Goblin Market

Editor’s Introduction

The following story was found in a stack of printouts labelled FIELD NOTES ON DESIRE: Toward a Non-Capitalist Metaphor for Sisterhood (drafts, unsubmitted) and dated several years after the supposed “last” work of its author. The piece appears to be a prose “translation” of Christina Rossetti’s 1862 narrative poem The Goblin Market, reimagined as a kind of domestic allegory for post-industrial appetite, self-erasure and the moral logistics of care.

Whether the story is parody, homage or confessional artifact remains unclear. The manuscript includes margin notes in several inks — “too preachy?” and “stop making everything about consumption” — and at least one self-directed reminder: “Try sincerity again.”

What follows, then, is not quite fiction, not quite essay, not quite repentance. It is, in the author’s words, “a fairy tale with a hangover.”

Superfluous observation No. 1: The Arabic equivalent of the fomulaic beginning “once upon a time” is kan ma kan, which translates to “It was so, it was not so.”

So let’s get this party started like it’s 1862. It was so, it was not so.

For there is no friend like a sister,

In calm or stormy weather …

— Christina Rossetti, The Goblin Market

(And yet, it’s worth asking: what if the storm is the friend?)

I. The Call

Morning and evening

Maids heard the goblins cry:

“Come buy our orchard fruits,

Come buy, come buy:

Apples and quinces,

Lemons and oranges,

Plump unpeck’d cherries,

Melons and raspberries,

Bloom-down-cheek’d peaches,

Swart-headed mulberries,

Wild free-born cranberries,

Crab-apples, dewberries,

Pine-apples, blackberries,

Apricots, strawberries;—

All ripe together

In summer weather,—

Morns that pass by,

Fair eves that fly;

Come buy, come buy:

Our grapes fresh from the vine,

Pomegranates full and fine,

Dates and sharp bullaces,

Rare pears and greengages,

Damsons and bilberries,

Taste them and try:

Currants and gooseberries,

Bright-fire-like barberries,

Figs to fill your mouth,

Citrons from the South,

Sweet to tongue and sound to eye;

Come buy, come buy.”

There is a town, small and almost aggressively unremarkable, the kind of place where pastoral charm feels less like virtue and more like neglect. The houses lean; the air smells faintly of wet bread and coal. If it’s not yet industrialized, it’s at least spiritually preparing for it.

Two sisters live there — Laura and Lizzie — in a house that could be politely called modest or, more accurately, under-insulated. The walls are painted by weather. They live the kind of daily life that is not so much lived as perpetuated: fetch the water, grind the flour, sweep the dust that always returns. It’s the sort of routine that encourages moral parable because otherwise it’s intolerable.

And then, toward dusk, something breaks the pattern. From the woods (not far, never far; the woods always begin sooner than you think) comes a chorus — voices layered and overlapping, masculine but not human in the strictest sense. A market, they call it. The goblin market.

The chant lists fruit — apples, grapes, plums, pomegranates — in a rhythm that feels both pagan and commercial, a liturgy of abundance. It’s possible that the goblins are selling actual fruit. It’s also possible they’re selling the idea of wanting something enough to pay for it.

Laura listens. Lizzie warns. (“Don’t look, don’t talk, don’t taste.”) But warnings, like taboos, work only on people who aren’t already imagining the exception.

II. The Purchase

“Oh,” cried Lizzie, “Laura, Laura,

You should not peep at goblin men.”

Lizzie cover’d up her eyes,

Cover’d close lest they should look;

Laura rear’d her glossy head,

And whisper’d like the restless brook:

“Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie,

Down the glen tramp little men.

One hauls a basket,

One bears a plate,

One lugs a golden dish

Of many pounds weight.

How fair the vine must grow

Whose grapes are so luscious;

How warm the wind must blow

Through those fruit bushes.”

“No,” said Lizzie, “No, no, no;

Their offers should not charm us,

Their evil gifts would harm us.”

She thrust a dimpled finger

In each ear, shut eyes and ran:

Curious Laura chose to linger

Wondering at each merchant man.

One had a cat’s face,

One whisk’d a tail,

One tramp’d at a rat’s pace,

One crawl’d like a snail,

One like a wombat prowl’d obtuse and furry,

One like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry.

She heard a voice like voice of doves

Cooing all together:

They sounded kind and full of loves

In the pleasant weather.

Laura approaches the brook where the goblin men gather. Their faces are not grotesque so much as slightly too real — the uncanny valley of myth. Their baskets overflow, the fruit glowing with a light that feels internal.

She has nothing to trade but herself, so she gives them a lock of her hair — her most literal piece of identity — and they give her fruit in return. The logic is transactional, the experience liturgical.

