Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage is increasingly being recognized as a significant work of fiction - historically, thematically and technically. Its subject matter (the life of a woman), the perspective (focalization through a female consciousness), and the frequent direct and free indirect representation of thought, all mean that Pilgrimage is a text often referred to as steam of consciousness writing or feminine writing. However, despite frequent allusions to the form of Pilgrimage, there has so far been no detailed analysis of the language of the text. In this thesis many aspects of linguistic form that have previously gone unconsidered, or been ill-defined or mis-interpreted in criticism of Pilgrimage, are discussed in terms of their functions and effects, in developing an argument about the importance of linguistic form in Pilgrimage. A variety of linguistic approaches demonstrate various ways in which the text of Pilgrimage is innovative and highly complex. This thesis explores in detail, and with extensive reference to the text, three central factors in the language of Pilgrimage - narrative structure, metaphor, and rhythm. Through textual analysis, the thesis demonstrates that the narrative is not simply a stream of the undiluted thoughts of Miriam Henderson, the protagonist, but a highly complex narrated, indirect and direct representation of Miriam's consciousness. The perspective of the narrative fluctuates as the relationship between Miriam and the narrator varies with alternating pronominal representation of Miriam (in the first- second- and third-person) and as Miriam matures and becomes less distanced from the narrator. Meanings are expressed metaphorically as Miriam's perspective cannot be recorded without radical linguistic innovation. Analysis of the processes of metaphor and metonymy reveals how Miriam's perspective is continually present (although there can be other points of view as well).