Keary's Goblin Market

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With Little Seal-skin it is not quite as clear which parts of the poem classify as sexual imagery, since it is far more vague in its speech than Goblin Market. However, one can argue, the overall story of Keary’s work and the symbolic meaning behind it, are alike an accusation of the repression of female sexuality, as was the case in Victorian times, since sexual appetite in females was considered an indiscretion. It should therefore come as a surprise to no one that especially feminists have taken an interest in the poem. Quite contrary to the narrative of Rossetti’s Goblin Market, where, in the end, Laura must be redeemed by her sister Lizzie, after she had succumbed to the figuratively sexual temptations of the goblin men, thereby restoring…show more content…
This could mean, that Keary saw the sexual independence of women as their natural state of being, and probably strongly questioned, if not opposed the sphere model and the deeming of women as asexual creatures, if they were not married. The fisherman, furthermore forces the woman to marry him and bear his children. Marriage thus allows women to marginally experience their sexuality in function of her fertility, but still holds them back from exploring it fully. In Victorian times, women were expected to marry; in fact, it was the only career they could look forward to. Once they had done so, a woman was to become the Angel of the house. It was not expected that a woman give up her sexuality completely; sexual pleasure was not explicitly forbidden to them, rather sexual desires that did not immediately serve the purpose of procreation were conceived as something unnatural (Mason 200), and were often treated as a mental disease, more specifically as a condition known as nymphomania. What happens to the sea-woman in the poem, is but a radicalised depiction of the fate that would befall most Victorian females sooner or later. In marrying the fisherman – out of sheer necessity – she gives up her identity and her freedom; she needs him to survive on land, as that terrain is not her own and places herself completely under his supremacy. Yet she is unaware that her predicament is the sole consequence of the fisherman’s deeds in the first place. As she does not know that he is the one who hid her seal-skin, she is unaware that is through him, she has lost her freedom. Therein lies the poem’s criticism of society. The patriarchal society restrains women in their identity, subjugates them, and acts as if through what is only further restraint – namely marriage to a man – they can achieve happiness. They offer women happiness without ever granting it to
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