Understanding Thomas Hardy's The Ruined Maid
Victorian Women's Economic Realities and Class Conventions
Feb 9, 2009
Hardy’s poem was written in 1866 and published in 1901, exactly ten years after he completed Tess of the d'Urbervilles, which also revealed the injustices of Victorian morality and women’s insecure social position. This poem is an example of a dramatic dialogue, in which a story is revealed exclusively through a verbal exchange between two characters. Playing on the word ‘ruined’, Hardy questions which woman's reality is the harsher and suggests the irony of class distinctions and moral rectitude.
Hardy’s The Ruined Maid is a dramatic dialogue comprised of six four-line stanzas. An AABB exact rhyme scheme carries through each stanza in the poem.
Stanza One
The speaker of the first three lines is an unnamed farm maid, who expresses disbelief at seeing a woman named ‘Melia in the town street. This unnamed speaker reveals the most about titular ruined maid, ‘Melia.’ It is here that we learn that ‘Melia is dressed well and looks prosperous. In each stanza, ‘Melia speaks the last line, indicating that she’s been ‘ruined’. In this context, ‘ruined’ means that she has crossed the Victorian-era morality line by selling herself. She would be considered soiled and unmarriageable even among men of her own class.
Stanza Two
The unnamed farm maid reveals that when ‘Melia left the farm she lacked shoes and socks and was wearing little better than rags. However, ‘Melia could apparently no longer brook farm work’s hard labor. Now, she wears jewelry and feathers. ‘Melia confirms that this is the uniform of her new profession.
Stanza Three
While on the farm, ‘Melia spoke with a heavy accent, which the unnamed farm maid mimics. She herself reveals her own accent when she exclaims that ‘Melia’s deportment makes her worthy of the posh set. Ironically, in the stanza’s last line, ‘Melia indicates that she has gained refinement with her loss of conventional dignity.
Stanza Four
‘Melia’s hands and face are described by the nameless farm maid. While on the ‘barton’, ‘Melia’s hands more closely resembled paws, but her tailored gloves now indicate that her hands have grown slim and elegant. They fit as if she had not done any hard labor that would broaden knuckles or distort hand shape. ‘Melia confirms that she does no work now that she is ruined.
Stanza Five
The farm maid reveals that ‘Melia frequently complained, suffered headaches, and was depressed while working in the farm yard. However, now she seems comfortable. ‘Melia again affirms her vivacious temperament in her new occupation.
Stanza Six
Captivated by ‘Melia’s appearance and comportment--and possibly not understanding the reality of 'Melia's new calling, the farm maid innocently wishes that she, too, could dress as 'Melia does and idly stroll the streets. This time, ‘Melia has the stanza’s last two lines. While icily separating herself from her former co-worker, whom she calls a “raw country girl”, 'Melia manages to reveal her own humble origins by using ‘ain’t’ in her final sentence. Hardy reminds the audience that while she’s escaped the farmyard, she has not escaped the fact of her social class, which, at the time, was determined by birth and education.
The Rhyme Scheme Explained
Hardy uses exact rhymes in the pattern AABB, meaning that the last word in lines one and two rhyme, while the last words in lines three and four rhyme. For example, in stanza one: ‘crown’, the last word in line one, rhymes with ‘town’ the last word in line two; ‘prosperi-ty’, the last word in line three, rhymes with ‘she’, the final word of line four. This rhyme scheme continues to the poem’s end.
Other Symbolism
‘Melia, perhaps short for ‘Amelia’, is similar to ‘ameliorate’, whose Latin root is ‘melior’. Melior means to grow mild or to mitigate, a somewhat cryptic reference to the favorable change in ‘Melia’s economic circumstances.
Hardy's literary works often concerned themselves with the Victorian era's entrenched class system and with the moral and economic constraints imposed on women by unwritten social codes. Through his dramatic dialogue between a naive farm maid and her former co-worker, now prostitute, Hardy makes the irony of women's realities plain.
Ultimately, each woman performs demeaning labor in order to survive, but one has denied conventional moral codes to improve her material circumstance. Now 'ruined', the woman has condemned herself to a situation even lower--and a future even bleaker--than the farm maid's.
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