Thomas Hardy The Ruined Maid

In Hardy’s poem ‘The Ruined Maid’, we are presented with the central persona, a young Victorian woman, who has undergone a huge transition in her life. The poem is about two female labourers who met after so many years and it seems that the maid is doing much better financially. The prostitute had a sense of poise and arrogance since she is happy to doing much better than the labourer even though her job is already of such a low class which was prostitution. The prostitute looks down at the labourer and seems as if she has forgotten about her past since she is ashamed of it. The poem focuses on women’s lives during the Victorian era and how they had to resort to very self-demeaning jobs such as prostitution. They had to face many difficulties

The prostitute is in a very poor state which is conveyed in the quotes “You left us in tatters” and “Without shoes or socks”. Their hard life was marked by labour poverty. The verb “tatters” shows that their life was very hard and plus it means how her life was torn apart due to her work. The noun “shoes […] socks” are the essential and vital items deprived from their very hard life already. Women were not expected to work but if they did have to work, they had to work the worst of all the paid jobs such as prostitution. Moreover the maids were always expected and exposed to very physical and laborious jobs that were very difficult which is illustrated in the quote “Tired of digging potatoes” and “hands were like paws” which shows how demanding the job was of the maid and is juxtaposed by being compared to animals which emphasises the fact that they were treated like animals such as dogs since digging is mainly what dogs do. They also didn’t have many clothes to wear and they struggled each day and so the maid thought that prostitution was the ideal job for her since the money was good enough. The use of the verb “tired” shows how unpleasant and hard their work was and that digging potatoes were such a strenuous job which led her to such a

Ironically, the poem has displayed that prostitution was financially better which is denoted in the quotes “I wish I had feathers[…]My dear – a raw country girl, such as you be, cannot quite except that. You ain’t ruined”. It proves openly that the maid is definitely not as ruined as she is since she is now a prostitute. However, deeper, the salutation “my dear” shows the closeness of her friendship with the maid and that she is in a way concerned for her and happy that she isn’t ruined since she herself has experienced such traumatic experiences of her being ruined. Moreover since the maid claimed to want what the prostitute has, the prostitute instantaneously denies of having feathers that it is not worth of being ruined to have