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The ruined maid was as ancient a theme as balladry itself, and Hardy indited a poem with “The Ruined Maid” as its title in 1866; in 1891 he wrote his Tess of the d’Urvbervilles which embodies this theme in a poetic prose novel. The same incentive that drove Hardy to write his novel made an earlier writer, Elizabeth Gaskell, the mother of four lovely daughters, compose her Ruth (1853), in which she deals with the same theme in the most sympathetic manner, to show that a seduced young girl should not be condemned as a fallen woman, writing her off respectable society. It is a parable based on the story of Mary Magdalen and how Christ led her from vice into saintly virtue. Preceding both of these writers, Richardson wrote his epistolary epic of a novel Clarissa Harlowe(1847-9); Clarissa, a virtuous beauty, seduced treacherously by Lovelace, a villain driven by lust, seems to be the model tor both Ruth and Tess, seduced and raped by Bellingham and Alec, and left to face the consequences alone. “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” This is the universal declaration of human rights in 034 (Idaibes). This statement is the subject of Monica Ali’s first novel Brick Lane (2003). The book is authored by a woman and written for women too, it illustrates different feminine personas. However, none of these female characters have the power to assert her own self in a natural way, but she appears in accordance with her society and tradition. This paper attempts to expose the weak side of each female character and her struggle to come over it; each in her own way. It exposes the psychological and silent reaction of abused women, it also offers a better example of a semi balanced woman who stands as the novel's heroine and narrator. She is the only woman in the novel who has made her dream come true without sacrificing her own human dignity or her traditions and beliefs.
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