Women and Commodities British Literature

Women and Commodities

In both Jonathan Swift's "The Lady's Dressing Room" and Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market," women are presented both in a world of commerce and as commodities themselves, but only Rossetti's text is critical of this formulation. In both poems, the value of a woman is dictated by her physical appearance, but whereas Swift seems to be arguing that the value produced by a beautiful woman outweighs any of the undesirable or otherwise unattractive elements which go into maintaining that beauty, Rossetti suggests that the woman who allows herself to be tricked into believing that a woman's value comes from her physical appearance will ultimately be doomed to waste away and die. By examining the conclusion of Swift's poem in conjunction with certain relevant scenes from "Goblin Market," one may see how the former serves to reinforce the notion that women are essentially semi-autonomous commodities, existing solely for visual consumption, while the latter attempts to challenge this ideology by proposing that in matters of money and exchange women are no more or less commodities than men.

The first instance in which "The Lady's Dressing Room" commodifies women comes when the narrator proposes to give "an Inventory" of the various things Strephon finds in Celia's dressing room (Swift 10). The poem reduces Celia to a manufactured product, complete with a list of the required ingredients, as if one were compiling an inventory of all the ingredients necessary for making sausage. Thus, at the outset the poem makes clear its interpretation of women, as any and all agency is stripped away from Celia. "Goblin Market," on the other hand, takes care to establish that the two central women are autonomous, capable people. For instance, Laura and Lizzie live in their own home without any need for male oversight or companionship, and even after Laura has been tricked into exchanging with the goblin men, the two sisters are still able to be "neat like bees, as sweet and busy," as they perform all of the duties necessary for maintaining their house and farm (Rossetti 202). Only after Laura has been ill for some time does she finally stop doing this work, and her weakness is a direct result of her willingness to be commodified (Rossetti 294-299). In Swift's poem, women are literally nothing more than visual objects or maids (in the form of Betty), but in Rossetti's poem, they are actual people, capable of taking care of themselves and experiencing a range of emotions and thoughts.

However, this is not to suggest that women are not commodified in "Goblin Market," because the goblin men explicitly seek to commodify women. When Laura meets them and expresses a desire for the fruit they are selling despite the fact that she does not have any money, the goblin men allow her (and in fact, tell her) to pay with "a golden curl" and "a tear more rare than pearl" (Rossetti 125, 127). Upon first reading this segment it appears that the goblin men are being gracious by allowing Laura to pay with her body in lieu of money, but their reaction when Lizzie does show up with money reveals that their true desire is the continued commodification of women, as they violently attack her for supposedly being "proud, / cross-grained, and uncivil" just because she is so presumptuous as to think that it would be reasonable for a woman to buy some fruit with actual money (Rossetti 495-96). In fact, realizing that the goblin men seem almost exclusively oriented towards commodifying and eventually killing women makes Laura's offer of "a tear more rare the pearl" all the more tragic, because it seems to suggest that Laura previously did not cry that often, and that some part of her actually realizes in the act that she is engaging in a marketplace that serves to demean and destroy women.

Even thought both poems commodify women, the difference between the two could not be more stark. Swift's poem attempts to generate humor by essentially chastising women for participating in all of the unattractive, undesirable activities necessary to attain the standard of beauty dictated by the hegemony of the male gaze. "Goblin Market" includes the commodification of women explicitly as a means of challenging that ideology, but Swift's poem serves to effectively reinforce it essentially by pretending to challenge it. The "inventory" of disgusting things that Strephon finds could almost be taken as justification for the ludicrous requirements placed upon women, except that the narrator's final lines serve to instruct the reader to ignore any possible criticisms of process needed to fulfill these requirements or the society which produced them in the first place. The narrator suggests that Strephon could be happy if only he could "learn to think like me, / and bless his ravishst Sight to see / such order from confusion sprung, / Such gaudy Tulips rais'd from Dung" (Swift 141-144). The narrator is advocating a kind of willful ignorance regarding the role of women in society by suggesting that one should simply appreciate pretty things without bothering to question where they come from or how they are made (with a further demotion of women in the implicit claim that they are merely pretty things to be looked at in the first place). Thus, not only does Swift's poem engage in the commodification of women, but it actually serves as an argument against challenging this process of commodification by suggesting that anyone who investigates the assumptions upon which patriarchy rely is doomed to a life of unhappiness.

The opposing ideological work done by either poem is seen most clearly in who is ultimately punished. In "The Lady's Dressing Room," Strephon is punished for investigating what actually goes in to producing the commodified "beauty" of women, so the poem is clearly working to support and reinforce the dominant power structure which relies on the subjugation of women through a nominal kind of "respect" that really only values women for the visual pleasure they can provide to men. In "Goblin Market," on the other hand, Laura is punished for engaging in a marketplace that relies solely on the commodification of women and their bodies. Laura loses all agency and power when she does this, because by allowing herself to be commodified and traded, she begins a process of disintegration that saps her energy and keeps her from being able to do anything. The only reason she is saved is due to Lizzie's intervention, who is rewarded for challenging the dominance of the goblin men both by suggesting that she has a right to engage with them commercially as an equal by using money instead of her own body, and further by claiming that the goblin men have no authority or right to dictate where she chooses to take the things she buys. Thus, Lizzie does not only retain authority over her own body, but she stakes a claim for herself in the marketplace that has as much authority as any goblin man.