The extract taken from D. Lodge's Nice Work is a Postmodern rendering of the Victorian Novel. The narrator is the third person omniscient intrusive, because Lodge's intention is to parody the Victorian Novel. Lodge presents a character to us, Robyn Penrose, a temporary lecturer in English Literature at the university of Rummidge. Her  characterization is made up with the categories of gender  (herself), language (frequent expressions), name and social background, the reader expects to meet an unusual, not otdinary and unconventional woman. Robyn Penrose presents her idea about the Victorian Novel, she sustains that:

- the rise of the novel (18^th Century) coincides with the rise of capitalism

- the triumph of the novel (19^th Century) coincides with the triumph of capitalism

- the modernist and postmodernist deconstruction of the novel (20^th Century) coincides with the crisis of capitalism

The Victorian Novel and the theory of capitalism (whatever you produce should be useful)  both are the expression of the Puritanism and dependent on the idea of an autonomous individual self. But the individual, according to Robyn, doesn't possess a unique  single identity, she doesn't believe on the concept of one self. Robyn believes identity is multiple, it includes a succession of conscious or unconscious states in front of relationships, discourses, facts.

Robyn says also that there isn't an author who originates a text ‘ab nihlo' because every text is a product of intertextuality, ‘ a tissue of allusions to and citations of other texts'.

The extract ends with a comment  of the narrator on the character: she is a common woman even she belongs to a different social specie.