During the Victorians, period the class system played a prominent role in English society. Like the novels Emma, Moll Flanders, Jane Eyre and Charles Dickens's, Great Expectations, the class structure played an important role in the novels. The class system in England began after Norman Conquest of 1066, and has been the social guideline for hundreds of years. The class system consists of an upper, middle and lower class. These classes and the differences between them are evident in the interaction of the characters and in the plot of novel.
             Dickens paints a very poor sketch of this system, where the upper class is powerful, the middle class is jealous of the upper class, and the hard working lower class is unable to live comfortably because they were born poor. An example of these injustices can be seen in the characters of Miss. Havisham, Mrs. Pocket, Mrs. Joe, Pumblechook and Magwitch. These characters embody many of the traits, which Dickens found to be evident in the various classes.
             The picture Pip paints of Miss. Havisham is that of a lazy and selfish rich oddball woman, who sat in her dark and dusty home and who is obsessed with her failed marriage. Pondering over the past, Miss. Havisham personifies the idle rich as she sat in her mansion, while still wearing her wedding dress that had began to rot. Dickens writes, "In her once-white dress, all yellow and withered...everything around in a state to crumble under a touch." She wants to create doomed relationship by manipulating Estella to break Pip's heart because she was left at the altar. Her behavior is in part because a wealthy father who "denied her nothing (what are you trying to say? Please clarify)." Miss Havisham never had to work because she was financially secure. She entertains herself by playing sadistic games with Pip and Estella. As she explains to Pip, "I sometimes have sick fancies." Dickens uses the irrationality of Miss. Havisham t
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