Unabashedly Bookish

[#1]

Some years ago, I came across in one book or another Dante Rossetti's illustration for the frontispiece of Christina Rossetti's 

Goblin Market  (1862) or rather a blown-up image of the circle in the corner--something that is suggested by what I expected to find and what I found when I went looking for the illustrations again this week, as Rosseti's larger illustrations look nothing like what appears in the circle--and had one of those moments of recognition that we all sometimes have. I thought, "That's Where the Wild Things Are," a book I had read over and over as a child. I quickly moved on to other issues, as my interests, perhaps unfortunately, have never brought me to study children's literature, but I never forgot that moment of recognition.

The recent release of Where the Wild Things Are, a movie I will likely not see despite good reviews and genuine desire, again got me thinking about the Rossettis, Dante's illustration and Christina's poem. Had Maurice Sendak been influenced by them? The simple answer is apparently "no," as Sendak had, the story goes, originally considered filling his tale with horses, an animal he found himself unable to draw, and modeled his monsters on his uncles and aunts, a fact that fits in, I guess, with the story, that is, if we take Max as an alter ego of Sendak and note that what he is looking for resides with his family from the beginning, something illustrated by his homesickness and the warm meal that awaits him in the end. Still, imaging a connection between Sendak's tale and Christina Rossetti's might not be pointless.

In the "Goblin Market," Laura, the maid who gives in to fancy and tastes the Goblin's forbidden fruits, is cured from her desire--a desire that is causing her to waste away--to taste again with the help of her sister, Lizzie. Lizzie faces the Goblins against her better judgment to procure more fruit for Laura, who is unable to see or hear them after her initial encounter. Lizzie, of course, is uninterested in tasting, and the Goblins, therefore, attack her, leaving her not with fruits but their juices on her face, which Laura tastes. The flavor is now wormwood to her and cures her of her desire, and she is able thereafter to focus on the love of her immediate family and eventually marry and form a family of her own, unlike Jeanie who had accepted the Goblins' offer a year before and now lies in a grave rather than a marital bed.

Both tales, then, comment on the emptiness of wild desires, repudiating their value in favor of the comforts of family life--though both also do a lot more and Rossetti's feminist sensibility certainly needs to be taken into account to get a complete sense of her poem. The "Goblin Market" happens to prove a stronger antidote to desire, as Laura's pleasures are momentary and her longing to experience them again horrible, while the protracted nature of Max's imagined wild world is what brings the reader back to his tale again and again. The meal at the end is the promise of a safe haven after one has become tired of the fantasy, which if indulged in for too long could prove as horrible as Laura's longing.