“Twilight is not good for maidens”: Gender Politics in Milton’s “Comus” and Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market”

Trisha Kannan

Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” (1862) tells the story of a fallen woman who is saved through the sacrifice of her sister. Milton’s “Comus” (1634) also portrays a Lady who is at risk of becoming fallen. The virtue of Milton’s Lady protects her against her tempter, and she is safely restored to the protection of her male relatives. This paper reads “Goblin Market” alongside Milton’s “Comus” (1634) in order to highlight two differing points of view regarding the threat of rape: what is only vaguely alluded to in Milton’s poem is made brutally clear in Rossetti’s. The threat of unbound female sexuality to the economic status of male relatives, and thus the need to contain that sexuality within the domestic sphere, is clearly an underlying theme in “Comus.” A similar social anxiety is still present in Victorian England, but Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” forefronts the reality of physical violence aimed at women. “Goblin Market” is able to clearly articulate the inextricable link between a woman’s body and her virtue, and does so from a point of view unavailable to Milton. I argue that Rossetti’s revision of Milton is committed to the portrayal of violence towards the female body, and reveals that physical violence is pervasive and immediate for women.