Summary of The Ruined Maid – Poetry Analysis and Summation (200 Level Course)
I think that the poem is about two country women who both are the same, until one of them loses her virginity. The poem shows how that when one woman has sex, her whole attitude to life changes and her friend wonders why. She acts superior to the other woman and talks and dresses more elaborately than she did. Her speech improves and within herself she believes that she is a better person. When the other country girl asks her questions on her new way of life, she always answers with the same statement, ‘…when you’ve been ruined.’
Her excuse of her new attitude is always that she’s not a virgin anymore so that gives her a new status of being a higher class to virgins. She also says in the last line that she can strut around town without being spoken about but it’s not alright for her friend to because she is not ‘ruined.’