SOURCE: "The Indefinite Disclosed: Christina Rossetti and Emily Dickinson," in Women Writing and Writing about Women, edited by Mary Jacobus, Croom Helm, London, 1979, pp. 61-79.

In the excerpt below, Kaplan surveys feminist readings of "Goblin Market" and argues that the poem explores female sexual fantasy.

To fill a Gap
 Insert the Thing that caused it—
 Block it up
 With Other—and 'twill yawn the more—
 You cannot solder an Abyss
 With Air.

(Emily Dickinson, c. 1862)¹

This curious, compacted lyric is one of a group of poems that form a distinct category in the work of two Victorian women poets, Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti. Such lyrics speak directly to and about the psyche, expressing and querying feelings that are deliberately abstracted from any reference to, or analysis of, the social causes of psychological states. They attempt to escape immediate or specific social determination, a project that cannot be...