Marxist interpretations

A second interpretation of the poem is that it is about the market and Victorian capitalism.

 

One of the first sounds of the poem is the sound of the market:

 

'Morning and evening / Maids heard the goblins cry.'

 

Rossetti would have heard these cries walking through the streets of London this is the traditional cry of the street vendor. 

 

The second aspect that would have echoed the experience of anyone walking through London streets is the sense of congestion, shouting and buffeting. This is the insistence of the market place - you have to buy and through seductive advertising, false desire is created:

 

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:

 

There is certainly something suspicious about the fruits being 'all ripe together' (l.15) because were fruits natural they would ripen at different times.

 

Perhaps the most interesting way to think about the market and capitalism is to see the poem being about the intersection of commerce and sex. The fact that Rossetti worked with 'Fallen Women' would have meant that she would have been aware of the thriving sex industry in the Victorian period:

 

                  Rossetti wrote this poem in 1859 while volunteering at the St Mary Magdalene Penitentiary for ‘fallen women’ in Highgate. Dedicated                to the reform and rehabilitation of prostitutes, this Anglo-Catholic institution was remarkable in the period for its conviction that                women who had transgressed sexually could be redeemed. Biographers and critics have argued that the themes of temptation,                sexual exchange and sisterly redemption in this poem are influenced by its poet’s experience working as an ‘Associate Sister’ at                Highgate. (Roe, 2014)

 

For more details of this

 

This leads to the next view of the poem which sees it as a poem about sexual desire.