When thinking about innocents, what comes to mind? Is it a newborn baby that has not yet experienced the ever changing world around them, or is it a woman that has not yet experienced any form a relationship. In many cases once our innocence is gone, the individual is unable to get it back. An example of this can be seen after a wedding ceremony. Once the woman is married, she tends to cut her hair, which in a sense is stripping herself of her innocent ways and allowing herself to enter into the world of marriage life. Stripping away innocence in some cases aren’t necessarily bad, but it in a sense allows for the individual to have a new perspective on life: whether good or bad. In Christina Rossetti’s poem “Goblin Market”, she seems to play with the fact that innocence can be restored to some degree. She allows for the reader to see the restoration of innocence through the act of another. Rossetti interweave how although innocence can be stripped away, it can be bought back by an act of sacrifice and love for another.
Rossetti begins her poem with the goblins crying out “Come buy, com buy: apples and quinces, lemons, and oranges,...come buy, come buy.” (Rossetti 1). The list off all these different types of fruit is used to entice the reader and stir up the type of desire or temptation that she introduces to her characters throughout the poem. She does this to sort of bring up the theological principle of how appealing sin looks from the outside. Then she builds on this idea by showing how Laura starts off by not wanting to “look at the goblin man” but then ends up picking up her head and looking at the “tramp little men” walking “down the glen” (Rossetti 2). This allows for the readers to understand that even when a person knows that sin is a bad thing, it can still seem appealing to an individual. However, it isn’t clear of the actual intentions of the story until after Laura buys from the goblin men “with a golden curl” (Rossetti 4). With giving up a piece of her hair she is giving away her innocence freely in order to obtain her desires. This can also be seen in the real world in many gang cultures. Many people try so hard to shield their children from the gang life, but there is something so appealing about it that ends up sucking them into it and in some instances the price of the temptation is death. It can also show us how people are before Jesus came and died on the cross for our sins. Without Jesus’s sacrifice, humans would still be a slave to sin and the desires of the fallen world.
Rossetti then transitions to showing how an act of sacrifice can bring an individual's innocence back. In the poem Lizzie, Laura sister, sees how the fruit is devouring Laura from the inside out by a “swift decay” of her body and soul (Rossetti 8). Lizzie sees what is happening to her sister and wants to help her get better and so she goes in search of the goblin men in order to get the fruit for her. However, she is unable to buy it from the goblins with money and they try to forcefully make Lizzie eat the fruit in order to steal her innocence away. Yet the goblins are unsuccessful in “making her eat” their fruit, even with pulling “her hair out by the roots” (Rossetti 12). Throughout this predicament that Lizzie is in, she never gives into the temptation and is able to give Laura the juices on her face. Lizzie sacrificed her body in order to help heal her sister of what is happening to her and is able to do it while resisting the temptations that the goblins attempted to force upon her. This can be tied back to the theological principle of Jesus dying on the cross to relieve us of our sins. Jesus, just like Lizzie, performed a sacrificial act in order to save the people that he loves. He took all our sins upon himself in order to help out the human race, because he loves them. This sacrificial act is also the reason that Lizzie endures pain in order to help her sister. In both of these examples, innocence is bought back through these acts of sacrifice in order to save the individual plague in temptation or sin.
Even though innocence is seen as a small deal in today’s society, it is actually really important. Innocence is something that needs to be treasured by every individual, because once it is lost it is extremely hard to get back. However it is not impossible. In the Christian faith, individuals are able to possess their innocence again, due to Jesus dying on the cross and saving them from their sins. In all honesty Jesus, did not have to die on the cross for Christians, however, it is because he loved them that he did it. In many cultures nowadays, sacrificial acts are seen as weak and unnecessary and it is fitting that the only way to possess innocence again is to go through that process. These acts are made out of the purity of an individual’s heart and often occurs, because they care for the person that needs their innocence returned to them.
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