The Patriarchal Gyre

A Comparison of Home within Rossetti’s Goblin Market and Le Fanu’s Uncle Silas

Historically, myths have been used to explore and exaggerate characteristics of virtue and vice. Campbell describes them as extensions of the human body and mind, the “secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestations” (3). These hyperbolic extensions of humanity could be found in the strength of Hercules and the wits of Odysseus who inspired stoicism, or the succubi and Scylla and Charybdis who conveyed tragedy and morality to guide the public. In the 19th century, gothic and science fiction literature (often written by pioneering female authors) began to explore their own society through hyperbolic expressions of the ‘real.’ Misogyny, patriarchal legal structures, fears of sexual perversion, religious moralism, and more found physical, figurative representations in the form of creatures, ghouls, ghosts, goblins, and opium-addicted uncles. Sometimes seeking to explore the moral limits of justice and science (Frankenstein) and other times seeking to explore taboos of the subconscious (just about all of Poe’s work), authors seemed to look to fiction and extremes to explore the nonfiction of their world. 

Joining in this literary development, Rossetti explored the animalism and barbarity of women’s objectification in the developing Victorian time period with Goblin Market. A chronological pair to Rossetti’s work, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Uncle Silas used a female driven narrative to explore the abject inconsequence of women’s opinion in the face of a destiny defined by Maud’s patriarchal figures. While the works lay vastly different in many respects, their dedication to exploring women’s response to a male-dominated and predatory environment binds them. Furthermore, Rossetti’s and Le Fanu’s willingness to experiment with otherworldly horror and fairytale elements join them as each author committed to supernatural elements to convey their respective points. Both works also explore invasions on structures that affect daily life within the home. Rossetti stabilizes that structure and projects fears of immigration and invasion; Le Fanu annihilates all sense of comfort for Maud, molesting her home environment with intruders and duplicitous agents of the patriarchy.

Suck Me, Squeeze Me, Grab Me, Lure Me

Christina Rossetti was a deeply religious woman and was fascinated with Milton’s Paradise Lost. Consequently, Goblin Market could be seen as a variation of a fallen figure reminiscent of Milton’s Satan: “These texts share a similar climatic event: a restorative, redemptive ritual that one woman performs for another.” Kathleen Vejvoda goes on to argue in her article “The Fruit of Charity” for the extensive focus of Rossetti’s work on chastity, charity, and the divine power that comes from violent assault (555). To convey this, Rossetti uses an animalistic abomination of masculinity to rape and invade femininity. Lizzie and Laura, consequently, are the innocent victims of this invasive masculinity and are driven to isolate themselves within the confines of their sisterhood and idealistic home. 

Rossetti’s choice to animalize the goblins helps exaggerate the violent and oppressive associations with masculinity. Their animalism is disarming and alluring at first, with jolly “parrot-voiced” goblins (112), others “cat-faced” purring (109) or singing with “tones as smooth as honey” (108).  However, these animalistic qualities are upturned only when the protagonists defy the goblins’s will, their “...demurring / Grunting and snarling… tone wax’d loud” (393-4, 397) as they claw and figuratively rape the “White and golden” Lizzie (408) and golden haired Laura. Rossetti was essentially projecting Victorian fears associated with the “contamination” of a woman’s body through “unrestricted sexual activity” (Carpenter 416). As 1860s authors worked to redefine femininity and sexuality, Rossetti drew on her experiences at the St. Mary Magdalene Home, a rehabilitation site for ‘fallen women,’ to moralize her experiences and depict the “interaction between prostitutes and women’s religious communities” (417). Rossetti therefore established redemption as an essential quality of the home. Whether reformed herself, or guiding the reformed, Rossetti seems to compel readers to participate in this process of reformation. 

Additionally, the goblin's caustic demeanor seems to also reflect social condemnation of women’s disobedience to social norms, reflective of the ostracization of fallen women. Economic elements perforate the poem as the women “have no copper” or “no silver either” (Rossetti 118-19). This economic occlusion is directly reflective of women’s ostracization in legal procedures. Not until the Married Women’s Property Act of 1882 did women have any personal goods or wealth “in [their] own right” (Holdsworth 9). Thus, Laura had to pay a symbolic, physical exchange with her golden hair. Rossetti drew on the gold’s intrinsic value and is ultimately “sexually… seized through a culf of hair” as she “ultimately surrenders her body” (Rappoport 854). Women’s increasing right to property and discussions for equity in economic structures drew extensive hostility and malevolence for male figures that sought to preserve their power, a sentiment represented in the reaction of the goblins to Lizzie’s refusal.

