‘Goblin Market’, Sisterhood and the Church Penitentiary Association

Abstract

Abstract Christina Rossetti’s work with fallen women and penitent prostitutes as a volunteer for the Church Penitentiary Association has long been known, but to date there is little scholarship on the relationship between her poem ‘Goblin Market’ and the actual rules and structures of the types of institutions where Rossetti volunteered for a decade. In this essay, I examine the ways that ‘Goblin Market’ both reflects the influence of the Church Penitentiary Association and interrogates questions about the viability of female communities.