“Sugar-Baited Words": Diabetic Themes in Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market"

<p>Written in 1859 and published in 1862, Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” follows two sisters who are tempted by goblins to eat their fruit. I read the younger sister, Laura, who gets ill after eating the goblin’s sugary fruits, through a diabetic framework because Victorian medicine did acknowledge diabetes as an illness. In Victorian physician Henri Bell’s work, <em>An Essay on Diabetes</em> (1842), he provides the working definition of diabetes, stating that diabetes is “a disease characterized by an excretion of urine, generally excessive, and variously modified in its composition, by extreme thirst, voracious appetite, dryness of skin, and progressive emaciation” (3). Prior scholars have approached the goblin fruit in different ways, most closely resembling my own argument are those of Rebecca Stern and Paula Marantz Cohen’s arguments of Laura as being anorexic as they focus on the connection between the female body and the fruits. I also use the work of Talia Schaffer to explore the relationship between the sisters and their daughters to offer a reading of the ending of the poem that focuses on care communities as what saves Laura. Using both the knowledge of diabetes in the Victorian period and modern disability theory to consider how language is used to describe the fruits and symptoms the characters possess, this reading of “Goblin Market” explores the social attitude towards diabetes and examines the importance of care communities for those with disabilities.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters Thesis

Year dc:date.available

2025

Author dc:creator

• Capers, Kayleigh

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dr. Alexandra Valint
• Dr. Emily Stanback
• Dr. Leah Parker

• Diabetes
• Rossetti
• Goblin
• Fruit
• Disability
• Care
• Literature in English, British Isles

Repository record dc:identifier

https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/1170

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:aquila.usm.edu:masters_theses-2246