Appropriately, Rossetti uses the innocent expectations of the genre to convey moralisms associated with sexuality, a task avoided in more grounded and less figurative works. The repeated “sucked” (Rossetti 134) juxtaposed with sore lips (136) suggest explicit sexuality associated with the goblins’s actions, an association jarring compared to the expected naivety of the fairytale genre and the setting. Furthermore, Lizzie’s sacrifice for Laura, with her request to “Eat me, drink me, love me; / Laura, make much of me” (471-2), places Lizzie as a eucharist or a feminine christ-like figure. Rossetti furthers notions of sacrifice involved in sexual interaction, inferring a lack of sacrifice on the counterpart of male figures in this act. Laura’s sacrifice of her hair, buying the fruit with her “golden curl” (125), is not a sacrifice of sisterhood but for pleasure and self-interest. Thus, Laura’s supposed sacrifice leads to her eventual decay with her “sunk eyes and faded mouth” (288) because it is not a sacrifice for sisterhood. Instead, it’s an ‘interest’ payment “depicting her loss of interest in life” (Rappoport 854) or an active choice for her to abandon morality and sisterhood for the sake of economic inclusion. 

Rossetti’s salvation comes from sisterhood. The closing of the poem remarks: “For there is no friend like a sister… To fetch one if one goes astray, / to lift one if one totters down, / To strengthen whilst one stands” (Rossetti 562, 565-67). In the tradition of a fable, Rossetti ends her poetic peace with a moralistic statement asserting the bond between all women. The statement has questions regarding morality, but Rossetti’s devout Christian beliefs indicate that women that fall “astray” fall away from Christian teachings and beliefs. Sisterhood, then, is an act of practicing faith and an essential glue to continue the stability of the home. Rossetti ultimately creates an image of a Christian, sexually pure home of eucharistic sacrifice that is persistently invaded by ‘foreign fruit,’ echoing fears of immigration and invasion from non-Christian entities. The sacrifice could also be seen as economic, as Laura’s ‘fall’ is associated with her “work and household management,” thus Lizzie’s sacrifice and their bond in sisterhood is “an elective affiliation with an economic structure” (Rappoport 885); sisterhood provides strength in an economic system. Rossetti’s solution to navigate the perils of a consumeristic patriarchy is the bond through sisterhood, though matters associated with marriage are left unexplored. Rossetti does seem to place some support in favor of traditional family structures, closing the poem with the sisters, both wives, with “children of their own” (Rossetti 545). Yet, the notion of sisterhood remains dominant over all other structures within the home.

That Creepy Uncle

While Rossetti explores invaders to sexual and christian purity, Le Fanu’s Uncle Silas covers the legal framework that places women as respective victims to the will of their father figures. Sexual references are left mostly omitted, with Uncle Silas lacking Rossetti’s otherworldly setting that allows exploration of such charged themes yet meet requirements for publication and censorship. However, other parallels relating to assault, invasion, the supernatural, home life, and more persist in a grounded verisimilitude. Furthermore, sisterhood reigns supreme as a guiding force, allowing Maud to find salvation through her bond with other female figures within the text and paralleling the thematic importance of sisterhood found in Goblin Market. Brotherhood ironically plays the foil to this role, leading to the downfall of characters that blindly cling to bonds of their own sex. 

