Bittersweet Dreams (Are Made of This): Unripe Fruit and Women
Abstract
This paper investigates the role of woman as a medicinal mother in Christina Rossetti’s 1862 Christian epic poem “Goblin Market” in which two young sisters, Laura and Lizzie, struggle with temptation as wicked goblin men attempt to coerce them into consuming their forbidden fruit. The marriage market, called the “Goblin Market” in this poem, highlights the inequities between marriage expectations for men and women and the disadvantages faced by the archetypal medicinal mother in the early development of modern medicine. While men are the producers in this misogynistic marriage market, women are not the true consumers because they are the ones being consumed by men’s unfair expectations of womanhood and motherhood in a patriarchal society. This dichotomy exposes the harmful view of women as medicinal mothers because it perpetuates the stereotype that women only have value to men in the marriage market if they are pure and fertile. This paper analyzes the importance of women’s fertility and the role of breastfeeding in modern medical culture and compares Lizzie to a Christ figure to highlight that women must establish their value in society through their accomplishments rather than by their ability to produce offspring in marriage. Even 157 years after the publication of “Goblin Market,” young women still struggle to advance in modern medicine because of the outdated view that they can only be mothers and not doctors, when in actuality women can be both. Today, medicinal mothers are not just the patients, but the doctors as well.
Faculty Sponsors
Dr. Aileen Farrar
Project Type
Event
Location
Alvin Shermany Library
Start Date
4-5-2019 1:00 PM
End Date
4-5-2019 5:00 PM
Bittersweet Dreams (Are Made of This): Unripe Fruit and Women
Alvin Shermany Library
This paper investigates the role of woman as a medicinal mother in Christina Rossetti’s 1862 Christian epic poem “Goblin Market” in which two young sisters, Laura and Lizzie, struggle with temptation as wicked goblin men attempt to coerce them into consuming their forbidden fruit. The marriage market, called the “Goblin Market” in this poem, highlights the inequities between marriage expectations for men and women and the disadvantages faced by the archetypal medicinal mother in the early development of modern medicine. While men are the producers in this misogynistic marriage market, women are not the true consumers because they are the ones being consumed by men’s unfair expectations of womanhood and motherhood in a patriarchal society. This dichotomy exposes the harmful view of women as medicinal mothers because it perpetuates the stereotype that women only have value to men in the marriage market if they are pure and fertile. This paper analyzes the importance of women’s fertility and the role of breastfeeding in modern medical culture and compares Lizzie to a Christ figure to highlight that women must establish their value in society through their accomplishments rather than by their ability to produce offspring in marriage. Even 157 years after the publication of “Goblin Market,” young women still struggle to advance in modern medicine because of the outdated view that they can only be mothers and not doctors, when in actuality women can be both. Today, medicinal mothers are not just the patients, but the doctors as well.
