Attached to life again: Esther Summerson's Struggle for Identity and Acceptance in Bleak House

In the preface to Bleak House , Charles Dickens wrote that he “purposely dwelt upon the romantic side of familiar things” (xxxv).  This simple sentence hints at the narrative outline of the book, establishing a third-person omniscient narrator of “familiar” things, and the first-person narrative of Esther Summerson, whose task it was to write about the “romantic” side of things.  Although not universally the case, most critics consider the omniscient narrator to be a powerful, compelling voice, but find Esther’s voice to be somehow ineffective.