George Moore’s novel of the 1890s, Esther Waters, is a work of naturalism, an attempt both to show and to explain life in the period. Esther is a servant, initially on a horse-racing estate in the south of England. After she becomes pregnant, she leaves for London where she struggles to bring up her baby alone. Throughout the book, there are many vivid depictions of working-class life and much to ponder about many aspects of the history of childhood and food
The diet of the jockeys
One of the jockeys on the estate is known as ‘The Demon’. He is described as ‘a boy’ although we are not sure exactly how old he is. As he must keep his weight down to six stone, he is allowed to eat very little. He is given doses of salts and castor oil to purge his system and is forced to go on long arduous walks to make him to sweat excessively. His consequent lack of strength affects his ability to perform in a crucial race.
Family mealtimes
It is very noticeable in Esther Waters that children and parents do not eat an evening meal together. The children eat something light – perhaps tea and toast – around 5’o’clock. When father comes home (from work or otherwise) he is served the most nutritious meal that can be provided. Esther’s brothers and sisters watch Father eating his steak ‘regretting that none of them ever had suppers like that’. In this novel, we don’t see the mothers eating anything at all.
Wet nursing
Esther takes a position as a wet nurse (a nurse who breastfeeds a child who is not her own) in order to save herself and her boy from the workhouse. Although it is not quite made explicit, we are led to believe that her employer has chosen not to breastfeed for reasons of fashion rather than practical necessity. Esther must spend most of her wages on sending her own child to live with a ‘baby farmer’ to be fed on animal milk mixed with water. The children of the two previous wet nurses in the house have died from experiencing similar treatment. Moore pulls no punches: ‘The children of two poor girls had been sacrificed so that this rich woman’s child might be saved’. Even more alarmingly, the baby farmer offers Esther the chance to pay five pounds to have the child ‘adopted’ so as to cause her no more trouble; everyone concerned is fully aware that this is fact means murdered.
Is a novel a good source of information?
Moore himself did not come from ‘the servant class’ and therefore could not be writing from direct experience - so how do the depictions relate to actual working-class lives at the end of the Victorian period? The Demon’s fate would indeed seem to resonate with the experiences of real life apprentice and adult jockeys– ‘wasting’ was a major factor in the deaths of many of them (Carter, 2012). On the other hand, Tess O’Toole has suggested that the use of wet nurses had declined significantly by the 1890s and the fierce controversies that had ranged about them were less significant than they had been (O’Toole, 1996). Ultimately, this remains a work of fiction – but Moore’s moving and powerful depictions of these situations are worth reading for the questions and ideas that they provoke us to explore.
References
Carter, N. (2012), Medicine, Sport and the Body: A Historical Perspective, London: Bloomsbury
Moore, G. (1899, first edition 1894), Esther Waters, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
O'Toole. T. (1996). "The Servant's Body: The Victorian Wet-Nurse and George Moore's Esther Waters", Women's Studies 25, 329-349.
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