Bleak House Analysis

Bleak House is a story about Esther Summerson who lives with her aunt and is the illegitimate daughter of Lady Dedlock and Captain Hawdon. She spends the early years of her life at Ms. Barbary, her aunt’s house. After Ms. Barbary’s death she goes to live at Greenleaf at Ms. Donny’s with the help of her guardian Mr. Jarndyce. She spends six years at Greenleaf. After six years she goes to live at her guardian’s house accompanied with two other wards Miss Ada Clare and Richard Carstone. She continues to live happily at Mr. Jarndyce’s house. She meets with different people at his house. She meets the two other wards at Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Richard Carstone and Ada Clare. Esther meets the charity worker Mrs. Pardiggle who introduces her to a poor brick …show more content…
Richard dies and Ada gives birth to his son. Mr. Jarndyce realizes that Esther and Mr. Allan Woodcourt really love each other so he frees Esther from the engagement so that she could marry Mr. Woodcourt. Mr. Jarndyce builds a similar bleak house for Esther and Mr. Woodcourt in Yorkshire. Lady Dedlock’s secret was out so in desperation she leaves her house and is found dead where Captain Hawdon was buried. Woodcourt and Esther get married.

Character Analysis of Esther Summerson in Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Esther Summerson is the protagonist of the story who is the illegitimate daughter of Lady Dedlock and Captain Hawdon. From the beginning of the story Esther is shown as very helpful and kind hearted. Dickens brilliantly projects Esther as his type of an ideal woman, with her modesty, perceptiveness and moral responsibility. Being a Victorian woman she is shown to be very submissive and accepts the circumstances around her. Esther fits the then popular Victorian image of the ideal wife/woman known as “The Angel in the House” with her jingling bunch of house keys. The Angel in the house is a poem written by Coventry Patmore in which he holds his angel wife up as a