Anomalous Masculinity and Sacred Femininity. Gender and Power in Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market

Gender and Power in Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market

Abstract

Drawing on Kristeva’s abjection theory, this article demonstrates how Christina Rossetti critiques Victorian society to reinforce young women’s moral foundations through re-sacralising the female role. Rossetti addresses female vulnerability and women’s challenges in escaping abjection. Goblin Market functions as sharp social critique, exposing dangers within patriarchal structures where women risk being «neither subject nor object» (Kristeva 1982, p. 1). Through Deleuze and Guattari’s framework, this analysis proposes how Rossetti’s male figures—the goblin men—align with the anomalous, representing destabilising forces at social margins.