Analysis of George Moore’s Esther Waters

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 2, 2025

George Moore’s novel Esther Waters proved his most successful work. The novel’s realistic portrayal of the hardships of a servant girl departed from the oversentimentality by which much Victorian fiction, and some of Moore’s earlier works, were marked.

According to an essay about Esther Waters by Virginia Woolf, the novel succeeds due to its lack of authorial passion; Moore does not intervene to express his outrage in an attempt to influence audience reaction. Therefore, readers may feel their own passions in a more natural way. For Woolf, that fact made Esther Waters an excellent reading experience.

Moore succeeded in his portrayal not only of the working class but also of the landed class. The influence of French writers such as Gustave Flaubert becomes obvious in Moore’s portrayal of the lack of control humans have over circumstances. However, he had also read much Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Henrik Ibsen, all of whom emphasized the power of character, instinct, and human will to help battle circumstance.

As Helmut E. Gerber points out in his introduction, the philosophy that environment or heredity propels the main character on a road to disaster, so prevalent through the first portion of the novel, disappears midway through when Esther’s strong character takes over, reversing her fortunes.

The novel opens with the phrase, “She stood on the platform watching the receding train.” Like the railway to which it refers, the novel itself will come full circle in its story about 17-year-old Esther Waters, a member of the Plymouth Brethren who enters the serving life to escape her alcoholic and abusive father.

The highly symbolic imagery in the opening scene includes a “white vapour” that evaporates and “white gates” that swing forward slowly to close behind Esther. Their color and suggestion of semi-blindness and imprisonment clue readers that the protagonist’s innocence and naivety will soon disappear.

The physical setting also becomes important, as Esther walks among trees, including laurels, elms, and fruit trees, all symbolic of the clear, unblemished wisdom imparted by nature, which, while at times cruel, at least does not attempt to cloak reality. This imagery contrasts with that of the ironically named Woodview mansion, home to the Barfield family, where almost everything is contrived, from iron gates to “the angles and turns of an Italian house” with “gables and ornamental arches.”

Esther has entered the world of temptation and betrayal. She learns that the estate’s major endeavor is the breeding and racing of horses for money. Moore puts to excellent use his knowledge of his father’s racing stables, and his detailed descriptions in chapters 31–33 of Derby Day are some of the best in English literature.

For a young woman like Esther, unfamiliar with the greater world’s cruelty, the mansion stands as a threat, ready to deceive. Even the racehorses masquerade in hoods, “clothed” in gray cloth, with only their questioning black eyes visible, foreshadowing the mansion’s culture, which is based on half-truths and leaves much unrevealed. That scene also aligns the servants, similarly clothed in serving garb, with the working animals.

The first time Esther sees the horses, “small, ugly boys” sit in the saddles. Esther learns later they are jockeys, unnaturally small men, who must starve themselves to participate in racing’s fantasy world, with its promises of fortune that few will enjoy. A romance filled with similar false promise will soon devastate Esther.

Gossip also figures importantly in the story from the first few pages, when the footman, William Latch, tells Esther of a man fired because after drinking “he’d tell every blessed thing that was done in the stables.” Moore foreshadows the fact that Esther’s reputation will tarnish in this unclean place.

Latch’s symbolic name signals that he will unlock both mysteries and miseries for Esther in another clear example of foreshadowing. She immediately experiences a conflict with William’s mother, the cook, when she refuses to obey an order after the cook makes fun of her. Moore will later sketch a more complete picture of the cook when, through exposition, the reader learns she had to return to the Barfields from a year’s savings the money embezzled by her husband, a former employee at Woodview who handled bets.

As with the other characters in his novel, the author makes clear her motivations and thus shapes personalities that ring true. Moore took a great interest in what he termed in the original version “the fight between circumstance and character . . . A hair would turn the scale either way.”

William Latch, whom even his mother calls a worthless scoundrel, impregnates the gullible Esther and then abandons her. As is custom, the family must dismiss Esther, and only Mrs. Barfield acts kindly. Turned out of her home, Esther first stays with her mother, who dies just after Esther’s baby, Jack, is born.

Esther eventually comes under the care of Miss Rice. She attempts to raise her son “right,” despite the constant humiliation as a single mother that she experiences from others. A respectable man named Fred Parsons, aptly named as a member of the Salvationist sect, and described by the narrator as “a meager little man about thirty-five,” wants to marry Esther, but when Latch returns, she feels that she must marry him for the sake of their child, despite the problems he faces in divorcing his first wife.

Latch becomes a surprisingly decent family man, making a good enough living to send Jack to school. However, his bookmaking eventually ruins his health, and the pub he used to take bets in is closed. On his death bed, he tells Jack, “Your mother […] is the best woman that ever lived.” When he dies, he leaves no resources for his family. Esther’s son eventually comes of age to make his own way as a soldier, and the novel closes with Esther’s return to Woodview, 20 years after her arrival there.

Esther moves in with Mrs. Barfield, whom she has always remembered for her kind actions. Now a poor widow allowed only a corner of the mansion, Mrs. Barfield needs Esther’s help, and both women enjoy happiness in one another’s company. Moore makes clear the arbitrary nature of social differences, writing that the two became “more like friends and less like mistress and maid,” their “slight social distinctions” causing “no check on the intimacy of their companionship.”

When Esther’s son visits her at Woodview on the final page of the novel, the narrator writes, “She was only conscious that she had accomplished her woman’s work—she had brought him up to man’s estate and that was sufficient reward.” Moore’s use of the term “estate” signals that Esther has built a non-material mansion and established spiritual and emotional ground of her own.

Critics contrast Esther Waters with Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) (a book that Moore claimed to hate) and George Eliot’s Adam Bede (1859), which depended on theories of determinism to bring their female characters to a bitter fate. Despite their differences, critics proclaim all three novels to have been essential in the development of modernist fiction.

Esther Waters has long been honored as Moore’s finest work. Made into a 1948 movie, it became available in electronic text in the late 20th century.

Bibliography
Gerber, Helmut. Introduction to Esther Waters, by George Moore. Chicago: Pandora Books, 1977.
Phelps, Gilbert. “George Moore: Esther Waters.” An Introduction to Fifty British Novels: 1600–1900. London: Pan Books, 1979, 513–518.
Woolf, Virginia. “A Born Writer.” The Times Literary Supplement. July 7, 1920. Available online. URL: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~CLASS/workshop97/Gribbin/bornwriter.html. Downloaded on February 3, 2025.