Social classes in Dickens

To state the obvious, the class structure was much more rigid in 19th-century England than in America then or ever - encapsulated in all the damn titles and honorifics, baronets and earls and Lady and Lord this and that - and no writer was more cognizant of this structure than Dickens. His view of the world was determined but the structure of his society, of course, yet he was prescient enough to not see any social class in only one of its facets. Reading Bleak House, you can see the contempt he had for the cold and cruel British aristocracy (Lord and Lady Dedlock), who think of none but themselves, contribute nothing to society, and in fact have never done anything worthy or worthwhile through their 700-year history, as he notes. There are also the social do-gooders like Mrs. Jellybe who think they're helping others but are really just meddling and seeking praise for their commitments to a cause, like the celebrants for various charities depicted weekly to this day in various Sunday papers - but then there's also the kindly and curious Mr. Jarndyce - maybe not as high in social rank as the Dedlocks, but he's affable and takes steps to help others, notably the 3 wards whom he more or less adopts. On the other extreme, he often sees the working class as loathsome and violent, crude, drunk, neglectful of their children - but he also recognizes traits of honesty, devotion to hard work, family values. He sees the complexity and variability of each of these two classes - yet the classes are fixed. The driving force in his fiction, however, are the free-floating integers - the rare occasions of one who has the potential or opportunity to move from one class to another - and it's these people - Pip, Esther Sommerson, David Copperfield - who distinguish his fiction. These characters are vulnerable, and often naive or just plain too nice (Esther), and the novels cover the course of their maturation into wisdom, their hardening, and their re-incorporation into society (unlike Fielding, where the incorporation generally involves a discovery of high birth or wealth, the 19th-century incorporation is a product of personal will, fortune, sometimes marriage "up").