Thomas Hardy - The Ruined Maid (analysis)

Stylistic analysis of THE RUINED MAID by Thomas Hardy

INTRODUCTION “The Ruined Maid” is a poem by Thomas Hardy, which has a form of a dialogue between two acquaintances who meet unexpectedly in town. In the first stanza unnamed country girl expresses her surprise when she sees ‘Melia, whom she used to know in the past. Then she describes ‘Melia’s life in the country and her physical appearance when she was leaving it, clearly indicating the differences between the present and the past. ‘Melia’s present way of speaking is better than the former one, and she is well-dressed now, with a lot of jewellery. The country girl is envious of her friend and says that she would like to be like her, but Amelia replies that she would have to be ruined first.

THE RUINED MAID by Thomas Hardy

1. "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. 2. "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. 3. "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. 4. "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. 5. "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. 6. "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.

ANALYSIS “The Ruined Maid” comprises of six four-line stanzas. Throughout the poem the first speaker has three lines of the quatrain, and the girl named Melia (probably the shorter form of the name Amelia) is given a one-line response, but this structural parallelism, i.e. the repetition of identical or similar syntactic patterns in neighbouring phrases or sentences (Preminger, 2003: 877), is broken in the sixth stanza, where Amelia’s response has two lines. The poem is written in an informal style, which is very suitable for the unexpected conversation between two old friends. In the poem we can notice the AABB full rhymes. According to Costa (1999), we can distinguish here two types of rhymes – in the first two lines of each stanza it is masculine rhyme (i.e. stressed, single-syllable words), and in the two other lines it is the final vowel sound /i:/ of the ending words that rhyme. In addition, some words in the third lines are hyphenated (e.g. ‘melancho-ly’) which was probably done to mark the syllable that rhymes with the word in the following line (Allen, 2011). The rhythm of the poem can be described as lively and musical, due to the meter which is very regular – almost every line consists of 11 syllables.

Syntactic figures The stylistic figure which is most frequently used in “The Ruined Maid” is the repetition of the consonants, particularly at the beginning of words, i.e. alliteration (Cuddon, 1998: 23). We can note it in stanza 2 (tatters – tired, digging – docks), in stanza 3(thee – thou – thik – theäs), in stanza 4 (blue – bleak – But – bewitched – by, and We – work – when – we're), in stanza 5 (sigh – sock – seem; megrims – melancho-ly), in stanza 6 (feathers – fine – face). Moreover, there are some examples of consonance, which means consonants repeated before or after different vowel sounds (Cuddon, 1998: 176), e.g. tatters – shoes – socks – docks, tired – and, left – without (all in stanza 2), or strut – about (stanza 6). And the last phonetic stylistic figure found in the work is assonance, i.e. the repetition of vowels (Cuddon, 1998: 58), like in stanza 2: spudding – up. All these contribute greatly to the musical effect of the poem. In “The Ruined Maid” each stanza ends in the same way – “…, said she.” It is a verbal repetition at the ends of sentences or clauses, called epistrophe (Cuddon, 1998: 279). Additionally, we can see here the inversion of the clause pattern (‘said she’ instead of ‘she said’) – according to Costa (1999), by this fronting “the poet places the pronoun ‘she’ in a foregrounding position”, allowing the reader to realise that “she “ is the main character. There is also another kind of verbal repetition in the poem, which is homoioteleuton – a grammatical rhyme due to the same inflectional endings (Preminger, 2003: 538). We can find it in the second stanza: “Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks”, which clearly forms an internal rhyme and contributes to the rhythm of the poem. What is also noticeable is polysyndetic construction in the lines uttered by the first speaker in stanzas 2, 3, 5 and 6, for example: “At home in the barton you said 'thee' and

'thou,' And 'thik oon,' and 'theäs oon,' and 't'other'; (…)”. Polysyndeton means that the sentences are joined by the use of the same conjunction, usually ‘and’, which “may add emphasis to the items in an enumeration” (Preminger, 2003: 968). Intentional omission of some words in sentences, i.e. ellipsis (Cuddon, 1998: 256), is another syntactic device used in “The Ruined Maid”. In stanza 4 in “Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak” it is obvious that the missing word is ‘was’, which should stand after ‘face’. And in stanza 6 (the missing elements are in the brackets): “I wish I had feathers, (I wish I had) a fine sweeping gown, And (I wish I had) a delicate face, and (I wish I) could strut about Town!”. We can also find two examples of enjambment, i.e. the situation when a part of a sentence moves to another line (Preminger, 2003: 359). We can see it in stanza 3: "And 'thik oon,' and 'theäs oon,' and 't'other'; but now Your talking quite fits 'ee for high compa-ny!", and in stanza 5: “And you'd sigh, and you'd sock; but at present you seem To know not of megrims or melancho-ly”

