Home > Goblin Market Summary & Study Guide > Goblin Market Group > Discussion Board

What is perhaps the graphic or most puzzling part of the narrative poem for you?

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
In her gay prime,
In earliest winter-time,
With the first glazing rime,
With the first snow-fall of crisp winter-time.

I want to know exactly how Jeanie died.  I think this part creeps me out the most.  She tried the goblin's fruit, and since the poem is often seen as an expression of sexuality and the dangers inherent in this sexuality, I wonder if the goblin's fruit is not a metaphor for sexually transmitted diseases.