Holmes' vision of this fundamental process of dialogic alternations between impulses of “house-keeping” and “house-breaking” did not arise solely out of his private preoccupations and personal history; on the contrary, it was developed quite self-consciously as a pointed elaboration upon habits of thought widely shared in mid-century culture. Indeed, the Doctor's interest in the wall-breaking powers of levity can be seen to have emerged out of and been shaped by his desire to open up a dialogue with the works of a line of English comic writers – most notably Sterne and Dickens – who had explored in classic, caricatural form the implications of the contemporary urge to “fortification” of the self or of the domestic sphere.