<正> In the 20th century the novel’s focus of attention shifts from the objective, physical world to the subjective, metaphysical world with its structure changed from the structure of a ladder to the structure of a cobweb. The paper attempts to examine this process through a detailed analysis of three established works: Arnold Bennet’s The Old Wives’ Tale, James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughter House Five.