ABSTRACT
This chapter contends that the essay, written when Dickens was merely 25, not only reveals the source and effect mechanism of his works, but also demonstrates that he had innovative ideas that became fully intelligible only. It focuses on how much Dickens's critique of contemporary British society could be considered as a facing up to an increasingly theatricalised world, in which human beings ever more became their own masks. The pantomime was important for Dickens not only due to its affinities with reality, but it also helped him to model a change in real life that was of utmost importance for him: a change of heart, or conversion. Dickens distinguishes the kind of knowledge offered by a noble, solid heart even from intuition or inspiration. Dickens lived, and wrote, before the rise of sociology and its trademark obsession with the crisis of the age, even preceding the angry outbreaks of Marx.
