentlemenfarmers,"who comprisea bourgeoisiecharacterizedby leisure
(see de Lavergne,86-87).
18 For an account of the variousforms of labor involvedin the
transportof fruits
fromthe orchardto the plate, see PatrickBerry,TheFruitGarden:A treatiseintended
to explainand illustratethe physiologyof fruit trees, the theory and practice of all
operationsconnectedwith the propagation,transplanting,pruning and training of
orchardand gardentrees ... the layingout and arrangingdifferentkindsof orchards
and gardens(New York:C. M. and SaxtonCompany,1857).
On the mixingof domesticand foreignfruits,see Menke, 116-17.
2 Rossetti,"Winter:My Secret,"in PoeticalWorksof ChristinaGeorginaRossetti,
336.
21 As Arseneauputs it, the piling of fruits serves to "overloadthe senses and...
and Interpretaimpairthe observer'sabilityto see beyondthe physical"("Incarnation
tion:ChristinaRossetti,the OxfordMovement,and GoblinMarket,"VictorianPoetry
31 [1993]:84).
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Sexual and Consumer Desire in Goblin Market
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2" See OED, s.v. "Jingle,"3b. For more on the productionof consumerdesire by
way of the advertisement,see ThomasRichards,TheCommodityCultureof Victorian
England:Advertisingand Spectacle,1851-1914 (Stanford:StanfordUniv.Press, 1990).
GoblinMarketindeed predictsthe force of the advertisementin the latterpartof the
age of capital:"Inthe late nineteenthcenturythere were few areasof social life that
remaineduntouchedby the massiveextensionof commodityculture, and advertised
spectacle was certainlyin the vanguardof this extensionevery step of the way. For
a series of floating moments capitalistrepresentationsaturatedsocial space with a
world of self-referentialsigns"(Richards,15). Also see Herbert Tucker,"Rossetti's
Goblin Marketing:Sweet to Tongue and Soundto Eye,"Representations82 (Spring
2003): 117-33.
23 The New Princeton
Encyclopediaof Poetryand Poetics,ed. Alex Premingerand
T. V. F. Brogan(Princeton:PrincetonUniv. Press, 1993), s.v. "Spondee."
24 "[M]orereal than real"is Jean Baudrillard's
phrase (Simulacraand Simulation,
trans.SheilaFariaGlaser[AnnArbor:Univ.of MichiganPress,1994],81). GuyDebord
puts this idea anotherway:"Herewe have the principleof commodityfetishism,the
dominationof societyby thingswhose qualitiesare 'at the same time perceptibleand
imperceptibleby the senses.'Thisprincipleis absolutelyfulfilledin the spectacle,where
the perceptibleworld is replacedby a set of images that are superiorto that world
yet at the same time impose themselvesas eminentlyperceptible"(The Societyof the
Spectacle,trans.Donald Nicholson-Smith[New York:Zone Books, 1994], 26).
25 Marx'sown formulationis,
vis-d-visa Lacanianterminology,ratheruncanny:"In
its functionas measureof value, moneythereforeservesonly in an imaginaryor ideal
capacity"(Capital,190, my emphasis).
26
Holt, 53.
27 On the magicaland aestheticappealof gold to earlycultures,see AndreiAnikin,
Gold:The YellowDevil (New York:InternationalPublishers,1983), 122-43.
28
This imperfectreflectionof bodies, in which a mirrormight returnto something
"golden"the dreaded image of a "goblin,"may be related to Rossetti'sown poor
body-image. As Marshreports,Rossettiwas "[f]illedwith apprehension"about her
own reflectionaroundthe time of her thirtiethbirthdayin 1860, two yearsbefore the
publicationof Goblin Market:"[S]hewas 'relievedand exhilarated'when she gazed
into the lookingglass and found no visible change, as she confessedto Williamthirty
years later.... But prospectswere definitelydiminishing.... Poor Christina:though
the mirrormight show no grey,the spectre of ageingspinsterhoodloomed"(A Literary Biography,255).
29 Luke 15:8-10 (KJV).This parable,found in the AnglicanBible, is preceded by
another,often cited as the "Parableof Lost Sheep,"and followed,finally,by the parable of the ProdigalSon.
30 For more on
intertextualityin Rossetti'scorpus,see AntonyHarrison,Christina
Rossettiin Context(ChapelHill: Univ.of North CarolinaPress, 1988).
31 borrowhere from Nicholaus
I
Mayhew,Sterling:TheRiseand Fall of a Currency
(London:Allen Lane, 1999).
32 Rossettiherself
mayhavebeen privyto contemporarydiscourseon the materialof
the penny.In 1860, the substanceof the pennywas changed from copper to bronze.
3a We might recallhere more of WilliamMichaelRossetti'sdescriptionof his sister:
"Shewas replete with the spiritof self-postponement,which passed into self-sacrifice
whenever that qualitywas in demand. Such a spiritis, in fact, the spirit of chivalry,
and noblesseoblige might have been her motto"(lxvii).
Victor Roman Mendoza
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945
34 As Marxputs it, "[M]oneyfunctionsas a means of circulationonly because in it
the value possessed by commoditieshas taken on an independentshape. Hence its
movement,as the medium of circulation,is in fact merelythe movementundergone
by commoditieswhile changingtheir form"(Capital,212).
