Summary of a critic's analysis on Goblin Market

"Symbol and realityt in Christina Rossetti's 'Goblin Market'" By Lona Mosk Packer

• Symbolic and allegorical level: Christian ethical assumptions
• Psychological level: emotional experience
• The two sisters may be regarded as Rossetti's version of sacred and profane love
• Rossetti discouraged explication of the poem
• Temptation in its human and theological state is the thematic core of Goblin Market
• Temptation symbolised by the fruit: The traditional symbol of sin and temptation in the bible

Rossetti spent her childhood summer in her grandfather's garden/cottage, observing animals such as the characters described of the goblin men (cats whiskers etc.) The fruit and animals are aspects of nature, the core: "sexual passion". Rossetti is not "puritanically condemning". Sexual love: Happy ending to goblin market where sisters are married with children. Because the ending is traditionally happy "Christina seems to be implying that neither the fruit nor the animals are in themselves harmful... it is only 'mans conciousness of guilt' - that is, the Christian concept of guilt incurred through sin embedded in the evil will - ... in short, man is his own destroyer".

"The potential of sisterhood: Chistina Rossetti's 'Goblin Market'" By Janet Galligani Casey

• Feminist: Rossetti uses sisterhood to demonstrate that contradictory to the public and bible's belief, women could be both the "redeemer and redeemed, as nurturer and nutured, as lover and beloved". ("both 'male' and 'female' roles are in fact available to everyone")
• Goblin market: "defines 'sisterhood' as the interdependence rather than isolation of antinomies" - It's important in sisterhood to have opposite personalities.