GREAT EXPECTATIONS - Narrow existence

"It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There may be black ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment may be retributive and well deserved; but, that it is a miserable thing, I can testify.

Home had never been a very pleasant place to me, because of my sister´s temper.[...].I had believed in the best parlour as a most elegant saloon; I had believed in the front door, as a mysterious portal of the Temple of State whose solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice of roast fowls; I had believed in the kitchen as a chaste though not magnificent apartment; I had believed in the forge as the glowing road to manhood and independence. Within a single year, all this was changed. Now, it was all coarse and common [...].

How much of my ungracious condition of mind may have been my own fault, how much Miss Havisham´s, how much my sister´s, is now of no moment to me or to any one. The change was made in me; the thing was done. Well or ill done, excusably or inexcusably, it was done.

There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its interests and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance any more.[...]

What I wanted, who can say? How can I say, when I never knew?[...].

After that, when I went in to supper, the place and the meal would have a more homely look than ever and I would feel more ashamed of home than ever, in my own ungracious breast".

Charles Dickens