The rhyming “ing” ending and the harsh plosive “g” here is repetitive and could represent the multiple attacks that the goblins subject Lizzie to. However, Lizzie is firm yet dignified when rejecting the goblins later on in the poem, whilst their insistent advances are presented as an attack on Lizzie: “They began to scratch their pates,/No longer wagging, purring,/But visibly demurring,/Grunting and snarling./One call’d her proud,/Cross-grain’d, uncivil…” The powerful animal imagery here emphasises both Lizzie’s sense of dignity in denying the goblins what they want, and the goblins’ transformation from flattery used to entice (“Hugg’d her and kiss’d her:/Squeez’d and caress’d her”), to “grunting and snarling” to intimidate and scare Lizzie into submission. Both Lizzie and Laura in Goblin Market do this at the beginning of the poem when the goblin men try to entice them: “We must not look at goblin men/We must not buy their fruits.” The repetition of “must not” implies a sense of fear of giving into desire, which Laura does, moments later, rather than defiance. By bringing her female characters’ avoidance and outright rejection of male advances to the forefront of her poetry, as well as presenting male characters’ pursuit of women as perverse and predatory, Rossetti brazenly shuns conventional heterosexual relationships.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |