The Ruined Maid

270 Words2 Pages
During the early 1900’s when this poem was written, many young people were moving to the fast growing cities to look for better job opportunities. A number of these new jobs were white collar jobs, which did not include the labor that was considered proper for young people at the time. This caused them to seem “ruined” to many older country people. This is best summed up in the quote from Granville Stanley’s 1921 book, Adolescence Its Phycology, where he states “Increasing urban life with its temptations, […] and passive stimuli just when an active life is most needed, […] all these lack some of the regulatives they still have in older lands.” In the poem, “The Ruined Maid” by Thomas Hardy, the final line of each stanza is a joke at the expense