Posts Tagged ‘Jasmine Yeh’

• 2008-09 Selected Essays

  Date: 2010.04.17 | Category: News, Selected Essays | Response: 0

  The editorial committee of e.g., UW’s online journal of 100-level writing, is pleased to announce the winning essays for 2008-09:

  “Turning the Intrinsic Screw: Henry James and Human Nature”
  Caitlin Harding

  “Christina Rosetti’s Goblin Market: Finding the Middle Ground”
  Jasmine Yeh

  “The French Lieutenant’s Woman: The Underscores of ‘Freedom’ within Restriction, Fowles’ Bridge between Realities”
  Prisca Youn

  Selections for the journal were made by members of e.g. editorial committee, chaired by Raj Chetty.  All members present at editorial committee meetings offer an opinion on which essays should be selected for publication, except in cases where an editor happens to be the instructor of one of the student submitters.  In this case, the editor does not read, evaluate, or offer an opinion/vote on work submitted by his or her former student.

  The e.g. editorial committee found the above works to be an exemplary piece of 100-level writing demonstrating excellence in claim and communication and proficiency in the Expository Writing Program’s outcomes.

  Judges: Jessica Campbell, Ed Chang, Raj Chetty, Stevi Costa, Brian Gutierrez, Dave Holmberg, Erik Jaccard, Anthony Manganaro, Jason Morse, Caitlin Palo, Alice Pedersen, Kim Trinh

• 2008-09 Winner: “Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market: Finding the Middle Ground” by Jasmine Yeh

  Date: 2010.04.17 | Category: Selected Essays | Response: 0

  “Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market” by Jasmine Yeh PDF

  “Lizzie with an open heart,
  Laura in an absent dream,
  One content, one sick in part;
  One warbling for the mere bright day’s delight,
  One longing for the night.”
  –Christina Rossetti

  Since its publication, literary and social critics have interpreted Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market in many ways.  Some critics uphold it is a masterpiece empowering women.  Others think much less of it due to the inconsistencies within the text.  This fairy-tale poem portrays two girls, Lizzie and Laura, tempted by goblin men selling a generous variety of fruits in a glen. Lizzie chooses to resist their cries of “Come buy, come buy,” while Laura gives in and trades a lock of her golden hair for the taste of their harvest, becoming insane with longing for it afterwards.  At the end, Lizzie breaks the spell of the goblins on Laura by withstanding their torture and hazing. Most of the critics’ interpretations are focused on either sexuality or the gender war between men and women. However, by assuming Peter Cominos’s Innocent Femina Sensualis in Unconscious Conflict as a basis for analysis, a new reading of the text emerges that embodies both interpretations. Rossetti’s poem depicts two “sisters”[1] who share a bond stronger than the bond between a man and a woman claiming, “For there is no friend like a sister/ In calm or stormy weather” (58).  With the two girls, Lizzie and Laura, Rossetti acknowledges the two extreme perceptions of women as passionless angels and whores (Cominos 163, 165).  Through the poem, she reconciles the two extremes by suggesting that there is a middle ground between the pure and the impure due to that bond of sisterhood.

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