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Another aspect of the kind of "associations" through which we discover meaning in poetry, is linguistic association or meaning -- discoverable only if you take the time to find out what effect shades of meaning in individual words (or even historical context) might have on a poem.
Hardy´s ballad, "The Ruined Maid," is a wonderful example of sustained irony. The narrative bouncing along in an irrepressible song-like rhythm, driven by the anapestic tetrameter. The play of dialogue going back and forth comically between the provincial country girl and the newly minted ingenue, `Melia, who reveals her own provincial origins and deflates, in the final line of the poem, the social pretensions of polish and refinement that she claims throughout, "´You ain´t ruined,´ said she." The general effect is lighthearted and that is only compounded by the continual play on the word "ruined" which to all appearances seems to be synonymous with material success and social elevation.
Some students commonly make the mistake of taking that word "ruined" seriously, without considering the broader cultural and historical context of the poem. `Melia is therefore ruined, the argument goes, precisely because she is materially better off and the poem becomes a didactic piece which sets out to warn against losing sight of your roots or growing vain and proud because of material gain. In our own cultural context such is a valid reading of the poem -- though not in Hardy´s. Social advancement via marriage was the unspoken (though occasionally declared) objective of the institution as far as it related to women in the nineteenth century. The fiction of the age is full of plots where virtuous women (finally) marry into wealth and property (and, if they are fortunate, love), thus avoiding the otherwise grim prospects (emotional, social and economic) in store for them. But the fiction of the age is equally full of women who, anticipating social elevation, and generally in relationships marked by inequality of social stations, are "ruined" by an over-hasty bartering of their "virtue" (like Hardy´s Tess). The problem for `Melia is that there is no vehicle for her social advancement except marriage or prostitution. The "ruin" that Hardy is referring to in the poem is moral "ruin."
It is unlikely that Hardy would perceive her being married as a kind of ruin, though it is not impossible: other Hardy figures are ruined by marriage, most notably, and similarly, the figure of Sophy in his short story "The Son´s Veto," but Sophy´s ruin is a more attenuated and subtle affair.
`Melia is a pompous, crass, vain (and lovable) figure who isn´t sensitive enough, however, to find her destruction in success. On the contrary, she revels in the material benefits that has accompanied her seduction by some city Gent. Marriage for her would be a Cinderella, rags to riches affair, but she is not offered it. Instead she is left with all the trappings of success, the makeup, the clothes, the affectation of refined manners (see the discussion of strained meter) in the broader discussion of meter and rhythm), and the idle lifestyle, which will leave her one day, tragically bereft as soon as she is no longer young enough, or attractive enough, to command the price that she currently does. One further clue to Hardy´s intentions with `Melia is the use of the word "gay" in the description of her acoutrements. "Gay" didn´t have, in the nineteenth century, the connotations of homosexuality that it does now. Nor was it the entirely innocent "happy" that we tend to otherwise associate with the word. Instead it was a word steeped in rather sordid associations, and commonly used as an adjective describing prostitutes. So the gaudy display that `Melia indulges in, of "gay bracelets and bright feathers three" might have very precise indications for Hardy´s contemporary audience.
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