Language in Use: the Fictional World

Abstract

In his 1925 essay ‘The Novel’ Lawrence writes that ‘In a novel, everything is relative to everything else, if that novel is art at all’ (Phoenix II, 416). The main force of a Lawrence novel is always located in the characters, and his handling of character will be dealt with in the following chapter. But character cannot exist in isolation. Character, above all, must be related to ‘everything else’ in the novel if the novel is to be what Lawrence calls a ‘quick’ novel.