Ruined Maid and To His Coy Mistress

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Ruined Maid and To His Coy Mistress

Both the “Ruined Maid” and “To His Coy Mistress” provide us with

disturbing images / pictures of love, sex and relationships as I am

about to explain.

The “Ruined Maid” was written by Thomas Hardy in 1866, during the time

when women didn’t have sex before marriage and they were thrown out of

their village for being “ruined”. The public at that point in history

had a very strict view of sex and marriage. They thought that women in

particular should never have sex before marriage and they should have

everything taken off them for being “ruined”. They were looked upon as

a disgrace to society.

The “Ruined Maid” provides us with disturbing images and pictures of

love and relationships because the poem is about a woman who has

become “ruined” which means that she’s had sex before marriage. She’s

turned the meaning of this into a good thing while most people thought

that it was a bad thing because it meant that the woman had no

self-respect and that they were looked upon as prostitutes in a sense.

The poem starts with Melia and a...

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