The Ruined Maid

“The Ruined Maid” is a poem by English poet and novelist Thomas Hardy. It was written in 1866, when Hardy was 25 or 26 years old, but it was not published until 35 years later, in Hardy’s second collection of verse, Poems of the Past and Present. The poem is a satire on conventional Victorian morality, in which a woman who had sex before marriage was considered to be “ruined.” When two women who are old acquaintances meet unexpectedly in a city, their ensuing conversation shows that this is very far from being the case. 

This study guide uses the edition of “The Ruined Maid” from Selected Shorter Poems of Thomas Hardy, Macmillan, 1969, pp. 22-23. 

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of gender discrimination, sexual content, and death by suicide.

POET BIOGRAPHY

Novelist, poet, and short-story writer Thomas Hardy was born on June 2, 1840, in Higher Bockhampton, a village near Dorchester in Dorset, southwest England. Hardy attended local schools until he was 16, after which he was apprenticed to a local architect. He moved to London in 1862, where he joined an architectural practice. He continued his education, enrolling in King’s College and also reading widely on his own, including the work of Charles Darwin and the philosopher John Stuart Mill. During this time, Hardy was also writing fiction and poetry. “The Ruined Maid” was one of his early works, written in 1866 while Hardy was living in one room in a house in Paddington, London. 

In 1867, Hardy returned to Dorset, and his first successful novel, Under the Greenwood Tree, was published anonymously in 1872. He followed this two years later with Far from the Madding Crowd, and when that novel met with success, he decided to give up architecture and devote himself to writing novels. He married Emma Gifford in 1874, and the marriage lasted until her death in 1912. 

His next two novels, The Return of the Native (1878) and The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), were set, like the first two, in the fictional landscape Hardy called Wessex, which covered a large part of southern and southwestern England. The Woodlanders followed in 1887 and then Tess of the D’Urbervilles in 1891, a novel in which a young woman is seduced by an aristocrat and becomes (like the woman in “The Ruined Maid”) a “fallen woman.” Hardy intended the novel as a critique of the rigidity of Victorian sexual mores, but many readers considered it immoral. Jude the Obscure (1895) also received a hostile reception in some quarters, perceived as an attack on marriage. Both novels, however, sold well and eventually came to be regarded as Hardy’s finest work.

Nevertheless, Hardy decided to write no more novels. Instead, he turned to poetry. In 1898, he published Wessex Poems and Other Verses, a collection of poems he had written over the previous 30 years. The Dynasts, a verse drama about the Napoleonic wars, appeared in three parts from 1904 to 1908. Other poetry collections included Time’s Laughingstocks and Other Verses (1909), Satires of Circumstance (1914), which contained “The Ruined Maid,” Collected Poems (1919), and Late Lyrics and Earlier with Many Other Poems (1923). 

In 1910, Hardy’s eminence as a writer was acknowledged when he was awarded the Order of Merit by King Edward VII. Two years after the death of his wife in 1912, Hardy married Florence Emily Dugdale. They had been friends since 1905 and Dugdale had become his assistant and secretary. Hardy died on January 11, 1928, of heart disease, at the age of 87. 

POEM TEXT

"O 'Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!

Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town?

And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?" —

"O didn't you know I'd been ruined?" said she.

— "You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks,

Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks;

And now you've gay bracelets and bright feathers three!" —

"Yes: that's how we dress when we're ruined," said she.

— "At home in the barton you said ‘thee' and ‘thou,'

And ‘thik oon,' and ‘theäs oon,' and ‘t'other'; but now

Your talking quite fits 'ee for high compa-ny!" —

"Some polish is gained with one's ruin," said she.

— "Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak

But now I'm bewitched by your delicate cheek,

And your little gloves fit as on any la-dy!" —

"We never do work when we're ruined," said she.

— "You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream,

And you'd sigh, and you'd sock; but at present you seem

To know not of megrims or melancho-ly!" —

"True. One's pretty lively when ruined," said she.

— "I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown,

And a delicate face, and could strut about Town!" —

"My dear — a raw country girl, such as you be,

Cannot quite expect that. You ain't ruined," said she.

Hardy, Thomas. “The Ruined Maid.” 1901. Poetry Foundation. 

SUMMARY

Two young women who knew each other well when they both lived in the country meet unexpectedly in an unnamed town. One woman does most of the talking. After expressing her surprise at encountering ’Melia, she asks her how she got her fine clothes and why she looks so prosperous. ’Melia replies, speaking ironically, that she has been “ruined.” Her friend comments further about how ’Melia used to dress in rags when she worked on the farm digging up potatoes. ’Melia makes another evasive comment about being ruined, while implying that she is anything but. 

This forms the pattern for the remaining four stanzas. ’Melia’s friend tries to extract more details, pointing out how ’Melia now speaks in a refined way and looks quite different too, just like a lady. In the past, the friend says, all ’Melia did was complain about her life, but now she seems happy. The woman also expresses the wish that she could be like ’Melia, but ’Melia says that is unlikely for a girl from the country—she would need to be “ruined” before she could emulate her.