The taste is — how to put this without cliché? — absolute. Every sweetness that the human mouth can register, condensed, and then something beyond sweetness: an obliterating plenitude that feels almost cosmic. She eats until her mouth aches, until her sense of self dissolves. Could be meth. Could be fentanyl. No, it’s something else.

She suck’d and suck’d and suck’d the more

Fruits which that unknown orchard bore;

She suck’d until her lips were sore;

Then flung the emptied rinds away

But gather’d up one kernel stone,

And knew not was it night or day

As she turn’d home alone.

Later, when Laura tries to return — when she listens again for the goblin calls — they will not come for her. She is excluded now, excommunicated from the pleasure she’s already had. (There is no cruelty like the one that follows satisfaction.)

III. The Decline

Day after day, night after night,

Laura kept watch in vain

In sullen silence of exceeding pain.

She never caught again the goblin cry:

“Come buy, come buy;”—

She never spied the goblin men

Hawking their fruits along the glen:

But when the noon wax’d bright

Her hair grew thin and grey;

She dwindled, as the fair full moon doth turn

To swift decay and burn

Her fire away …

She no more swept the house,

Tended the fowls or cows,

Fetch’d honey, kneaded cakes of wheat,

Brought water from the brook:

But sat down listless in the chimney-nook

And would not eat.

Days pass. Laura fades. Not dramatically, not like a cursed princess in a morality play, but quietly, like someone unplugged. Her eyes go dull, her hair loses its shine, her laughter becomes a sound that doesn’t quite resolve.

She starts hoarding things — pits, seeds, bits of dry fruit — as if they might bloom again. Lizzie watches this not with shock but with the exhausted intuition of someone who knew it was coming all along.

What the story doesn’t tell you, but you can feel underneath, is how unbearable it is to love someone who is disappearing. Because we’ve all lived this horror.

Tender Lizzie could not bear

To watch her sister’s cankerous care

Yet not to share.

She night and morning

Caught the goblins’ cry:

“Come buy our orchard fruits,

Come buy, come buy;”—

Beside the brook, along the glen,

She heard the tramp of goblin men,

The yoke and stir

Poor Laura could not hear;

Long’d to buy fruit to comfort her,

But fear’d to pay too dear.

She thought of Jeanie in her grave,

Who should have been a bride;

But who for joys brides hope to have

Fell sick and died

In her gay prime,

In earliest winter time

With the first glazing rime,

With the first snow-fall of crisp winter time.

IV. The Resistance

Till Laura dwindling

Seem’d knocking at Death’s door:

Then Lizzie weigh’d no more

Better and worse;

But put a silver penny in her purse,

Kiss’d Laura, cross’d the heath with clumps of furze

At twilight, halted by the brook:

And for the first time in her life

Began to listen and look.

Laugh’d every goblin

When they spied her peeping:

Came towards her hobbling,

Flying, running, leaping,

Puffing and blowing,

Chuckling, clapping, crowing,

Clucking and gobbling,

Mopping and mowing,

Full of airs and graces,

Pulling wry faces,

Demure grimaces,

Cat-like and rat-like,

Ratel- and wombat-like,

Snail-paced in a hurry,

Parrot-voiced and whistler,

Helter skelter, hurry skurry,

Chattering like magpies,

Fluttering like pigeons,

Gliding like fishes,—

Hugg’d her and kiss’d her:

Squeez’d and caress’d her:

Stretch’d up their dishes,

Panniers, and plates:

“Look at our apples

Russet and dun,

Bob at our cherries,

Bite at our peaches,

Citrons and dates,

Grapes for the asking,

Pears red with basking

Out in the sun,

Plums on their twigs;

Pluck them and suck them,

Pomegranates, figs.”—

“Good folk,” said Lizzie,

Mindful of Jeanie:

“Give me much and many: —

Held out her apron,

Toss’d them her penny.

“Nay, take a seat with us,

Honour and eat with us,”

They answer’d grinning:

“Our feast is but beginning.

Night yet is early,

Warm and dew-pearly,

Wakeful and starry:

Such fruits as these

No man can carry:

Half their bloom would fly,

Half their dew would dry,

Half their flavour would pass by.

Sit down and feast with us,

Be welcome guest with us,

Cheer you and rest with us.”—

“Thank you,” said Lizzie: “But one waits

At home alone for me:

So without further parleying,

If you will not sell me any

Of your fruits though much and many,

Give me back my silver penny

I toss’d you for a fee.”—

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;

Their tones wax’d loud,

Their looks were evil.

Lashing their tails

They trod and hustled her,

Elbow’d and jostled her,

Claw’d with their nails,

Barking, mewing, hissing, mocking,

Tore her gown and soil’d her stocking,

Twitch’d her hair out by the roots,

Stamp’d upon her tender feet,

Held her hands and squeez’d their fruits

Against her mouth to make her eat.

