When I read Goblin Market before the class discussion, I thought Laura and Lizzie were just normal sisters who look out for each other. I was actually set on the thought that they were sisters the whole time I was reading the poem. Things that Laura and Lizzie do, such as sleeping together and walking together, are activities that any sisters would do. As a younger sister, I have walked with my sister. Also, my sister and I have shared a room and slept in the same room when we were younger. As Laura looked out for Lizzie, I would looke out for my sister and protect my sister from "globins" as well.

After the class discussion, my thoughts about the relationship changed a bit. I think it is possible that Christina Rossetti was trying to portray a lesbian relationship between Lizzie and Laura. As mentioned during the discussion, the way Laura talked to Lizzie after the "Laura and Goblin incident" was pretty sensual.

In order to understand the poem better, it would be nice to discuss and estimate Laura and Lizzie's age. I also wonder why they don't have parents living in their house.

As mentioed below, I think it would be good to talk about Jeanie. I didn't completely understand the purpose that Jeanie served in this poem.

I was thinking about our readings and discussion this week and was reminded of the laws of thermodynamics (i.e. the energy of the universe is constant and the entropy of the universe is increasing).  It seems like these principles also apply to the creation of new genres and academic writing too. 

In terms of the infinite regress of source materials, perhaps they are the conserved “energy” and all of our different interpretations and changes that we apply to these conserved sources serve to combine but, in doing so, spread out the sources into something “new”… a unique combination.   I think the idea of wanting to produce something that’s different, in any form that it may take  (write, draw, describe) are all ways of taking a finite source and expanding out to something infinite. 

With the ability to reference so many sources on the internet, our ability to combine, but expand, has increased profoundly.  The internet opens our window to new languages, stories, tones of voice, categories of knowledge, graphic representations, interactions, as well as things we’re not even seeking to find (i.e. the surprises that may come up when you Google).  Since you can make many more variants from 100 sources than 5, for example, all of these aspects can make for even greater diversity and boundless creativity.  As the universe is increasing, so are our literary kinds. 

Throughout "Goblin Market" one of the aspects I found the most striking is the playful air of the format and its similarity to the structure of a nursery rhyme or a fairy tale. The fact that it has this shared format makes the poem exceptionally striking, as one can undoubtedly say it is a poem that is not meant for children, as it reflects upon topics that would be incomprehendible to them. Rossetti might have used this format to speak lengths about conflicts such as sexuality, inequality and sexual violence and how these are often a part of a woman's struggle, though as children you are shielded from hearing about the realities of such horrible truths.

At the end of the poem, we learn that both women have been married but their husbands do not have a role in the text. They are not described in any way. We learn that Laura and Lizzie's relationship is the most important one in each of their lives along with each of their children -- and their feelings of obligation to worn them about the dangers of the goblins. While the relationship is ultimately erotic, as are the calls of the goblins, Laura and Lizzie's eroticism stretches far beyond purely sexual connotation. They seem emotionally close and devoted to one another and seem to miss the past during which they were able to enjoy their time together.

"Laura would call the little ones
And tell them of her early prime,
Those pleasant days long gone
Of not-returning time"

Since our discussion of Goblin Market this week, and the related question of whether each of us is a feminist, I have been stuck on my answer to that question.  My intial response was that I am, of course, but then I began to wonder if that definition is too narrow.  In fact, I'm kind of stuck wondering if feminism is too narrow in general.  Until recently, I accepted the dictionary definition of feminism as being about equally for both genders, but it is that binarism that has me stuck right now. 

It seems to me that, historically, feminism has relied on the notion that there are two distinct genders, and that those genders are at odds with one another.  While there's definitely a tradition, especially within 3rd wave feminism, of making room for women who don't strictly adhere to gender norms, there is still the problem of erasure of women who were assigned male at birth, and the errasure of men who were assigned female at birth, inherent in much of the rhetoric surroundng feminism.  From the second wave movement of loving one's vulva, to recent events, including the "Womyn born Womyn" event, feminism still seems stuck on the idea that having a vagina = being a woman.  To me, this is too narrow a definition.

This is my second time using Serendip for one of my classes.  Before I took interdisciplinary perspectives on gender and sexuality last year I was really not looking forward to having to blog each week.  I did not think anyone else would ever read the things that I posted.  I was surprised to find myself in a conversation with my entire class that existed outside the walls of our classroom.  Every week we had to do a blog post and our posts often created topics that would fuel discussions inside and outside of class.   One week, one of my classmates wrote in her blog post about how much she disliked one of the books we read.  A few days later, the author of that book responded to her post stating the reasons she wrote the things my classmate disliked in her book.  I am excited to see where the online Literacies and Education class discussion will take us.

