Victorian London, as presented in The Great Trouble, is plagued by sharp class divisions that affect the material conditions and personal identities of the city’s inhabitants. The physical circumstances of these divisions are presented as the most immediate in the text. As the novel begins, Eel comments on the stink and filth of the Thames, which he wades through daily in his role as a mudlark. This dirty, arduous, and often unproductive labor is a sign of Eel’s extremely low social status. In correlation with Eel’s financial need and lack of prospects, he allows his work to subsume his identity and therefore thinks of himself not as someone who goes mudlarking, but as someone who is a mudlark. Because he allows himself to be defined by his work, this self-limiting mindset is detrimental to his well-being, for he sometimes refuses to seek out novel solutions on the assumption that they are simply inaccessible to someone of his social status.

This mindset becomes apparent when Hugzie accuses Eel of stealing from the Lion Brewery—a crime that Hugzie himself is guilty of committing. However, because Hugzie is the nephew of the Lion’s owners, he and Eel both know that Mr.