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...
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