I am also looking forward to really understanding what this class is about.   I want to truly break down what literacies actually mean.  Could you consider socially illiterate when they can read and write but they have no comprehensions of meaning and symbolism through body language?    What does multi-literacy mean and how is it achieved within an academic setting such as Bryn Mawr?  What are the implications of not having computer literacies in the growing technological era?  These questions are just starting points for me with this course and they will be some of the points I plan on addressing throughout the semester.

To me, the most striking thing about Rosetti's "Goblin Market" was the relationship between the women.

The relationship between Laura and Lizzie is complicated and intriguing; they are described as sisters but there is innuendo of sexual relationship. "Golden head by golden head" they sleep beside one another. Lizzie risks everything to help Laura, and succeeds in saving her. Maybe lovers, maybe sisters, one is undoubtedly the savior of the other. And the concluding lines of the poem do not chastise Laura for her indiscretion, but rather dispense the wisdom that "there is no friend like a sister." Regardless of its ambiguous nature, the poem centers on the fact of their relationship.

One of the things we didn't really talk about in class was Jeanie, the woman who fell prey to the goblins in the way that Laura did. Only, presumably, Jeanie did not have a Lizzie. Laura reflects on Jeanie when she realizes she can no longer hear the goblins, and the poem reads,

"She thought of Jeanie in her grave,

 Who should have been a bride;

But who for joys brides hope to have

Fell sick and died"

A little cliché to find meaning and thus struggle in the first sentence of a class reading (and I find I am not alone in this based on two notecards in my Ghana study), but in Literacy and Diversity Lemke explains that “the forms of literacy should be as diverse as are the interests and purposes of people in our society”. This idea first began my thought process of the many different types of literacies that can exist: “cultural” literacy, literacy regarding a certain academics (such as being literate in physics), literacy for a language (fluent in English), and even literacy for certain abilities. My second thought actually came from my friend, who on her notecard wrote the thought that if literacy should be diverse, then literacies would possibly separate people. I did not give much thought to this until I read numerous tweets regarding how some people were struggling with Twitter because they did not understand the “literacy” of it (the character limit, remembering how to respond to someone or more than one someone, attempting to follow a conversation). As only a few people in our class had a Twitter before the course started, and were thus not as “literate” with Twitter as Alice or the few others who already had accounts, would this not separate our class? If the purpose of the Twitter hashtag was to generate thoughtful discussion amongst all students, if half the students were literate at Twitter and the other half were not, would the second half not be left behind in confusion and lack of understanding? Perhaps, a lack of learning and making meaning?

Although writing in a natural or physical science discipline can be easily distinguished from a literary text by the subject topic, different genres of writing branch out of science as well. As a physics major and a student in other science courses, I have had a range of experience in different types of science writing. Presenting my laboratory work for an experimental physics course, an individual research project on the chaos in heart rate for classical mechanics, or a popular science report on human evolution for biology, I must say that each writing experience was unique regardless of the topic in question. The writing assignments are framed in a specific context, either by the professor or the course itself, that allow for a genre of writing. As mentioned by Debbie in class on Thursday, the different genres of writing appear as a result of the context of each sample. A sample from a magazine such as Harper’s or an academic literary essay from the PMLA fall under different genres as each addresses a different audience with different backgrounds on the topic. Other writing samples cannot be understood out of a historical or political context at which they were originally written. Whether a science paper is to be published in Scientific American or the Physical Review Letters does create separate genres in scientific writing as a result of the expected audience and their varying technical and science background.

Originally, I saw Goblin Market as being about the dangers of “strange men,” but by looking at commonalities in the interpretations offered by other critics, I can see that Goblin Market lends itself to a wide range of interpretation.  The common thread seems to be that the goblins must represent something forbidden that young women could fall prey to (drugs, sex, food, consumerism…etc…).  The real point of importance to me is what all of these interpretations could say about women and sisterhood.  Regardless of what the temptation is, the roles given to women are both one who falls victim to temptation, and one who selflessly rescues a weaker victim.  On one hand, it seems very feminist to have a heroine who does not need the help of a man.  On the other hand, it seems that everyone who falls victim to temptation in the world of Goblin Market has been a woman, the only reference to past victims was also a woman and there is no significant mention of human men.  What would have happened in the poem if a father, brother, or other male figure was present?  While a female helping another female seems very feminist, a temptation that only corrupts women seems strange and could be promoting women as the “weaker sex.”  I am still not sure whether Christina Rossetti deserves a seat at the table – although she promotes independence and sisterhood, the sisterhood came at great expense and does not seem to exist in a broader world that includes men.