Esther Summerson: My favourite Charles Dickens character Charles Dickens's 10th novel, Bleak House, features one of his most holy of heroines - a mother to all and "angel of the house": the Oprah Winfrey of the Victorian age, if you will. Unlike the writer's other angels, Little Dorrit's Amy; or Sissy Jupe in Hard Times, Esther gets to tell her own story as she narrates a tale centring on a quarrel over an inheritance. Charlotte Bronte may have described her as "weak and twaddling," but she's the only woman that Dickens allows a pen and he brilliantly projects Esther as his type of ideal woman, with her modesty, perceptiveness, and moral responsibility. As her name suggests (it means "star"), she lights up the gloomy and chaotic world of the novel and dispenses her love to the needy, because love is the very thing she needs in return. As an illegitimate daughter, Esther faces numerous bitter experiences in Victorian society and takes a great dislike to those she feels unworthy of her virtues - her handling of the incorrigibly irresponsible Harold Skimpole is perhaps one of her finest moments as she politely refuses his proposal, all the while letting him know exactly what she thinks of him.