One evening, Lizzie leaves the cottage. She walks toward the sound of the goblin chant. She doesn’t bring money or a lock of hair or anything they can take. She just stands there, and they surround her — pressing, pleading, their offers turning to mockery, then violence.

They smear her with fruit, try to force her to eat, but she stands immovable. Her refusal becomes a kind of monument. (There’s a moral somewhere in this about endurance — not to mention what stinkers aggressive men are — but it’s too sticky to hold onto.)

By the time she returns home, her clothes are soaked in juice, her skin fragrant and bruised. She looks like someone who’s survived an event that has no vocabulary.

In a smart, ache, tingle,

Lizzie went her way;

Knew not was it night or day;

Sprang up the bank, tore thro’ the furze,

Threaded copse and dingle,

And heard her penny jingle

Bouncing in her purse,—

Its bounce was music to her ear.

She ran and ran

As if she fear’d some goblin man

Dogg’d her with gibe or curse

Or something worse:

But not one goblin scurried after,

Nor was she prick’d by fear;

The kind heart made her windy-paced

That urged her home quite out of breath with haste

And inward laughter.

V. The Cure

She cried, “Laura,” up the garden,

“Did you miss me?

Come and kiss me.

Never mind my bruises,

Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices

Squeez’d from goblin fruits for you,

Goblin pulp and goblin dew.

Eat me, drink me, love me;

Laura, make much of me;

For your sake I have braved the glen

And had to do with goblin merchant men.”

Laura started from her chair,

Flung her arms up in the air,

Clutch’d her hair:

“Lizzie, Lizzie, have you tasted

For my sake the fruit forbidden?

Must your light like mine be hidden,

Your young life like mine be wasted,

Undone in mine undoing,

And ruin’d in my ruin,

Thirsty, canker’d, goblin-ridden?”—

She clung about her sister,

Kiss’d and kiss’d and kiss’d her:

Tears once again

Refresh’d her shrunken eyes,

Dropping like rain

After long sultry drouth;

Shaking with aguish fear, and pain,

She kiss’d and kiss’d her with a hungry mouth.

Her lips began to scorch,

That juice was wormwood to her tongue,

She loath’d the feast:

Writhing as one possess’d she leap’d and sung,

Rent all her robe, and wrung

Her hands in lamentable haste,

And beat her breast.

Her locks stream’d like the torch

Borne by a racer at full speed,

Or like the mane of horses in their flight,

Or like an eagle when she stems the light

Straight toward the sun,

Or like a caged thing freed,

Or like a flying flag when armies run.

Swift fire spread through her veins, knock’d at her heart,

Met the fire smouldering there

And overbore its lesser flame;

She gorged on bitterness without a name:

Ah! fool, to choose such part

Of soul-consuming care!

Sense fail’d in the mortal strife:

Like the watch-tower of a town

Which an earthquake shatters down,

Like a lightning-stricken mast,

Like a wind-uprooted tree

Spun about,

Like a foam-topp’d waterspout

Cast down headlong in the sea,

She fell at last;

Pleasure past and anguish past,

Is it death or is it life?

Life out of death.

That night long Lizzie watch’d by her,

Counted her pulse’s flagging stir,

Felt for her breath,

Held water to her lips, and cool’d her face

With tears and fanning leaves:

But when the first birds chirp’d about their eaves,

And early reapers plodded to the place

Of golden sheaves,

And dew-wet grass

Bow’d in the morning winds so brisk to pass,

And new buds with new day

Open’d of cup-like lilies on the stream,

Laura awoke as from a dream,

Laugh’d in the innocent old way,

Hugg’d Lizzie but not twice or thrice;

Her gleaming locks show’d not one thread of grey,

Her breath was sweet as May

And light danced in her eyes.

Laura, seeing her, is both terrified and mesmerized. Lizzie tells her: Taste me.

Laura does. The juices sting; she convulses; she cries out. For a moment, it looks fatal. Then the fever breaks.

There’s a sound — small, private, not meant for anyone else — when a body remembers how to live. That’s the sound Laura makes.

Afterward, they lie on the floor together, breathless, holding each other the way survivors do, not for comfort but to prove that they’re still here.

VI. Aftermath

Days, weeks, months, years

Afterwards, when both were wives

With children of their own;

Their mother-hearts beset with fears,

Their lives bound up in tender lives;

Laura would call the little ones

And tell them of her early prime,

Those pleasant days long gone

Of not-returning time:

Would talk about the haunted glen,

The wicked, quaint fruit-merchant men,

Their fruits like honey to the throat

But poison in the blood;

(Men sell not such in any town):

Would tell them how her sister stood

In deadly peril to do her good,

And win the fiery antidote:

Then joining hands to little hands

Would bid them cling together,

“For there is no friend like a sister

In calm or stormy weather;

To cheer one on the tedious way,

To fetch one if one goes astray,

To lift one if one totters down,

To strengthen whilst one stands.”

