George Moore was an Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist. He came from a Roman Catholic landed family and originally wanted to be a painter studying in Paris in the 1870's. As a naturalistic writer, he was amongst the first English-language authors to absorb the lessons of the French realists, and was particularly influenced by the works of Émile Zola. Because of his willingness to tackle such issues as prostitution, extramarital sex and lesbianism, his novels were met with disapproval but eventually as public taste changed they became accepted. Esther is a poor girl working as a kitchen maid who is seduced by another employee. She becomes pregnant. She is abandoned by her lover and decides to raise her child as a single mother. Esther Waters in a Victorian novel about a fallen woman.