How are characters influenced by their environments?It is under the influence of Estella that Pip wants to be a gentleman. But what about other...

A prevalent theme of Charles Dickens in is exactly that to which you allude; namely, environment.  For, Dickens felt that society was a prison.  In "Great Expectations" the character who best illustrates this concept is Magwitch as it is his environment, the streets of London, that make him a criminal.  Magwitch as Provis tells Pip,

'When I was a ragged little creetur as much to be pitied as ever I see, I got the name of being hardened. 'This is a terrible hardened one," they says to prison visitors, picking out me.  "May be said to live in jails, this boy."  They always went on agen me about the Devil.  But what the devil was I to do? I must put something into my stomach, mustn't I?'

Magwitch goes on to relate how he met Compeyson and fell in with him, "swindling, forgin, stolen bank note passing, and suchlike." He is "a poor tool" in the hands of Compeyson until they are charged with felonies.  Compeyson tells him that they should have separate defenses.  Then, when the gentleman Compeyson appears in court, he is dressed well and speaks as an educated man while poor Magwitch in his worn clothes and street dialect stands opposite.  Compeyson's counselor says,

My lord and gentlemen, here you have afore you, side by side...one well brought up, one ill brought up.

Compeyson receives half the sentence that Magwitch does when he was the instigator of all their crimes.

While poverty creates a prison for Magwitch, wealth and position creates another for Miss Havisham.  Exploited in both love and her wealth, Miss Havisham is so disgraced within her socially-prominent environment that she imprisons herself as she loses her mind.