How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
To reach this place, the visitor has to penetrate through a maze of close, narrow, and muddy streets, thronged by the roughest and poorest of water-wide people. (50.2)
Again, the streets in the city are metaphorically described as a "maze" – easy to lose yourself, and difficult to get out again. It’s also crowded ("thronged") and claustrophobic ("close" and "narrow"). In this part of the city, there’s no freedom – you’re always pent-up, and potentially lost in the "maze."
Quote #8
In such a neighbourhood, beyond Dockhead in the Borough of Southwark, stands Jacob’s Island, surrounded by a muddy ditch, six or eight feet deep and fifteen or twenty wide when the tide is in, once called Mill Pond, but known in these days as Folly Ditch. (50.3)
This muddy area actually existed in Dickens’s time (it’s not there, or no longer in this condition, nowadays). It’s on the very borders of London, and surrounded by water – but only sometimes. It’s kind of a watery, muddy, border territory between the city and the surrounding country, but the continual rise and fall of the tidal river keeps it covered in filth from the city. Even on the edge of the city, the grime and contamination of London still infects it.
Quote #9
[…] rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter. (50.4)
Compare this description of Folly Ditch to earlier descriptions of the country landscape in the village where the Maylies go on vacation. Here, the rooms are "confined," while in the country, everything is open and free. The country air heals people, while the air in Folly Ditch is "too tainted even for the dirt and squalor."