Thomas Hardy’s The Ruined Maid is a poem consisting of an imagined dialogue between two working class women, one of whom, ‘Melia, has transformed herself into an apparently wealthy, sophisticated lady. In the time since the two last met, it is heavily implied ‘Melia has become a “kept” woman, a sex-worker or the mistress to a wealthy man. As such, she is morally “ruined” in the eyes of Hardy’s audience. Throughout the poem, the world “ruined” gathers an increasing sense of irony as it is revealed that the woman who has exposed herself to moral “ruin” has been able to spare herself the physical degradation of a life of labor and toil. In this sense, Hardy’s poem functions to deliberately unsettle its contemporary audience and to disrupt the notion that an honest, laboring life is any less ruined than that led by someone who is morally condemned but physically comfortable. It does so by employing a series of juxtapositions and a moral semiotics consistent with Hardy’s prose work.
According to Stanley Renner, it is possible to understand Hardy’s poem as orbiting around a central irony, itself expressed through the contrast between ‘Melia’s physical appearance and her status as morally ruined. Renner writes that “the basic irony of the poem…is obviously that she [‘Melia] is not ruined” and then insists that ’Melia “appears as the epitome of female success” (1992. 20). ‘Melia’s capacity to embody such an image of success is made clear with reference to her physical appearance and, in particular, to the clothes that she is wearing. In the first stanza of the poem, ‘Melia’s interlocutor asks: “Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town? / And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?” (Hardy, 2017).
The notion of prosperity, of success and of advancement follows directly from ‘Melia’s clothing. This apparent sense of advancement is immediately undercut, however, with Hardy’s ironic next line: “”O didn’t you know I’d been ruined?” said she” (ibid). The opening stanza of the poem is therefore focused around an ironic juxtaposition, one that serves to actively problematize the moral framework of Hardy’s readership. According to Renner, such a framework is based around both the idea that vice is punished and that physical appearance is, in some tangible way, an indication of moral character and sophistication (ibid). Given that ‘Melia is presented as having obviously and immediately benefited from having been “ruined,” at least of these ideas must be manifestly false.
As Saleh and Abbasi argue, the ironic presentation of a “fallen” woman is a consistent feature of Hardy’s fiction, and is something that makes it most obvious appearance to his novel Tess of D’urbevilles: Or A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented (2014, 91). The notion of purity with the novel, and within Hardy’s work in general, is not simply ironic, however. Rather Hardy manifests a specific kind of causal nexus in which it is precisely Tess’s virtue and her innate moral character which leads her into a situation of spiraling moral despair. In Throughout his writing, Hardy operates with a deliberately ambiguous moral semiotics, one that demands that a reader both recognize the content of a particular moral quality but simultaneously insists that such content cannot be realized in the world as it exists. In Hardy’s novels, this semiotics is realized according to the tragic characters of his female protagonists, in the case of the poem at hand, however, it is realized through the juxtaposition of qualities that, according to a conventional moral framework, appear to be incommensurable.
Throughout the remaining stanzas of The Ruined Maid, Hardy continuously moves between the physical characteristics of ‘Melia in her laboring life and in her new “ruined” state. The third stanza of the poem notes, for example, that while she previously had hands like “paws” and a face that “blue and bleak” ‘Melia now possesses a “delicate cheek” and gloves that would fit on “a-ny lady” (2017). In this case, the juxtaposition in question is emphasized through the use of end-rhyme and, again, through the ‘Melia’s familiar reply that her physical improvement is the result of her ruined moral nature.
Importantly, the poem ends with an apparent reversal of perspective and with a solidification of poem’s discourse on the nature of social class. In this stanza, ‘Melia’s conversant states that she would like “feathers” and a “fine sweeping gown,” and her former friend responds simply that “a country girl, such as you be, / Cannot expect that. You ain’t ruined…” (2017). This final juxtaposition, between “fine feathers” and a “raw” country girl, serves to affirm the cumulative sense of irony that the poem builds. At the same time, however, ‘Melia’s response crystallizes a particular kind of class-based morality, before immediately inverting its apparent justification. ‘Melia effectively mirrors an argument the natural social position of a “raw” girl, however, by insisting that it is her continued virtue which prevents her from accessing comfort, Hardy’s ruined speaker draws direct attention to the moral hypocrisy of this class-structure and the values it promulgates.
In conclusion, Hardy’s poem seeks to actively undo a series of normative presuppositions present in the minds of his contemporary readership, in particular the idea of the moral value of chastity and of an honest, laboring life. Rather than opening repudiating these, however, Hardy seeks to unsettle them via series of juxtapositions that themselves develop an increasingly complex moral semiotics capable of the challenging ethical foundation of both poverty and degradation.
