Esther Summerson is not the sentimental, insipid character she is usually taken to be. Dickens uses her as the unconscious spokesman of the many characters in Bleak House who have never known parental love and makes her tale the most important illustration of one of the novel's major concerns—the breakdown of the parent-child relationship. His attitude is essentially clinical: he is interested in recording a complex pattern of psychological development in detail. Esther's story demonstrates both the immediate and the long-range effects of her godmother's pious cruelty and neglect. The novel shows that her inhibited intelligence and self-effacement are products of this upbringing and traces her attempt to become a more assured and self-possessed woman. Esther's dawning confidence, however, is shaken first by her illness and disfigurement and then by Mr. Jarndyce's proposal. The two incidents are best understood as crucial symbolic events in her attempt to transcend the determining influences of her childhood. Although Dickens finally resorts to fantasy to resolve Esther's conflicts, his detailed study of the stages of her life is that of a psychological realist interested in revealing the connections between childhood experience and adult personality.