Rossetti’s goblins are explicitly otherworldly, but Le Fanu uses similar diction to add supernatural elements to less otherworldly creatures. Madame de la Rougierre, Maud’s malevolent governess, exhibits goblin and ghostly traits, indicating a perverse distortion in her person as the result of her manipulation by patriarchal figures. She is a giant, comparatively, obsessed with ghosts and graveyards with an “unearthly” image (12) and a “hag-like face” that floats “filmy in the dark” (42). She is abusive, breaking Maud’s fingers early in the novel and she minimizes the abuse with banter suggesting it was merely “play” (13). She is associated with “vulgar, lower-class masculinity” negatively (Mangum 230) and she ultimately rejects her chance at redemption for the sake of weidling “momentarily… the sceptor of the master/patriarch” (Mangum 533). Her eventual demise is fitting considering her malevolence never supersedes her humanity. Even with Maud’s pleading to “save [her],” her refusal with a “black and witchlike stare” and indifference, “why should I care” (Le Fanu 178), undercut her potential for redemption. She refuses the offer of sisterhood from Maud, thus resulting in her eventual demise and suggesting a necessity for humility, vulnerability, and sacrifice of ego in order to perpetuate stability of relationships within the home.

While Maud doesn’t undergo a eucharistic sacrifice, she is still placed under the crucible of violence. Just as Lizzie’s sacrifice showcases her defiance to the goblins, Maud’s decision to “grow all at once resolute and self-possessed” takes a more grounded approach in the face of a genuine existential threat found within the physically overpowering Dudley and the drugged claret. Witnessing Dudley’s murder of Madame de la Rougierre, Maud cowers and hides as the “unnatural shriek,” repeated blows, and “convulsions of the murdered woman” that perforate the room (182). The violence parallels Goblin Market further when the claret is taken into consideration. Acting similar to the fruit of Rossetti’s tale, the drugged claret (181) places the victim in a vulnerable state, allowing male figures to overcome and violate the entire existence of the woman and allowing a figurative rape to take place. Madame de la Rougierre’s murder does not explicitly involve rape, but language and location of her murder could be associated with the physical conquering of her body in a suggestively sexual manner. Dudley covers her face “softly,” resulting in Madame’s fighting and yelling, her arms “drumming on the bed.” The bed, too, connotes sexual interaction, so the murder of the governess seems to indicate a figurative rape as she is violated within her own bed, struggle’s against Dudley’s advances, only to circum to Dudley’s eventual climax as the “diabolical surgery has ended” (182).

Sisterhood, like in Goblin Market, is the saviour of women in Uncle Silas. Maud’s companionship with Monica Knollys helps her develop into a more mature and actualized character. Maud takes Lady Knollys’s warnings to “try and be a woman” (31) to heart. She mentors Milly, an affection she reciprocated and one of mutual benefit. Milly is surrounded by an agéd collection of novels, “a drier collection you can’t fancy,” yet she showcased “ten times the cleverness of half the circulating library misses one meets with” (85). Bartrum is a place of decay prior to Maud’s arrival, with dilapidated, uprooted grounds held together only by Austen during his life (85). Milly’s life of isolation, prior to Maud’s arrival, is described as she “ran wild about the place” and “did not care a pin about her manners or decorum” (84). Silas’s indifference to his own daughter was explicitly shown when he “place[d] his thin white fingers quickly over his ear” (94) to avoid his daughter’s rough speech, an attribute that can easily be attached to Silas’s opium-induced invalid state. Through Maud, Milly is able to grow into a “no longer absurd” and “essentially reformed” individual (112), a development showcased by their interaction with Monica Knollys in Elverston. Sisterhood perpetuates growth and resolution, builds ties between non-familial members, and strengthens family bonds, however loose. It functions off of vulnerability and mutual interest and ultimately leads to the strengthening of the foundations of the home. 

Silas’s eventual dissolution of this bond, where he plays the “defamed and injured kinsman” (134), is his attempt to undermine his only substantial threat. He acts as a reformed victim of his circumstance in order to dissolve the sisterhood that threatens his patriarchal power. He is a quiet, predatory figure that hides behind his invalidism. Maud actively avoids confronting this element of Silas, as “Any Falsehood there opened an abyss beneath my feet into which I dared not look” (115); she actively deceives herself for fear of the consequences of her reality. Silas’s opium addition is a habit where “he won’t measure” (120), giving into his inhibitions and impulses.  He further hides his violence behind his religion, wearing his religious ties with “utter hypocrisy” (185) to manipulate his perspective and turn himself into a pious victim. His hidden violence is foreshadowed through his actions and haphazard threats, as he mockingly threatens his sister, Monica Knollys, that he would “set [his] foot upon [her] throat” (105) over injuries supposedly “buried” or he rose from an opium-induced sleep with “swift noiseless steps” to stare with a “death-like scowl” into Maud’s reflection (122). Consequently, Silas is the goblin of Rossetti’s markets masquerading in Le Fanu’s more grounded work, scheming with an image of innocence and meekness until denial and resilience occurs. Upon facing resistance, he cuffs and catches, coaxes and fifths, bullies and knocks (Rossetti 425-6, 428) all opposing female figures.

