The Ruined Maid

Question 1

What is the overall ‘plot’ of The Ruined Maid?

Answer 1

A prostitute’s life and luxuries seem more appealing than a farm girl’s, who has been ruined similarly but in an alternative, more respectable circumstance

Question 2

What was the Victorian attitude to sexuality?

Answer 2

• Sexuality was seen as masculine; men needed to sow their wild oats and were expected to be more sexually experienced than their wives
• Women with desires were ‘fallen’
• Ideal woman was the ‘angel of the house’- companion and mother (Victoria adamant of this as a woman’s role)
• Christian values were more important than human passions; sex an indecent sin

Question 3

How was Hardy influenced by Victorian society in his works?

Answer 3

• Showed the impossible standards set by Victorian society; a period obsessed with perfectionism
• Focused on accurately portraying the world; its rules and hypocrisies. Hardy was a Victorian realist
• Influenced by Dickens
• Focused on a declining rural society

Question 4

What literary movement was Hardy influenced by?

Answer 4

Romanticism, especially big boy William Wordsworth

Question 5

What is the significance of Hardy writing the ruined maid early in his writing career?

Answer 5

Shows that, even as a young man, he was ahead of his time in his views on women. Forces readers to reconsider conventional values

Question 6

Name 3 Victorian realists. What did they write about?

Answer 6

1. George Eliot
2. Dickens
3. Mary Gaskell

-Explored effects of different social ills e.g neglect of children in schools

Question 7

What is the significance of the use of colloquial speech in the ruined maid?

Answer 7

Shows interest in the real world; representation of lower realm of society rather than the upper classes

Question 8

Why did the Victorians emphasise morality?

Answer 8

• The Industrial Revolution= cities grew and the upper and lower classes crossed. This led to a desire to control and direct society
• Queen V. Reacted against the late Georgian kings; promoted a quiet, religious family unit with defined gender roles

Question 9

What is a fallen woman e.g Tahreen?

Answer 9

• A woman who has lost her innocence; fallen from Gods grace😈
• An expression of the belief that women’s sexuality should be restricted to marriage and that she should be under a mans authority💍
• Associated with prostitution/sex outside marriage🍆 /woman of lower socio-economic status/rape victim

Question 10

What narrative poem was a cultural basis for how women should act in this period?

Answer 10

The Angel in the House (poem by Coventry Patmore)

Question 11

What is the meter of the ruined maid?

Answer 11

Anapaestic trimeter

Question 12

What is the effect of the poem’s meter?

Answer 12

Sing song rhythm contrasts the darker social commentary, adding to the irony and satire. Makes the poem seem forced and unnatural, like how women were expected to act

Question 13

What part of the country are the colloquialisms in the ruined maid from?

Answer 13

West Country

Question 14

What does critic Susan Miller say about how Hardy used his poems for social commentary?

Answer 14

‘His poems acted as vehicles for his sceptical ideas’

Question 15

What does the refrain of ‘didn’t you know id been ruined?’ mirror?

Answer 15

The repeated social injustices faced by Victorian women

Question 16

What is notable about the poetic voice in the ruined maid?

Answer 16

The only poem in the collection without a first person speaker. Instead it is a dialogue between 2 women, making Hardy’s voice less clear because he’s not addressing the reader directly

Question 17

What does Marxist literary criticism explore?

Answer 17

The relationships between different classes, wake half the struggle between lower and higher classes. Marxists believed all literature is born out of this social struggle

Question 18

How is the suggestion borne that Melia’s finery is all an act?

Answer 18

• She slips back into country dialect in final line (you ain’t ruined)
• Previously was the juxtaposition between Melia’s voice and her friend’s exaggerated country accent

Question 19

What specific contrast involving Melia’s casual tone adds to the satire of the poem?

Answer 19

Melia’s casual tone and the heavily damning connotations of ruined

Question 20

What is significant about the ruined maids name?

Answer 20

To ameliorate= to improve

Question 21

Where is the clash between the country and city seen?

Answer 21

The girls meet in town. Women preyed upon in cities. Melia used to be a farmer in the rural world but now is a prostitute

Question 22

How is the wealth of Melia established?

Answer 22

She has ‘fair garments’, ‘gay bracelets and bright feathers three’. A prostitute is prospering better than the farm girl. These items are gaudy however; uniform of a prostitute. She now ‘never’ does work as a ruined woman

Question 23

What is the implication of ‘O didn’t you know I’d been ruined?’

Answer 23

Ruined= fallen
She is shameless about this; her prostitution is an asset almost
This is a masculine position- Melia is freely sexual and benefits from this

Question 24

What was Melias life like before becoming ruined?

Answer 24

She lived a harsh, uncivilised life (‘without socks or shoes’)

Question 25

How does Hardy imply that rural life dehumanises workers?

Answer 25

• Repetition of ‘O’
• ‘us’(community rather than individual; Melias friend is nameless)
• Hands like ‘paws’ vs Melia’s ‘little gloves’ (perhaps these are covering up the paws; she’s been dehumanised already. More than prostitution will)
• Harsh alliteration of ‘face blue and bleak’

Question 26

What is the irony of Melias new found high class accent?

Answer 26

She is the polished version of a woman. Ironic because there is therefore a lack of sin and moral corruption; she has a better life than when she left

Question 27

How does Hardy imply a fear of female sexuality in the poem?

Answer 27

‘I’m bewitched…’

Melia possesses an evil control

Question 28

How is the life of a prostitute more attractive for Melias friend?

Answer 28

‘I wish I had feathers…’
She sees more value in the material over her reputation (perhaps sexist from Hardy in implying that all women are superficial?)

Question 29

What is the significance of Melias friend being a ‘raw country girl’?

Answer 29

• She is pure and chaste
• Uneducated and uncivilised
• Patronised by Melia: ‘My dear…’

Question 30

What is the significance of Melia slipping back into her home dialect at the end of the poem?

Answer 30

‘You be’
‘You ain’t’
Mocks Melia; her facade/surface level superiority has dropped

Question 31

How does the ruined maid relate to the great Gatsby?

Women adopting ‘masculine’ traits

Answer 31

• Women threaten masculinity by invading traditional masculine roles
• Reformed female expressions; the feminine ‘position’ isn’t linked to sex (Julia Kristeva). Flapper movement.
• Jordan Baker is masculine. Her dresses are ‘like sports clothes’, there is a ‘jauntiness about her movements’. Nick afraid of this so ‘threw [her] over’
• Myrtle is sexually promiscuous and insults her husband (‘dirty little coward’)= Mr Wilson emasculated; ‘the exact opposite of true masculinity’ (Mosse). ‘His wife’s man’
• Melia mirrors Gatsby: both achieve wealth (‘buffet tables’, ‘shirts of sheer linen’) through unaccepted means and have insincere ways of speaking

Question 32

What is ‘the great social evil’ of the 19th century?

Answer 32

Prostitution

Question 33

What is ‘Emilia’ a double entendre of?

Answer 33

Work and fertility

Women’s ‘masculinity’ coexists with their orthodox role as women