Corrected version

The text is an extract from the novel Nice Work written by D.Lodge. The novel is the parody of Charles Dickens’ Hard Times. 

Thanks to the narrative strategies used by the writer the reader now understands that the speaking voice is a third person omniscient intrusive one (let us leave).The intelligent reader understands that the extract is not the beginning of the chapter: indeed,  the conjunction and sets it at  the centre of chapter. The first statement introduces  the female character in opposition to Vic Wilcox (“to meet a very different character”).

Robyn Penrose is a character who does not believe in the concept of character: she is introduced through her ideas about a structural element of the novel: the idea of character.

Besides, the expression that is to say is often used by the character: the narrator refers to her frequent expression during her lecture right from the beginning of her presentation to point out her personality. Her name itself contributes to her characterization. Robyn is a man's name that immediately recalls the English idealist hero who “stole from the rich and give to the poor". The lecturer may probably oppose to the principles of capitalism and may be inclined to forster a widespread equality of rights. The surname Penrose underlines her job: pen recalls writing and rose may refer to her gender.

The first paragraph has the function to introduce not only the character but the most relevant argumentation of her lecture: the parallelism between capitalism and the novel and the concept of character. Indeed, the age that saw the widespread of the novel coincides with the period when capitalism developed in European socie. If 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 crises of capitalism.

The second paragraph has the function to go deep into the similarity. The focus in the second sequence are further similarities between capitalism and the ovel.

The second paragraph tells about the dynamnics of novel production. Robyn explains that the novelist is a capitalist of imagination; the novel was the first mass-produced cultural artefact. The last two periods are between parentheses: the speaking voice highlights the parts that underline an aspect of Robyn Penrose’s characterization: her gestures

The third and last paragraph have the function to bring  the woman’s characterization to a climax because it provides a detailed argumentation about the concept of character introduced in the opening lines. It contains Robyn’s considerations about the self recalling the idea of the selfmade man of Victorian fiction  and its connection with society and culture.

Also the way a novel takes shape is discussed. The reader understand also Robyn is holding a lecture. The concept of identity is well explained  in different ways that constitutes some of the main principles of Semiotic Materialism : 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 extract ends with reference to its beginning: the woman belongs to a very different social species, from Vic Wilcox. The text has therefore a circular structure. In conclusion, the text  has introduced the second main character of the novel. The characterisation is carried out in opposition to the one of V. Wilcox. It highlights the woman’s features by telling about her ideas, her own words, her way of speaking and her gestures. The narrator is intrusive and omniscient. There are different levels of narration: D.Lodge’s novel, the narrator's narrative and R.Penrose’s lecture.