George Moore |
Esther Waters is a
novel which has a kitchen maid as its heroine, morality as its subject, and a
distaste for hypocrisy at its core. It is a novel which discusses what other
nineteenth-century texts only hint at and appears strikingly modern, while
still being embedded in its time (the slang of the race track, the conversation
in the public house, journeying through London streets at night). Working class
orphan Esther raises her illegitimate child alone in a world which is deeply
hostile to her – but she is no Tess Durbeyfield. She faces poverty and homelessness,
while never becoming a tragic figure, and exposes the faults of those around
her through her forthright honesty and pragmatic approach to leading a moral
life.
For general readers: Esther Waters has an immediacy which is
appealing to modern readers and its focus on working class characters is also
attractive, given our interest in servants and worker characters, from TV shows
like The Mill and Downton Abbey, to our tastes in
Victorian stage comedy. Don’t expect pages of lengthy description or narrative
exposition – this feels raw and real.
Yet the reading experience is a little uneven. Long sections
of dialogue about racehorses can be hard work, even if our confusion is meant
to mirror that of the initially naïve and unworldly Esther, brought up by the
Plymouth Brethren, and so entirely ignorant of gambling. And there are leaps in
time which can be a little unsettling, especially given it still seems
something of a surprise for little Jackie, an illegitimate child in a novel, to
survive his infancy.
The passages I found most affecting were those which dealt
with the physical and emotional consequences of Esther’s pregnancy (dealt with
in a previous post), the terrible position of wet nurses, divided from their
own children to nourish richer women’s, and Jackie’s confusion when caught
between his two parents. Esther’s response to the unexpected return of an absentee
father rings very true, alternating between her possessive and protective
feelings towards her child.
For students: Esther Waters naturally complements the
study of ‘fallen woman’ literature, nineteenth-century censorship, the
influence of French novelists, especially Zola, and the move in the 1890s
towards writing we may consider ‘modern’ in bent. But there are other topics
worthy of critical attention.
The treatment of Esther’s fellow servant Sarah in the
courtroom, tried for stealing from her employers to fuel her partner’s gambling
addiction, is an interesting point of contrast to the treatment of more
aristocratic and middle-class women in my earlier series looking at women in
the dock and witness box.
The kind of healing companionship between women which the
novel deals with, in Esther’s partnerships with Miss Rice and Mrs Barfield, could
also prove fruitful for study. These pairings are unequal (with Esther always definitively
in the role of servant) but offer an alternative to the suffering incurred by
male/female sexual relationships, and reminded me of the conclusion to a later
novel which similarly deals with illegitimacy (yet here where sexual relations
cross class lines) – E.M. Forster’s 1910 Howards
End.
Which lesser known nineteenth-century novel would you like
the Secret Victorianist to review next? Let me know here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist!
No comments:
Post a Comment