The Fear of Desire: George Moore's A Mummer's Wife and Esther Waters

Set amidst the blazing furnaces of an industrial city and the fogs and vapours; of London, A Mummer's Wife (1885) and Esther Waters (1894) mirror the fears generated by the ongoing and accelerated process of industrialization and urbanization that took place in Great Britain in the 19th century. In these novels, the images of the industrial and urban landscape, but also of the Victorian domestic scene, conveyed and filtered through the protagonists' minds and bodies, contribute to the dramatization of their existential state. Literally consuming the characters and bringing the body-whose disorders are staged-to the fore, alcoholism and consumption echo the fires of industry and reveal a fear of desire which, according to Leo Bersani, characterizes Realism. Such fear-paradoxically both of excess and of exhaustion-leads to a form of retribution and to the expulsion (often synonymous with death) of the character who has gone beyond the pale.