SOURCE: "Nature's Perilous Variety in Rossetti's 'Goblin Market'," in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 51, No. 3, December, 1996, pp. 356-76.

In the essay that follows, Grass examines the influence of various aspects of Rossetti 's life on her writing of "Goblin Market." He identifies Rossetti 's extensive use of lists as the "interpretive key" in determining which biographical events correspond to the events in "Goblin Market. "

The critical interpretations of Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" that have been advanced during the last two decades are nearly as multifarious as the goblin fruits so lavishly depicted in her verse. A cursory glance at the introduction to virtually any critical essay on "Goblin Market" provides a healthy catalog of the disparate readings of the poem: as commentary on the capitalist marketplace; as tale of sexual, sometimes homoerotic yearning; as feminist glorification of sisterhood; and perhaps most often as Christian allegory of temptation and redemption, "inescapably...