Throughout Great Expectations, Dickens explores the social conflict associated with the class system of Victorian England, ranging from the most wretched criminals (Magwitch) to the poor peasants of the marsh country (Joe and Biddy) to the middle class (Pumblechook) to the very rich (Miss Havisham). The theme of social class is central to the novel's plot and to the ultimate moral theme of the book "Pip's realization that wealth and class are less important than affection, loyalty, and inner worth. Pip achieves this realization when he is finally able to understand that, despite the esteem in which he holds Estella, one's social status is in no way connected to one's real character. Drummle, for instance, is an upper-class lout, while Magwitch, a persecuted convict, has a deep inner worth.
Like Pip, Jane Eyre, in her passage through loneliness, isolation, intense suffering and temptation, asserts her own individuality, forges a sense of identity, and proclaims her freedom and independence of will.
She is a mixture of the rational and the irrational, the calculating and the passionate, the anxious and the desirous. Somehow, in the course of her life, she has to bring all these things together to form a stable and satisfying sense of her own identity. .
Jane undergoes tremendous physical, material, and social development. At the beginning of the novel, like Pip, Jane is a child. She is a poor, friendless orphan, dependent on her relatives' charity, and her social status is lower than most of the household servants. In the course of the novel, all of these things change. She grows to mature womanhood. This is a development confirmed in the novel by her marriage to Rochester and her giving birth to her own children. Moreover, she is no longer a friendless orphan. Not only does she have an immediate family in her husband and children, but she also has, in the Rivers, cousins who are more like brother and sisters to her.