London is the capital of the not just England, but the entire globe-spanning never-sunsetting British Empire. With sizable territory on every continent, wealth and resources poured into the city, encouraging rapid industrialization that would produce the extremes of wildly luxurious aristocratic neighboorhoods and blackened, soot-lined slums. As the Victorian era passed into World War One and the Interwar Period, London once again faced a reckoning of harsh inequality and national struggle through the Great Depression. London was the victim of mass layoffs, raising unemployment and severely impacting quality of life. However, by the late 1930s, London had recovered from the worst parts of the recession, notably seeing a resurgence in suburban home-building, ironic considering what the protagonist is critiquing in the passage.

"I had read about England ever since I could read -- smaller meaner everything is never mind -- this is London -- hundreds thousands of white people white people rushing along and the dark houses all alike frowning down one after the other all alike all stuck together -- the streets like smooth shut-in ravines and the dark houses frowning down" (Rhys, Part 1 Chapter 1).