Lizzie’s Insistent Rejection to Her Unconscious Desires in Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market through the Lens of Lacanian Desires

Abstract

The growing concern in the latest critical practices and processes of a great many scholars as indicated in the continuous development and improvement of literary criticism with respect to the veritable and valuable characterization of this poem Goblin Market (1862) has been shown for the essential and evident exploration of the feasible solutions to the problems as most women character have to be faced with in an unavoidable fashion in Victorian age due to their blind adaptation to the ideological and epistemological values emphasized in the continuation of Christian beliefs regarding the essential and crucial morality to be followed in the increasing enrichment and improvement of their rationalist mentality. However, it has seemed to be quite pitiful that they have failed to probe into the unconscious minds of the vivid characters depicted in this poem to lay an ideological and epistemological foundation for the apparent clarification of the strong will of this character Lizzie has developed to enable her to get free from the imprisonment or enslavement of the hegemonic desires carried in the harmful fruits of the goblin men she and her sister Laura has encountered in their lives. For the sake of this critical blind spot, this paper will explore Lizzie’s strong will used to protect the purity and piety of her unconscious desires and to reduce to the least the possibility for her to fall victim to the vicious desires those goblin men aim to impress and impose upon her mind indebted to the rich theoretical enlightenment and encouragement entailed in Lacanian desires related to the conceptual elaboration of the longing for wholeness, sanity, and, meaning in the rich lives of his analysands. In the long run, this exploration will remind more and more readers of the objective truth that the strong willingness of women as exemplified in what has happened to Lizzie is bound to give rise to their great successes in rejecting their unconscious desires triggered in the popularization of the vicious desires of polluted men like those of the goblin men in this poem as epitomized in the developmental inclined with which the marketization and capitalization of the communicative activities related to the commercialization and commodification of the harmful and sinful fruits peddled in goblin market.