The term "squalor" in literature has been employed with remarkable versatility, often embodying both physical degradation and deeper existential or societal decay. For instance, in Joyce’s Ulysses, squalor is entwined with passion and sensory excess ([1]), while Forster’s use in Howards End oscillates between the literal degradation of poverty and a metaphorical critique of cultural and personal turmoil ([2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7]). Similarly, Chesterton contrasts squalor with an almost transcendent sense of innocence and philosophical liberty ([8], [9]), and Carlyle’s writings depict it as a symbol of human confinement and moral decline in environments of harsh urban degradation ([10], [11]). Moreover, Riis and Du Bois employ the term to reflect the stark realities of impoverished lives—whether in the dens of New York tenements or in environments steeped in systemic vice ([12], [13])—while Smollett and others underscore its relationship to both material poverty and emotional distress ([14], [15]). Through these varied contexts, “squalor” emerges not merely as a descriptor of the sordid or deteriorated, but as a multifaceted emblem of the human condition itself.