The Ruined Maid by Thomas Hardy: Prose and Analysis

A young girl from the countryside happens to meet her former friend one day while visiting the Town. Her friend goes by the name Amelia and the country girl is perplexed to see how Amelia is dressed in such a fancy gown and moves with a regal poise. So, she stops her old friend and expresses her surprise in meeting her so suddenly. She also asks her how Amelia managed to get herself such fair garments and prosperity. In response, Amelia asks the country maiden whether she knows if she is ruined, implying that losing her innocence by either being an escort to a wealthy lord or a high class sex worker brought her all these lavishness.

The country maiden further goes on to ask Amelia how she has been able to change her life while simultaneously providing little details of her former life in the countryside. She mentions how Amelia did not even own shoes or sock and how her clothes were in tatters. Moreover, she details how she used to speak in dialect, especially the dialect of old Irish countryside. Furthermore, she briefs about how her hands used to resemble a paw due to all the hard work she had to do in the potato fields and her face was always bleak and blue due to the cold and dirt. But now, Amelia has rosy cheeks, speaks in a language befitting an aristocratic company, and wears gloves that fit her delicate hands and also bracelets and feathers. To all of these details about her transformation, Amelia replies by saying that she has achieved this by being ruined.

Hardy, in his poem, used this dialogue between two former friends to point out the hypocrisy and double standards of the outlook between men and women found in the Victorian era. In this day and age, it was normal for a man to not only have mistresses outside of marriage but also pursue the service of a sex worker. But for a woman, her chastity and virginity were considered as virtue and her right to sex and sexuality was systematically overlooked and dismissed. A woman who preserved her virginity before marriage was considered to be worthy of respect only. Such restrictions were not put on men of that time and place.

The protagonist of this poem, Amelia, had to give up her virtue in return for a lavish, wealthy and much more comfortable life. She was able to buy her way into the aristocratic luxury at the expense of her chastity. Her character gets demoralized but ironically, she finds solace in the fact that she does not have to work in the fields anymore in cold weather; that she has elegant garment on her body. In fact, Amelia comes off as unabashed at the fact that she has to give up her virginity to get this new life. She implies that she will rather have this comfortable life in exchange for supposedly moral degradation than to work in the cold fields in torn ragged clothes, living under poverty.

The irony further continues when the country maiden also wishes for the wealthy lifestyle Amelia has despite learning about how she has got them in the first place. Through the end of the poem, Hardy tries to show the readers how poor women were exploited with the bribe of a comfortable life in his day and age by the aristocratic society and patriarchal dominance. By pointing out this duality existing in his society, Hardy had actually taken a stand for women and against the exploitation they had to face in those times.