Victorian Visual Culture

In Dicken’s novel Bleak House, Esther is a highly divisive character in Bleak House, which is interesting of itself because she is really the only constant character within the narrative. As all of the other characters become more and more difficult to keep track of, she is the only one who remains familiar, understandable, and easily memorable. This divisiveness comes from her narrative style, however, and her personality. She, as the narrator, depicts herself as extremely humble, often putting herself down in terms of looks and abilities. However, she is quick to note others’ compliments for her, and the Bleak House becomes full of her understanding that others love her even if she is no as sure of herself.

This all arguably makes herself the perfect character for whom readers might insert themselves into the shoes of. She’s a flat character, being both humble and confident, intelligent yet simple—this makes her the jack of all trades that is so common in these kinds of self-insert stories. This also furthers her ability in becoming the familiarity within the novel, as the narrators begin to shift between her voice and an omniscient perspective—because she is more understandable, and her chapters more familiar, we as readers become more dependent on her. Because of this, we are likely to enjoy her character more, and thus to relate to her more. Esthers character almost tricks us into wanting to become her throughout the length of the story, in order for Bleak House to remain comprehensible and legible.

This does not stay constant, however. As Esther becomes more involved in the complexities and mysteries of her love life and in the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case, she becomes far more secretive and hides more information from the reader. This complicates our relationship with her as readers; for most, the reader has become attached to Esther in a way where they view her as an extension of themselves. To have this supposedly reliable narrator become somewhat deceitful and entirely unreliable ruins our perception of her as a perfect avatar within Victorian England. We begin to have to comprehend the novel on or own, and in fact get a kind of taste of what the novel would have truly been like for Esther—overwhelming, too many people at once, mysteries all around, and heavy confusion surrounding love and family. In this way, we stop pretending to be Esther, and in fact become her.