Spatial Metaphors and Liminal Elements in Esther Waters

This essay examines Moore's use of liminal elements that make "Esther Waters" a narrative concerned with frontiers, in order to underscore their significance at both a social and diegetic level. Indeed, the novel may be seen as re-drawing the cultural and ideological coordinates of the last decades of the nineteenth century. Moore's evocation of Esther's movements through space and the vicissitudes of life turns the story into a textual map of spaces and borders, whose crossing entails the protagonist's social change. Through the symbolic use of borders and frontiers that delimit the space of the narrative, the writer subtly questions rigid Victorian rules and paves the way for an upheaval of human conscience.