The Goblin Market: Forbidden FruitThe short epic poem The Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti is like a fairy tale because of the goblins and the happy ending of the united sisters, but the metaphors and allegory of the fruits is ambiguous for different interpretations of drugs, sexual pleasures, temptation to sin, etc. The poem is divided into four main sections: temptation, fall, redemption, and restoration. Many people had mixed feelings about the poem; some were even shocked by Goblin Market due to its obscurity since Rossetti is usually linked to children's novels and nurseries. The target audience is not children but teenagers, because this poem is just a scene to warn young women about temptation and desires. At the Goblin Market, there is a strange list of twenty-nine different kinds of fruit. Many readers, overwhelmed, might wonder why there are so many different kinds of fruit: why not one or two? Much like the reader being overwhelmed, this can symbolize Laura being overwhelmed by her temptation and desire to eat the different kinds of appetizing fruits. The fruit is both ripe and a source of rot. The fruits represent opposites: “night versus day, light versus darkness, summer versus winter, and life versus death.” » (Krocker) Young girls only hear the goblin's cry in the morning and evening, never at night. Mornings and evenings are times of transition, “Twilight is not good for young girls. ” (Rossetti 144) Even after Laura can no longer hear the goblins, Lizzie still can, but only when “the slow evening comes” and “before the night grows dark.” The transition symbolizes the passage from a girl to a woman. Another example of youth to maturity is when the goblins sell the fruit, by the stream, a separation between earth and the medium of paper that turns into bitter poison for Laura. In a way, the Goblin Market is a message to society about drug abuse and the dangers of addiction. Additionally, the fruit can also act as a disease; normally fruits are healthy, but in the poem they do the opposite by slowly killing the person digesting them. “Tender Lizzie could not stand her sister's abnormal care,” a canker sore is one of the main symptoms of syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease. In the poem, the men's roots are found in the ground, which is impure, symbolizing men having sex with prostitutes. Women's reproductive organs are called "garden", so prostitutes have poorly nourishing soil because they have already been "ruined". Parliament passed a series of contagious disease laws that provided for examinations for prostitutes, since diseases were widespread in 1864. (Orchisse 4.)