"Eat Me, Drink Me, Love Me": Eucharist and the Erotic Body in Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market (Essay) (Victorian Poetry Studies) (Critical Essay‪)‬

In the scholarship surrounding Goblin Market, there is no dearth of readings which focus on the erotic nature of its imagery. In addition, any number of readings of the poem focus on its allegorical rendering of spiritual redemption. Few readings, however, have attempted to bridge the gap between these two approaches. And almost none, as Diane D'Amico has noted in her work Christina Rossetti: Faith, Gender, and Time, have "yet given any detailed attention to Rossetti's Eucharistic beliefs," (1) even though Eucharist as sacrifice and saving meal is clearly at the heart of Goblin Market. But, as I will argue in this essay, the both/and nature of Rossetti's central image of the erotic body as the vehicle for salvation--an image that is at once profoundly spiritual and profoundly erotic--can only be understood through an appreciation of the Anglo-Catholic doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. This doctrine, shaped by the teachings of Saint Augustine and heavily influenced by such key Tractarians as Edward Pusey and Robert Isaac Wilberforce, is, like Goblin Market itself, a bewildering and eroticized combination of the physical and the spiritual. Moreover, the doctrine of the Eucharist offers a paradigm of desire, echoed in Goblin Market, which acknowledges the physical body and asserts that the body may be used (and even enjoyed) in the service of what Augustine and Pusey see as the highest good, that is, "the closest union of God and man." (2) In this essay I will first sketch briefly the history of Rossetti's reading of Augustine (specifically The Confessions) and her connection with the Tractarians. I will then offer some background concerning the Anglo-Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist as well as a discussion of the role of the physical body--that is, the body of Christ as literal nourishment--in Eucharistic language. Finally, I will offer a reading of Goblin Market through the twin sensibilities of erotic desire and spiritual satisfaction. In this reading, I will argue that Rossetti's startlingly physical imagery is the logical and indeed appropriate spiritual conclusion of Eucharistic doctrine. In so doing, I will suggest that Rossetti is using the body not as a symbol or metaphor but rather as the concrete conduit through which humans understand God. In other words, for Rossetti, humans do not so much transcend the body as they experience the transcendent through it. As such, Rossetti resists a purely ascetic repression of the body even while insisting it be employed in the service of a higher desire.