Alfred Sohn-Rethelnarratesthis nicely: "A coin has it stamped upon its body
31
that it is to serve as a means of exchangeand not as an object of use. Its weight and
metallicpurityare guaranteedby the issuingauthorityso that,if by the wear and tear
of circulationit has lost in weight,full replacementis provided.Its physicalmatterhas
visiblybecome a mere carrierof its socialfunction"(Intellectualand ManualLabor:A
Critiqueof Epistemology[London:Macmillan,1978], 59; quoted in 2izek, 19).
36 The
penny,then, can be seen as a symptomwithin the poem in anotherway.In
somethingof a paradox,the penny'suniversalvalue, which relies on the fantasyof
equivalentexchange,disclosesthe very impossibilityof such a practice.
37 Sohn-Rethel,quoted in Zifek, 18.
38 In this sense, we
might regardGeorge W. Bush, with his rhetoricin the face of
"globalterrorism,"as the impotentgoblin dujour.
39 OED, s.v. "Tender,"
8a. I derivemost definitionsof "tender"in the followingsenfrom the OED entries
tences, includingits meaningsof "attendant"and "currency,"
for this word.
4" Menke quotes here A Naval Encyclopxdia (Philadelphia:L. R. Hammersely,
1881), 493.
41 1 would like to
pursuethis colonialtackin anotheressay,particularlyin terms of
my argumentthatthe goblinsundergoa subjectivationat the momentof theirexchange
with Lizzie,a kindof "educationof desire,"to borrowa phrasefromAnn Stoler(Race
and the Educationof Desire:Foucault'sHistoryof Sexualityand the ColonialOrder
of Things[Durham:Duke Univ.Press, 1995]). See, in the meanwhile,Carpenter,who
finishesher discussionof GoblinMarketwitha readingof "Inthe RoundToweratJhansi,
June 8, 1857,"which followsGoblinMarketin GoblinMarketand Other Poems.
42 Rachel Bowlby,Just Looking:ConsumerCulturein Dreiser,Gissing, and Zola
(New York:Methuen, 1985), 3.
43 Encyclopediaof NauticalKnowledge,ed. W H. McEwenand A. H. Lewis (Cambridge:CornellMaritimePress, 1993), s.v. "Tender."
44 OED, s.v. "Tender,"
3a.
45
2ifek's accountof an object which induces the feeling of the sublime accounts
for these seeminglycontradictoryresponses:"[A]nobject evokingin us the feeling of
it givesus displeasurebecause
Sublimitygivesus simultaneouspleasureanddispleasure:
of its inadequacyto the Thing-idea,but preciselythroughthis inadequacyit gives us
pleasureby indicatingthe true,incomparablegreatnessof the Thing,surpassingevery
possiblephenomenal,empiricalexperience"(203).
46 We also see this masochisticdisciplinarityvia poetic text in Gerard Manley
Hopkinsand Rossetti'sPre-Raphaelitefellow AlgernonSwinburne.See JuliaSaville,
A Queer Chivalry (Charlottesville:Univ. Press of Virginia,2000); and Yopie Prins,
"Swinburne'sSapphic Sublime,"in Victorian Sappho (Princeton:Princeton Univ.
Press, 1999), 112-73.
The sisters'very samenessand contiguitymightbe seen, followingLuce Irigaray,
as repeatingthe form of the copula, the "kiss"embodyingfeminine pleasure. See
Irigaray'sThis Sex Which Is Not One, trans.CatherinePorter (Ithaca:Cornell Univ.
Press, 1985).For more on these lines "asan eroticinvocationof sameness,"in the face
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Sexual and Consumer Desire in Goblin Market
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of the goblins'performanceof "sexualdifference,"see Helena Michie, "'Thereis no
friendlike a sister':Sisterhoodas SexualDifference,"ELH 56 (1989):401-21.
48 ChristinaRossetti,GoblinMarketand OtherPoems (London:Macmillan,1862).
For anotherreadingof Dante Gabriel'sfrontispieceillustration,as well as subsequent
illustratedrenderingsof GoblinMarket,see Kooistra.See also Gail Lynn Goldberg,
"Dante Gabriel Rossetti's'RevisingHand': His Illustrationsfor ChristinaRossetti's
Poems,"VictorianPoetry20 (1982): 145-59.
49Goldberg,147.
50 See
SigmundFreud, The Interpretationof Dreams,trans.James Strachey(New
York:AvonBooks, 1965).
Millerpointsout, one can haveone'sjouissancein "smallquanti51 As Jacques-Alain
ties":"Lacancalls them lichettes,little bits ofjouissance"("Paradigmsof Jouissance,"
LacanianInk 17 [2000]:33).
52 The
phrase comes from SandraGilbertand SusanGubar'sinfluentialThe Madwomanin the Attic:TheWomanWriterand the Nineteenth-Century
LiteraryImagination (New Haven:YaleUniv.Press, 1979), 574.
53 Marx,"Economicand PhilosophicManuscriptsof 1844,"in The Marx-Engels
Reader,ed. RobertC. Tucker(New York:Norton, 1978), 95.
95.
54Marx,"Economicand PhilosophicManuscripts,"
15Max Weber, The ProtestantEthic and the Spirit of Capitalism,trans. Talcott
Parsons(1930; repr.,London:RoutledgeClassics,2001), 114.
95.
56Marx,"Economicand PhilosophicManuscripts,"
57Weber,114.
Victor Roman Mendoza
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947