With the following text, I'm going to analyze an extract taken from "Nice Work", a novel of David Lodge that represents a postmodern answer to the Victorian "Hard Times".

The extract uses the characterization of Robyn Penrose - being her a woman, even if Robyn is usually a male's name, and with her surname suggesting both her work of lecturer, both her being a beautiful but dangerous woman, as only roses can be - to hide more deep considerations; the first of them is the protagonist and the writer's convinction that the character, as perceived into classic novelism, doesn't exist. It is but a bourgeois myth, product of Capitalism as the novel itself. Novelism is seen as a product of capitalistic and puritan mentality: this is supported by the coincidence between the Novel and the Industrial Revolution's raise, splendor and crysis.

The writer itself is but somebody who exploits imagination, and transforms it in a novel, which is but a product, merchandise: Defoe, who is the first novelist, was a merchant, as many others.

The reason why she is sure about this, is beacuse there is no certain identity: if the typical Victorian character was based on the idea of a self-made man, sure about his achievements and about his identity, this wasn't possible. Semyothic mentality - which is the basis of Robyn's mentality - tells us that "we are what speaks us": we are but texts, that speak and are continuely interpreted by other people; the relativism that influences all the 20th century is here evident: no certain self, no certain identity but multiple ones. Language becomes more than an instrument, and so is commented by the narrator, recalling the postmodern technique of "metanarrative".

Robin, who actually is herself but a character, is finally described as a product of what she read: her ideas aren't hers, but take inspiration from the idea of others. This goes against the idea of the "author": nobody invents anything, but copies, and than modifies.