Esther Waters Reviews

Ryan is a virgin made pregnant by Bogarde, a footman in the household where Ryan is a maid. He offers to marry her, but at the last minute vanishes with another girl. After years of wandering about trying to scrape together a living for her son, she meets Bogarde again, now a prosperous bookie. They marry and live happily for a while, but Bogarde, now ill, bets their life's savings on a horse and dies, never knowing that his horse lost and his widow and orphan are again reduced to poverty. A well-done but melancholy costume drama from the book by the Irish playwright and critic George Moore, a cofounder of the theater group that led to the famous Abbey Theatre.