Semantic figures As far as semantic figures in “The Ruined Maid” are concerned, in the fourth stanza we can find simile, a figure of speech in which you compare things explicitly, using ‘like’ or ‘as’ (Cuddon, 1998: 830): “Your hands were like paws then”. The opposition to simile is metaphor, a semantic figure in which you name one thing by the name of another (Cuddon, 1998: 507). In the third stanza “high compa-ny” is a metaphor for the people from higher social class who are now around Amelia and influence her way of living. The most important, however, is the admiration expressed by the “raw country girl” for Amelia’s life – striking here is the fact that if a girl wants a better life she will have to become ruined first, which is somewhat paradoxical. It is shown, for example, in the first stanza: “(…) And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?" "O didn't you know I'd been ruined?" said she.” or in the second stanza: “(…) And now you've gay bracelets and bright feathers three!" "Yes: that's how we dress when we're ruined," said she.” or in the fifth stanza: “One's pretty lively when ruined (…)”. The idea of being ruined is metaphorical in the sense that the ruined woman was, in fact, a prostitute, which meant that she had virtually no chance for marriage (Allen, 2011). Although Amelia’s language have improved, we can find two examples of ungrammatical combination of words in her utterances – both from the last stanza: “…such as you be” (for “you are”), and “You ain't ruined” (for “you aren’t ruined”). Such nonstandard usage of grammatical constructions is called solecism (Cuddon, 1998: 838), and in this case it shows that in spite of the change in Amelia’s appearance and better speaking she cannot hide her low class, rural origin (Costa, 1999).

“The Ruined Maid” has a number of words which reappear in different positions: ‘Town’ (stanza 1 and 6), ‘feathers’ (stanza 2 and 6), ‘fits’ (stanza 3) and ‘fit’ (stanza 4), ‘quite’ (stanza 3 and 6), and ‘delicate’ (stanza 4 and 6). Repeating these words aims at drawing reader’s attention to what is happening in the poem. One can also easily note the collection of words which are closely related to women’s clothing: ‘feathers’, ‘bracelets’, ‘dress’, ‘sweeping gown’, ‘gloves’ – this, in turn, assures the reader of the fact that the poem is about women (Costa, 1999). What also contributes to the meaning of the text is the use of words related to the person, time or place of utterance, and it is called deixis (Cuddon, 1998: 215). There are many of them found in Hardy’s poem, e.g. ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘she’, ‘we’, ‘your’, ‘us’, ‘now’, ‘then’, ‘this’, ‘that’. These are expressions which cannot be understood without context, but as we read through we become aware of some facts. Therefore, in “"You ain't ruined," said she”, we know that ‘you’ indicates the girl who speaks first in the poem, and ‘she’ means Amelia (Costa, 1999).

CONCLUSION Thomas Hardy’s “The Ruined Maid” is considered to be a great portrayal of womanhood in Victorian times (Allen, 2011). ‘A raw country girl’ could not expect high standard of living. The only possible way of having a better life was to ‘ruin’ herself becoming a prostitute, losing her moral values and purity. This analysis shows us that all the stylistic devices used in the poem, all the words, meanings and syntactic patterns play an important role in creating a perfect imagery of the ‘ruined’ woman in Victorian era. And all this is conveyed in a simple dialogue with a note of irony - Amelia says that she is ruined, yet her old friend admires her new life and wants to be like her. The elaborate use of language by Hardy helps the reader understand this complicated idea of being ‘ruined’ and living in ‘prosperity’ at the same time.

REFERENCES Allen, Liz. (2011). A Close Look at Thomas Hardy’s Poem The Ruined Maid. [online]. Available on: http://www.humanities360.com/index.php/a-close-look-at-thomas-hardyspoem-the-ruined-maid-14784/. Accessed February 5, 2014. Costa, Dominique. (1999). Language through poetry: A stylistic analysis of Thomas Hardy’s The Ruined Maid. In: B. Maia (ed.) Actas do 4º Encontro Nacional do Ensino das Línguas Vivas no Ensino Superior em Portugal. Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Letras. 215-222 [online]. Available on: http://ler.letras.up.pt/uploads/ficheiros/6083.pdf. Accessed February 5, 2014. Cuddon, J. A. (1998). The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Penguin Books: London. Hardy, Thomas. (1901). “The Ruined Maid” [online]. Available on: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-ruined-maid/. Accessed February 5, 2014. Preminger, A. et al. (eds.). (2003). The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ.