Ouida

Ouida – Life, Work, and Enduring Voice

Ouida (Maria Louise Ramé, 1839–1908) was an English novelist celebrated for her passionate prose, social critique, and prolific output including Under Two Flags and A Dog of Flanders. Discover her biography, literary themes, famous quotes, and lasting influence.

Introduction

Ouida was the pen name of Maria Louise Ramé (later styled Marie Louise de la Ramée), a prolific and colorful writer of Victorian England whose novels, short stories, children’s books, and essays combined romantic bravura, social commentary, and a flair for dramatic emotions. She was immensely popular in her time — her works were translated into many languages and frequently adapted — yet her reputation has fluctuated with changing literary tastes.

Through her writing, Ouida often explored issues of social inequality, artistic integrity, women’s inner lives, and the tensions between appearance and authenticity. She was also an outspoken advocate for animal rights. Her life, full of glamour, struggle, and contradiction, mirrors many themes in her fiction.

Early Life and Family

Ouida was born Maria Louise Ramé on 1 January 1839 in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, England.

The pseudonym “Ouida” comes from the way she as a child pronounced her own name “Louise.” Marie Louise de la Ramée.

Her upbringing involved travel between England and France, exposing her to both cultures, languages, and literary traditions. This bicultural infusion would inform much of her sensibility and the cosmopolitan settings of her fiction.

Literary Career & Themes

Output & Popular Success

Ouida was extraordinarily prolific. Over her lifetime she produced more than 40 novels, along with collections of short stories, children’s books, and essays. Held in Bondage, was published in 1863. Some of her most famous works include:

• Under Two Flags (1867) — one of her signature works, involving heroism, romance, and colonial adventure.

• A Dog of Flanders (1872) — a children’s novel still beloved especially in parts of Asia.

• Signa (1875) — later cited by Jack London as a formative influence.

• Moths, Pascarel, La Strega, The Waters of Edera, and Friendship.

Her novels often combined romantic melodrama, adventure, social critique, and a lush descriptive style. She was willing to push against conventional morality, portray flawed characters, and include strong emotional and ethical conflicts.

Themes & Social Concerns

• Critique of society and hypocrisy: Many of her novels expose the double standards, moral hypocrisy, and injustice within society — especially in issues of class, gender, and power.

• Role of women, autonomy, and passion: She often portrayed female protagonists who struggle with constraints, desire, identity, and moral agency.

• Art, beauty, and authenticity: In her fiction Ouida sometimes wrestles with the tension between surface appearances and inner truth, the cost of maintaining beauty or social status, and the life of the artist.

• Animals & ethical treatment: Ouida was an early and vocal opponent of vivisection and cruelty to animals. She published The New Priesthood: A Protest Against Vivisection in 1897.

• Exile, identity, and place: Later in life, Ouida moved to Italy (Florence, Scandicci) and lived much of her life abroad, contemplating displacement, belonging, and cultural hybridity.

Later Years, Financial Troubles & Death

Though Ouida enjoyed popular success, she did not always manage her finances well. In her later years, she suffered monetary difficulties, eventually putting her own works up at auction to pay debts.

Around 1871, she left England and by 1874 settled in Florence, Italy, making it her long-term home.

In 1906, a small civil list pension of £150 per year was granted to her by the British government (after some reluctance) to assist financially.

Ouida died on 25 January 1908 in Viareggio, Italy, from pneumonia.

In her hometown, friends organized a memorial: a fountain for horses and dogs was erected in Bury St Edmunds in her honor.

Famous Quotes by Ouida

Ouida was not only a novelist but a writer of memorable aphorisms and reflections. Below are selected quotes:

“Petty laws breed great crimes.” “Take hope from the heart of man and you make him a beast of prey.” “Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty but kind to ugliness.” “There is no knife that cuts so sharply and with such poisoned blade as treachery.” “To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.” “An easy-going husband is the one indispensable comfort of life.” “It is hard work to be good when you are very little and very hungry, and have many sticks to beat you, and no mother’s lips to kiss you.” “Could we see when and where we are to meet again, we would be more tender when we bid our friends goodbye.”

These quotes reflect her moral sensitivity, attention to injustice, and capacity for both lyrical and piercing observation.

Lessons & Legacy

1. Blend of sentiment and critique
   Ouida’s work reminds us that romantic or emotional storytelling can also be a vehicle for social criticism rather than mere escapism.

2. Voice of moral compassion
   Her concern for the vulnerable, whether women, animals, or the socially marginalized, underscores how literature can amplify empathy.

3. The double edge of popularity
   Though widely read in her day, the changing tastes of literary critics have sometimes dismissed her as melodramatic. Yet revisiting her work can reveal depth, ambition, and a voice ahead of her time.

4. Life as literature
   Ouida’s own life—her extravagance, her debts, her exile, her love for animals—mirrors many tensions she explored in fiction: identity, appearance, sustainability, and authenticity.

5. Cultural bridge
   By moving to Italy and writing for an international audience, she became a cross-cultural figure, illustrating how literature can transcend national boundaries.