They grow older. They marry, or maybe they don’t; it’s irrelevant. They live long enough to tell the story to their children.

Maybe the children don’t quite believe them, but that’s fine. They’ll have to learn to navigate temptation for themselves. The point is the telling, the insistence that what happened still means something.

When Laura speaks of the fruit, there’s still some smoke in her eyes — a residue of hunger that healing didn’t erase. Lizzie, listening, stays silent. Maybe because she knows what it cost her. Maybe because she secretly misses the song.

VII. Coda

If you were to translate this into contemporary terms (and of course, the temptation is irresistible), the goblin market is every algorithmic feed, every infinite scroll, every thing that offers plenitude while quietly converting your wanting into someone else’s capital. The fruit is content, dopamine, engagement. Laura is all of us at 2 a.m., thumb hovering over something we know we shouldn’t click. Lizzie is who we imagine we could be if we logged off.

But what keeps the story alive, what makes it more than just a proto-Internet parable, is the love that sits stubbornly at its core. The love that isn’t sentimental or pure or easy, but heavy — the kind that costs something.

Because in the end, what redeems Laura isn’t discipline, or knowledge, or abstention — it’s contact. It’s the sister who endures the ugliness, takes the mess on herself and brings it home.

And if you’re honest (really honest), you can admit that part of you still wants to hear the goblin men call again. Because their song is beautiful. Because the world without it feels unbearably quiet.

Author’s Note (Found Attached to the Last Page)

This thing began, if memory serves (and it seldom serves cleanly), as a kind of experiment: what would happen if you ran Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market — all that 19th-century sisterly virtue and ripe fruit imagery — through the exhausted circuitry of late capitalism and personal guilt?

Rossetti’s poem is weirdly radical, if you read it right. Everyone pretends it’s a moral about chastity and redemption, but it’s easy to read — and has been — from an LGBTQ perspective as a lesbian love song, what with all the scorched lips, hungry mouths and syrupy chins.

In Rossetti’s poems “No, Thank You, John” and “In an Artist’s Studio,” the devout Anglo-Catholic Victorian feminist — now there’s a combo you don’t see every day — recoils at the expectations of women routinely put by men. “Here’s friendship for you if you like; but love, — No, thank you, John.”

Part of a creative and occasionally scandalous family that included Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood co-founder Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina never married and never had children. She was engaged to Pre-Raphaelite painter James Collinson but broke it off when he reverted to Roman Catholicism, and rejected at least two other proposals from male painters who were part of that circle.

It’s not an utterly outrageous speculation that she suppressed her sexuality due to her religious convictions and palpable fear of winding up in hell, in whose reality she fervently believed. (Brother Dante, by the way, did the illustration for the cover of his sister’s 1862 book Goblin Market and Other Poems appended to the bottom of this essay. His libertine lifestyle did, in the end, make for a particularly hellish exit from this side of the lawn.)

But from where I sit, “Goblin Market” is really about commerce. About how even desire needs a middleman. It’s the original narrative of consumption: woman exchanges self for sweetness, loses access to sweetness, gets restored through contact with another woman who refuses the deal. That’s not Victorian moralizing; that’s economics with theology pretending to be ethics.

The goblins, of course, are us. For the buyers and the sellers were no different fellers than what I profess to be. The chorus, the ad copy, the algorithmic push notification. They’re what happens when marketing stops being about things and starts being about wanting itself.

And the sisters? They’re the only available human response: one who breaks, one who endures. Neither is rewarded exactly. They both just get to keep living.

It’s supposed to be redemptive, but honestly, I don’t think redemption scales anymore. I think the best we get is small, localized rescue — someone pulling someone else out of the wreckage long enough to remember what touch is for.

Rossetti had to make it end well; Victorians demanded moral clarity. We don’t have that excuse. We know too much about irony and algorithms and the microeconomies of the self. But still — I wanted to see if the moral could survive translation.

Superfluous spoiler alert No. 1: it can. But only barely.

Remember Genesis 3:6. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes … it doesn’t end well.

If there’s a thesis buried somewhere in all this pulp, it’s that love, even the familial kind, is a deeply inefficient transaction — and that inefficiency might be the last sacred thing we have left.

So maybe that’s why the goblins sing. Maybe that’s why Laura listens. Maybe that’s why Lizzie goes back into the woods, sticky and shining, to bring her sister home.

And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day …

It was so, it was not so.