Peter Ponzio

Esther Summerson's Struggle for Identity Peter Ponzio

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.