In order to contextualize Esther Waters, the reader should consider the relationship between Esther and the aspiring author, because the narrator of the novel is also a novelist, so perhaps this relationship indicates the relationship the novelist intended for the character Esther and the rest of us. It seems that Jack's health and well-being is the measure of Esther's success, which is another helpful hint. All in all, it seems Esther is about the trauma and tragedy of life and the nobility of suffering for one you love, like a mother sacrificing her well-being for her child, for instance.
Consider the many life cycles Esther endures. Rejected by her lover, left to raise a child alone, embarrassed and humiliated at every turn, and in every way mistreated by her culture—and yet, Esther endures. She continues to work hard when she has no strength left, and she takes jobs that are brutal and torturous. In this way her love for her son is like divine love, perfect love for someone who cannot earn that love yet. This maternal love is central to the plot, and in the end, she returns to the maternal love of her first employer, Mrs. Barfield, completing the largest cycle of her life, and her reward for a journey well-travelled is some peace and quiet, and a friend. She spends her elderly years praying and contemplating on her treatment and her life, and her son even comes to visit.
Perhaps the most basic way to unravel this complex network of life cycles (hired, fired, hired, fired, hired, fired, etc.) is merely to look at the central image of the novel, the depiction of life and death. When Esther delivers little Jackie into the world, her mother simultaneously gives birth and dies in the process. It's as if Esther is the local image of the cycle of life (the sacrifice of the mother for her son), and her mother represents a more abstract representation of the same dynamic (a literal death for the birth of a son). The two images are essentially the same image, and this holds the main meaning for the novel.
Life is suffering. The generations come and the generations go, but the earth remains. No doubt, these fundamental guideposts of wisdom will lead Esther into her delightful, transcendent years of thinking deeply about having suffered so very much.
