THE GOTHIC

How The Gothic Plays A Role In Goblin Market

Prodigious Monsters, Pleasure from Pain, Setting and Supernatural

In Gothic literature, one thing that is common is the appearance of prodigious monsters. The word prodigious simply means unnatural or abnormal. This often means that animals and humans have morphed into one. For example, a satyr would be considered prodigious. Artists would often create images of beasts that had wings instead of arms, the face of a man with an elephant’s nose and ears or the head of a horse with the lower half of a man. All of these things would be considered prodigious. Prodigious can also include human abnormalities like a man with one eye, a woman with three legs, or a person growing from the torso of another. The umbrella of unnatural or abnormal is a wide one, leaving plenty of space for imagination and creation. Taking this definition into account the idea of prodigious monsters is found throughout Goblin Market due to the inclusion of the goblin men. In Goblin Market we get very detailed descriptions of the animalistic goblin men. Lines 71 through 77 states, “One had a cat’s face, One whisked a tail, One tramped at a rat’s pace, One crawled like a snail, One like a wombat prowled obtuse and furry, One like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry”. Although these are technically men, they possess animal characteristics which automatically makes them abnormal. Not only is their appearance abnormal but so is their merchandise. They somehow have fruits of every season and of every corner of the world perfect for the picking at one time. That is extremely abnormal and when referring to fruit, very unnatural. This element is the first thing that draws the reader in and alerts them that there is something supernatural going on in the poem. 

Based on the claims of Letitia Barbauld and John Aikins in On Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror the gothic is based on the human need to explore pain and receive pleasure. When Goblin Market first opens the reader is introduced to two young women that seem to live a normal and peaceful life. Would you be interested in reading 567 lines about how Laura and Lizzie clean the house and fetch water all day? Probably not. The pain that Laura and Lizzie feel throughout the poem is what captivates us as readers and brings us pleasure. Barbauld and Aikins say, “The painful sensation immediately arriving from a scene of misery, is so much softened and alleviated by the reflex sense of self-approbation attending virtuous sympathy, that we find, on the whole, a very exquisite and refined pleasure remaining, which makes us desirous of again being witnesses of such scenes, instead of flying from them with disgust or horror” (Object of Terror 120). Lizzie tells Laura so many times that eating the fruit is bad that when she “sucks and sucks some more” we are filled with terror about what will happen to her. Will she live? Will she die? How will this affect her? Humans want to explore and to test the limits and this desire for exploration is what draws us into this poem. When Laura eats the fruit we feel that painful sensation arrive in the scene because we know that she is doing something harmful to herself. We feel the same way when Lizzie sacrifices herself and eats the fruit for her sister. (407) This feeling continues when Laura’s “lips began to scorch” (493). We feel that pain and are scared for them but our curiosity overpowers the pain which in result brings pleasure and thus encourages us to keep reading. Pain is something nobody wants to experience first-hand but the distance that simply reading about pain creates allows us to explore pain without it directly affecting us physically and that results in a pleasurable experience. 

Looking at more classic gothic tropes the setting of this poem perfectly aligns with that of traditional gothic literature. Laura and Lizzie come in contact with the mysterious goblin men while they are in the forest. Classic landscapes in gothic literature include castles, monasteries, subterranean passages, caves, nunneries, graveyards, and yes forests. The time of the meetings with the goblin men aligns as well. They meet the goblin men in the evening. Evening is a mysterious time because the sun is going down and light is fading. Everything gets darker, shadows seem to appear more, the human eye often gets lost in the dark. Dark colors like black and navy blue which often appear at night are often paired with the image of evil or the devil thus resulting in a sort of satanic and mysterious environment. The supernatural also almost always make some kind of appearance in gothic literature. Things like witches, warlocks, vampires, monsters, and goblins are all very common.