Note: if you missed Wednesday’s class, you can either grab the handout from my box, or find the poem on-line.
Answer TWO of the following:
Q1: The poem is full of repetition and echoing devices, such
as the stanzas that string simile after simile together: “Like a rush-imbedded
swan,/Like a lily from the beck,/Like a moonlit poplar branch,/Like a vessel at
the launch/When its last restraint is gone” (1620). Why are these repetitions
significant—and where do they specifically occur in the poem?
Q2: The Goblin Market itself is full of sensual imagery,
from the taste of the fruit to its shapes and textures. Since this is not only
a poem but a kind of fairy tale, what might the Market represent? And why is it
significant that Laura paid for the fruit with a lock of her hair?
Q3: In one of the most famous passages of the poem, Lizzie
returns from the Market with the juice of the fruits on her body, and bids her
sister “Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices/Squeezed from goblin fruits for you...Eat me, drink me, love me,/Laura, make
much of me” (1628). A modern reader hears many things in this passage—but what
would a Victorian hear, do you think? How should we read this passage in the
context of the poem itself?
Q4: The poem ends with a kind of Epilogue, set many years in
the future, when the sisters both have daughters of their own. What do you feel
is the point of this Epilogue and its moral? What message might this poem—which
is presumably told by Lizzie and Laura to their children—have for the
listeners? Is it as simple as “don’t trust men,” or “sisters stick together?”
What else might they—or we—hear in this cautionary conclusion?
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