The Victorian Age was a time of economic, social, and cultural change throughout England. It was characterized by "momentous and intimidating" social movements. Under the reign of Queen Victoria as people migrated from the county to the city in hopes of finding better wages as a result of the Industrial Revolution. In the Goblin Market, Rosetti addresses the skepticisim associated with sudden ascces to some goods that were unsustainable. The maids were tempted daily by goblin men that could not have been grown in the same enironment and are not home to England.

Most of Christina Rosetti's poem and art was surrounded around the Oxford Movement. The Oxford Movement is a movement of high members of the Church of England that eventually devloped into Anglo-Catholicism. Their philosophy was known as tractarianism.  Christina joined the oxford movement alolng with her mother and sister in the early 1840s. Her sister became an Angelican nun and that is where she started working with the Angeliccan sisterhood at the Highgate Penitetiary. Which is the inspiration behind the Goblin Market.