In the third chapter of Bleak House Dickens does a switch from an omniscient narrative to Esther's narrative. I loved the shift because I could understand why Dickens had switched at that time, for the first two chapters Esther wasn't even there and she had no idea what would have been going on so she couldn't have gone into as much detail and background information as the omniscient narrative was able to do. Without this narrative in the story it would have been confusing and we wouldn't have known so much before hand like we did. It would have just been another story about a girl who finds love, loses it, as well as her beauty.
As much as we need the omniscient narrative we also need Esther's narrative because she adds tot eh emotion of the story, we grow to like and someimtes maybe even hate her just a little, this passioante voice, we feel sympathy for her and we wouldn't feel this way necessarily if all we had were the other narrators voice. If we didn't have Esther we'd just have a bunch of characters that we may never really have understood and we never would have gotten to know some other characters at all (even though there are some we probably really wish that we hadn't) which may have ruined the entire story altogether.
This story wouldn't be the same without both these narratives that are given to us. They let us get to know the group of characters that are given to us. Very few stories can pull off switching between perspectives as well as Dickens does in this story so I have to say two thumbs up to Dickens for this accomplishment.
While we're on the topic of Dickens achievements in this novel I'd also like to mention his ability to use so many different characters and still have them seem as realistic as they do or as any other story with far fewer characters would. When I was reading I had to write down each character and a note about who they were or else I would have been completely lost, and even though there are so many characters each of them had something to add to the novel. Such as a personality or an emotional pull, some gave information that we needed, there wasn't a character who didn't have a reason to be there, (yes even Skimpole.)
I like your comment that there isn't a single character in the novel who didn't have a reason and purpose. The more I read Dickens, the more I think that he all of his characters are carefully crafted to achieve a specific end or purpose, thematically.
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