I very much like Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” and revisit the poem (story? fairy tale?) every so often. Re-reading it this past time, I was struck by how much Laura’s sin, of eating the goblin fruit, has its mirror in the new food asceticism, which also at times equates eating the wrong things with immorality. (I’m thinking of the Skinny Bitches and their ilk, though one imagines the only objection the Skinny Bitches would have to goblin fruit is if it wasn’t organic.)
If this idea is phrased inelegantly, just be grateful I didn’t approach you with any of the “Discussion Questions” that run alongside the poem. It’s hard to imagine the discussion that wouldn’t be stopped dead in its tracks by “feminist poem or religious allegory?”
Recently, Guardian blogger Shirley Dent took up a similar line of thought, finding parallels between the advice of modern diet books and 13th-century religious guides for women that warn, “Lechery comes from gluttony and from enjoyment of the flesh, for as St Gregory says, ‘Food and drink beyond what is right give birth to three broods: frivolous words, frivolous deeds, and lechery’s desire'”.
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
