What is the name of the narrator and heroine of Bleak House?

The narrator and heroine of Bleak House is Esther Summerson.

Esther is one of the novel's two narrative voices and the central female character. She tells approximately half of the story in the first person, while the remaining sections use a detached third-person narrator. This unusual structure lets readers experience both Esther's personal understanding and the wider, darker events surrounding the Chancery case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

Esther begins the novel as a self-effacing young woman who was raised believing she was an orphan. Her guardian, John Jarndyce, brings her to Bleak House, where she becomes a companion to Ada Clare and helps manage the household. Her identity and family history gradually become central to the plot.

Readers sometimes choose Lady Dedlock because she is Esther's mother and one of the book's most important figures. Ada Clare is also a major character, but neither woman narrates the novel. Esther's dual role as heroine and first-person narrator is one of Dickens's most distinctive formal choices.