Ironically, brotherhood foils the characteristics of sisterhood and actually undermines the happiness and ultimate goals of the male characters. Male relationships in Uncle Silas are built on competition, instead of unity, and lead to violence and derision: Austen’s blind trust in Uncle Silas ultimately places Maud in extreme danger; Dudley’s trust in his father then leads him to murder and repeat the cycle of gambling debt that left his own family into ruin; Dudley combats Captain Oakley, exposing Maud to yet another trial of violence as Captain Oakley retreats with “bleeding beside over one eye” and blood over his shirt (129); Bryerly’s mild reprimands to Silas, a cautious warning regarding Silas overstepping his legal limitations, are met with anger and disdain at the supposedly “sly,” money-loving man (132). Brotherhood, consequently, is not a nurturing force but a deteriorating one, leading to the eventual dissolution of family structures within the home. The men maintain a constant state of combat and contest, creating turmoil and tumult to all the women surrounding them.

Sister Texts in a Whirling Gyre

The bridging attributes between the texts lie in the form of sisterhood, abuse, supernatural elements, and their overall relationship to the home-life of the characters. Goblin Market addresses the dangers of external forces outside of the home, projecting fears of immigration and invasion of Christian values (ironic considering the imperialism of the British empire). These fears are materialized in Uncle Silas, with foregin entities, both French and other worldly, invading the space of the home as Le Fanu grounds those fears in vivid and shocking scenes of literal abuse reflective of the figurative abuse and rape of Goblin Market. Furthermore, the ultimate solution and women’s defense to these invasions rests on unity and sacrifice for one’s gender-kin. Women that deny this sisterhood are violently assaulted and wither into nonexistence as the consistent and abusive patriarchal forces whirl their existence like a patriarchal Charybdis. 

The characters of both texts rely on the premise that their existence is set to be maltreated by their respective environments. Like creatures caught in a whirling current, the women of the Victorian era had to survive the abusers of their time. Their existence wasn’t defined by extraordinary actions of control and dictation of history. Instead, it was the active resistance to implore survival and empathy and sisterhood under a self-destructive, intrusive, abusive, and assaulting patriarch desperate to molest every fiber of their existence within and outside the home. The woman’s goal was not to create a new structure, but to actualize themselves in opposition to the fallacious ones surrounding them; to become the eucharist to a Laura; to develop and mature like Maud. 

Works Cited

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 2004.

Carpenter, Mary Wilson. “‘Eat Me, Drink Me, Love Me’: The Consumable Female Body in Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market.’” Victorian Poetry, vol. 29, no. 4, West Virginia University, 1991, pp. 415–34.

Holdsworth, W. A. The Married Women’s Property Act, 1882 : with an Introduction, Notes, and Index. George Routledge and Sons ..., 1882, 1882.

Mangum, Teresa. “SHERIDAN LE FANU’S UNGOVERNABLE GOVERNESSES.” Studies in the Novel, vol. 29, no. 2, University of North Texas, 1997, pp. 214–37.

Rappoport, Jill. “The Price of Redemption in ‘Goblin Market.’” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 50, no. 4, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010, pp. 853–75.

Rossetti, Christina Georgina. Goblin Market, The Prince’s Progress, and Other Poems. Project Gutenberg.

Vejvoda, Kathleen. “The Fruit of Charity: ‘Comus’ and Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market.’” Victorian Poetry, vol. 38, no. 4, West Virginia University, Dept. of English, 2000, pp. 555–78, doi:10.1353/vp.2000.0046.

By Pavel Tretyak

Written September 26, 2021

Last Edited March 9, 2023