What is the setting of The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol?

The story's setting, amongst office-workers in contemporary St. Petersburg, must have seemed startling to Russian readers of Gogol's time, who were used to literature that described adventures amongst noblemen in pastoral and aristocratic settings. The setting in "The Overcoat" plays a role that is almost more important than that of any of the story's characters. The cold winter weather of St. Petersburg requires Akaky to buy his new coat, and the "cold" treatment he receives at the hands of the bureaucracy in which he exists finally kills him.