This is a beautiful little book, gorgeously illustrated by the author's brother.



The opening pages, where Goblin Men call out to the women about their market wares, reads a bit like something from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:

Rare pears and greengages,
Damsons and bilberries,
Taste them and try:
Currants and gooseberries,
Bright-fire-like barberries,
Figs to fill your mouth,
Citrons from the South,
Sweet to tongue and sound to eye;
Come buy, come buy.

Whimsical, rhyming and vaguely ominous. Twin sisters hear their call; one quickly falls prey to their voice while the other resists. After Laura becomes despondent when she can no longer "[suck] until her lips are sore" (the Goblin Men's calls do not fall upon her ears any longer), Lizzie takes it upon herself to approach them and get "the antidote" for her sister's woes. By taking their abuse of fruit upon her person, but refusing steadfastly to ingest it, she is able to bring it home with her and Laura can partake once more in an uncomfortably erotic recitation:

She clung about her sister,
Kissed and kissed and kissed her:
Tears once again
Refreshed her shrunken eyes,
Dropping like rain
After long sultry drouth;
Shaking with aguish fear and pain,
She kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth.

It quickly becomes a heavy-handed metaphor for Victorian morality; the "fallen" one with the saintly pious sister. Joyce Carol Oates says in the afterword that this lesson is shown "perhaps too clearly for contemporary tastes", which I can certainly agree with. Still, there are many possibilities that can be drawn from the simplistic, lyrical tone. Are the Goblin Men representative of all men who tempt women from their chastity? Or are they just a representation of sexual desire that all Righteous Women, "full of wise upbraidings" should resist? One thing is made clear: men are not to be trusted.