We Britons had at that time particularly settled that it was treasonable to doubt our having and our being the best of everything: otherwise, while I was scared by the immensity of London, I think I might have had some faint doubts whether it was not rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and dirty.
– Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, Chapter 20. London in Dickens’s time was a sprawling and bustling metropolis, a center for culture and superiority, capital of the powerful and wealthy British Empire. But the writer’s depiction of the great city doesn’t fit that image. When Pip arrives there so he can move up the social ladder to become a gentleman, the place doesn’t live up to expectations. A disappointed Pip finds that London is not a beautiful superior city, but a dirty, unpleasant and stifling place.