When I Return || Perrentes

Chapter 11: Lying, Falsifying and General Illegality

"So I was thinking," Mike started out of the silence as they hurtled along a backroad, the red car close behind. Vic snorted.

"Steady on."

"I was thinking about Christina Rossetti, right? And the religious reading of Goblin Market in conjunction with the feminist reading of Goblin Market."

"So weird," Jaime said, munching on a peanut butter cup. "I was thinking the same thing."

Mike blinked for a moment, pulled a face in bafflement, and then shook his head and carried on. "So, I was thinking about how Lizzie's actions to save Laura flew in the face of Victorian ideas of female heroines, how she was a pioneering figure, being a strong woman, the hero of the story, and her drive was not romantic but sisterly."

"Right," Tony nodded.

"And then I was thinking, you know how you see Laura as the figure of Eve, eating the forbidden fruit, and then Lizzie as the Jesus figure because she sacrifices herself to save her sister?"

"Yeah."

"Well...I remember reading in a critical essay once that there was room to interpret the Goblin Men themselves as the perpetrators of original sin, since they tempt Laura in with the fruit."

"Good point,"

"But I also read that Christina Rossetti was somewhat prevented from being a feminist because of her religion, even though she supported Suffrage and women's right to vote and so on...but she belonged to the evangelical branch of the Church of England. So she'd have known the Bible pretty well, right?"

"I would have thought so."

"Well...then I was thinking about Lilith."

"Oh my God, like Lilith from Supernatural?"

Mike laughed. "Kind of, I suppose. Basically, Lilith is mentioned in the...Book of Isaiah, I think? It says that God created her at the same time and in the same way he created Adam, she was intended to be his wife. But according to the book, she was fiercely independent and refused to lie beneath Adam. She wanted to be his equal. Essentially, she buggered off on her own, resenting being used to reproduce the human race, and spawned a bunch of demons instead."

"Ha!" Tony exclaimed. "Okay. Okay, so you're saying that in the Book of Isaiah it literally likens women's pursuit of equality and emancipation to being a demon?"

"It can certainly be interpreted that way."

"Yikes," Tony blinked, eyes wide.

"Indeed. I've thought before that perhaps our world would be very different if we interpreted original sin as Adam's determination to have sex with Lilith and his subsequent hostility as a result instead of Eve taking the apple. I think it would be quite different, don't you?"

"It may be so..." Tony nodded, again, chewing his thumbnail. "Damn. But say, how does this tie to Goblin Market?"

"Well. You know the part where Lizzie tries to buy the fruit but the Goblins say they won't sell it, she has to eat it, but she refuses? And the Goblins try to force her to eat the fruit and pin her down and abuse her to try to get her to eat it, but she still refuses point blank. Well, that may be symbolic of Jesus, true - but mightn't that also be symbolic of Lilith? Refusing to submit in a sexual as well as social context, maintaining independence...we can already interpret Goblin Men as perpetrators of original sin, but in that context you could interpret Rossetti as subscribing to the idea of Adam's pressuring of Lilith as the true original sin. They say her religion prevented her from being a feminist, but perhaps it enabled her to be so in a different way to what a modern reader may consider."