David Lodge, Nice work, II – Analysis.

The text is from the secondo chapter of the David Lodge’s novel Nice Work. The novel is the parody of Charles Dickens’ Hard Times and it expresses the weaknesses of the society through the contraposition of the two main characters: Vic Wilcox and Robyn Penrose.

The extract has the function to introduce the novel’s female character. She is presented in the first paragraph yet. The intelligent reader understands the position of the text into the chapter thanks to the first sentence: the conjunction and locates the part not at the beginning of the chapter but in its centre. The first statement makes the reader able to comprehend the way in which the character is introduced too: she is presented after the male one (let us leave Vic Wilcox) and in opposition to him (to meet a very different character). Robyn Penrose is a character who does not believe in the concept of character: she is introduced through the statement of her beliefs. The reader has than some information about her work and about her way of speaking: the expression that is to say is one of the expressions she uses more frequently. In fact, the narrator uses it already at the beginning of her presentation, to point out her personality, and repeats it several times, as she would do. The name itself of the woman contributes to her characterization. Robyn is a male name, so she might speak about themes associate to man and not to woman (commerce, economy, politics and capitalism). The name recalls also English folk hero who “stole from the rich and give to the poor". The woman will then presumably oppose to those that are the principles of capitalism and will be inclined to a widespread equality of rights. The surname Penrose underlines her job: pen- recalls writing and she is a Temporary Lecturer in English Literature; -rose refers to her being a woman.

The first paragraph has also the function to introduce the argument of all the extract: the bound between capitalism and novels’ production. The age of spread of novel coincide with periods of change in the role of capitalism in European society: the eighteenth century sees the rise of novel and the rise of capitalism, the spread of novel in the nineteenth century coincides with the triumph of capitalism and its crisis coincides with the capitalistic one. The second paragraph of the text has the function to extend and specify this as the similarities between the two elements. The specification is created through the words of the character, and then the characterization continues through the report of a lecture held by women on the subject. The focus in the second sequence are the other points of encounter between capitalism and novel. Thanks to the narrative strategies used by the writer the reader now understands that the speaking voice is a third person omniscient one (is perfectly obvious to Robyn).

The second paragraph also contains the exposure of the process that normally a novel had to follow to be published and read. The protagonist of the text exposes some novel’s characteristics, which can be summed up simply with two sentences reported by the omniscient narrator: the novelist is a capitalist of imagination; the novel was the first mass-produced cultural artefact. The last two periods are included in parentheses: they are therefore not essential to the understanding of the narrative portion of the extract. In this way, however, the speaking voice highlights them because of their contribution to Robyn Penrose’s characterization: her gestures. Definitively, the narrator describes the woman from a social point of view (held by her profession), both from the point of view of identity (name and surname), and from the point of view of languages used by her (verbal repetition and gestural emphases).

The third and last paragraph has the function to conclude the woman’s characterization. It contains Robyn’s considerations about self, its bound with society and culture and about how a novel takes shape. The initial expression according to Robyn said by the speaking voice and the following repetitions of that is to say make the reader understand that also here Robyn in speaking. The concept of identity is expressed through various sentences and constitutes some of the principles of postmodernism: there is no such thing as the “self” on which capitalism and the classic novel are founded; every text is a product of intertextuality; there is nothing outside the text; we produce our “selves” in language.

The description and the extract finish with reference to their beginning: the woman belongs to a very different social species, from Vic Wilcox. The text has then a circular structure and the recovery of the initial opposition allows the reader to understand the definitive conclusion of the description of the David Lodge’s novel’s second character.

In conclusion, the text ranges within one chapter of the novel by David Lodge; it has the function to introduce the second main character of the novel. The introduction of the character is realized in opposition to that of the first one. The description highlights the woman’s features by exposing her beliefs through her own words, her way of speaking and her gestures. The narrator is intrusive and omniscient: he intervenes to make comments or to declare his presence in the text. The criterion used for the characterization is the verisimilitude and arguments quoted indirectly through the words of the woman are the novel, its origin and its connection to the political/economic system of capitalism.