Esther Waters

Set in England from the early 1870s onward, the novel is about a pious young woman from a poor working-class family who, while working as a kitchen maid, is seduced by another employee, becomes pregnant, is deserted by her lover, and against all odds decides to raise her child as a single mother.

Although she has found a kindred soul in Mrs Barfield, who is also a Plymouth Sister and abhors the betting on horses going on all around her, Esther is dismissed ("I couldn't have kept you on, on account of the bad example to the younger servants") and reluctantly goes back to London.

Another stroke of luck in her otherwise dreary life is her employment as general servant in West Kensington with Miss Rice, a novelist who is very sympathetic to her problems.

While working there, she makes the acquaintance of Fred Parsons, a Plymouth Brother and political agitator, who proposes to Esther at about the same time she bumps into William Latch again while on an errand for her mistress.

Latch, who has amassed a small fortune betting on horses and as a bookmaker, is the proprietor of a public house in Soho and has separated from his adulterous wife, waiting for his divorce to be completed.

Esther realises that she must make up her mind between the sheltered, serene and religious life Parsons is offering her—which she is really longing for—and sharing the financially secure but turbulent existence of a successful small-time entrepreneur who, as she soon finds out, operates on both sides of the law.

Illegal betting is conducted in an upstairs private bar, but more and more also across the counter, until the police clamp down on his activities, his licence is revoked, and he has to pay a heavy fine.

Then she remembers Mrs Barfield, contacts her and, when asked to come to Woodview as her servant, gladly accepts while Jack, now old enough to earn his own living, stays behind in London.

Describing the novel as Moore's best and comparing it to W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage, Orwell noted certain stylistic flaws but argued its "fundamental sincerity makes its surface faults almost negligible.

The subject-matter of Esther Waters was the most "English" of his novels, and Moore had just returned to England after abandoning his brief interest in the Irish Renaissance theatre movement.

[4] Esther Waters was filmed in 1948 by Ian Dalrymple and Peter Proud with Kathleen Ryan (in the title role), Dirk Bogarde (as William Latch), Cyril Cusack, Ivor Barnard and Fay Compton.