Tipping the Velvet
Encyclopedia
- For the TV serial based on the novel, see Tipping the Velvet (TV serial)Tipping the Velvet (TV serial)Tipping the Velvet is a 2002 BBC television drama serial based on the bestselling debut novel by Sarah Waters of the same name. It originally screened in three episodes on BBC Two and was produced for the BBC by the independent production company Sally Head Productions...
Tipping the Velvet is an historical
Historical fiction
Historical fiction tells a story that is set in the past. That setting is usually real and drawn from history, and often contains actual historical persons, but the principal characters tend to be fictional...
novel written by Sarah Waters
Sarah Waters
Sarah Waters is a British novelist. She is best known for her novels set in Victorian society, such as Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith.-Childhood:Sarah Waters was born in Neyland, Pembrokeshire, Wales in 1966....
published in 1998. Set in Victorian England during the 1890s, it tells a coming of age
Coming of age
Coming of age is a young person's transition from childhood to adulthood. The age at which this transition takes place varies in society, as does the nature of the transition. It can be a simple legal convention or can be part of a ritual, as practiced by many societies...
story about a young woman named Nan who falls in love with a male impersonator, follows her to London, and finds various ways to support herself as she journeys through the city. The picaresque plot elements have prompted scholars and reviewers to compare it to similar British urban adventure stories written by Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
and Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe , born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain and along with others such as Richardson,...
.
The novel has pervasive lesbian themes
Lesbian fiction
Lesbian fiction is a subgenre of fiction that involves one or more primary female homosexual character and lesbian themes. Novels that fall into this category may be of any genres, such as, but not limited to, historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, horror, and romance.-History:The first...
, concentrating on eroticism and self-discovery. Waters was working on a PhD dissertation in English literature when she decided to write a story she would like to read. Employing her love for the variety of people and districts in London, she consciously chose an urban setting. As opposed to previous lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
-themed fiction she had read where the characters escape an oppressive society to live apart from it, Waters chose characters who interact with their surroundings. She has acknowledged that the book imagines a lesbian presence and history in Victorian London where none was recorded. The main character's experiences in the theatrical profession and her perpetual motion through the city allow her to make observations on social conditions while exploring the issues of gender, sexism, and class difference.
As Waters' debut novel
Debut novel
A debut novel is the first novel an author publishes. Debut novels are the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to publish in the future...
, Tipping the Velvet was highly acclaimed and was chosen by The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and The Library Journal as one of the best books of 1998. Waters followed it with two other novels set in the Victorian era, both of which were also well-received. Reviewers have offered the most praise for Tipping the Velvets use of humour, adventure, and sexual explicitness. The novel was adapted into a somewhat controversial three-part series of the same name
Tipping the Velvet (TV serial)
Tipping the Velvet is a 2002 BBC television drama serial based on the bestselling debut novel by Sarah Waters of the same name. It originally screened in three episodes on BBC Two and was produced for the BBC by the independent production company Sally Head Productions...
produced and broadcast by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
in 2002.
Inspiration and publication
Sarah Waters
Sarah Waters is a British novelist. She is best known for her novels set in Victorian society, such as Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith.-Childhood:Sarah Waters was born in Neyland, Pembrokeshire, Wales in 1966....
was 19 years old, she joined a student house in Whitstable
Whitstable
Whitstable is a seaside town in Northeast Kent, Southeast England. It is approximately north of the city of Canterbury and approximately west of the seaside town of Herne Bay. It is part of the City of Canterbury district and has a population of about 30,000.Whitstable is famous for its oysters,...
, Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
, sharing a bed and then falling in love with another young woman. They lived there for two winters in what became a six-year relationship. She recalled, "It was cold, isolated, romantic and so intense—quite special." In 1995, Waters was at Queen Mary and Westfield College
Queen Mary, University of London
Queen Mary, University of London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
writing her PhD dissertation on gay and lesbian historical fiction from 1870 onward when she became interested in the Victorian era. While learning about the activism in socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, women's suffrage
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...
, and utopia
Utopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
nism of the period, she was inspired to write a work of fiction of the kind that she would like to read. Specifically, Waters intended to write a story that focused on an urban setting, diverging from previous lesbian-themed books such as Isabel Miller's Patience and Sarah
Patience and Sarah
Patience and Sarah is a 1969 historical fiction novel with strong lesbian themes by Alma Routsong, using the pen name Isabel Miller. It was originally self-published under the title A Place For Us and eventually found a publisher as Patience and Sarah in 1971.Routsong's novel is based on a...
, in which two women escape an oppressive home life to live together freely in the woods. She said to herself at the time, "there's so much more to lesbian history than that".
Waters was drawn to the Victorian era because of the (mis)understandings of what social norms existed during the period. As she stated, "I find it a fascinating period because it feels very close to us, and yet in lots of ways it is utterly strange: many of the things we think we know about it are stereotypes, or simply wrong." Considering herself part of gay and lesbian literary heritage, Waters was influenced by Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
, and Chris Hunt, who wrote Street Lavender, an historical novel with gay male themes also set in the Victorian era. She has stated that Tipping the Velvet is a female version of Street Lavender, with a plot similar to James Kincaid's My Secret Life: An Erotic Diary of Victorian London.
Waters pitched Tipping the Velvet to ten British publishers, but after they all rejected it, she began considering American publishing houses. Although she was picked up quickly by a literary agency, the agent spent almost a year trying to sell the book to a mainstream publisher. By the time Tipping the Velvet was accepted by Virago Press
Virago Press
Virago is a British publishing company founded in 1973 by Carmen Callil to publish books by women writers. Both new works and reissued books by neglected authors have featured on the imprint's list....
—one of the ten that had previously passed on the project—Waters had already begun work on her second novel.
Plot
Nancy "Nan" Astley is a sheltered 18-year-old living with her working-class family and helping in their oyster restaurant in Whitstable, Kent. She becomes instantly and desperately enamoured with a "masher", or male impersonator, named Kitty Butler, who performs for a season at the local theatre. They begin a friendship that grows when, after Kitty finds an opportunity to perform in London for better exposure, she asks Nan to join her. Nan enthusiastically agrees and leaves her family to act as Kitty's dresser while she performs. Although Kitty and Nan acknowledge their relationship to be sisterly, Nan continues to love Kitty until a jealous fight forces Kitty to admit she feels the same, although she insists that they keep their relationship secret. Simultaneously, Kitty's manager Walter decides that Kitty needs a performing partner to reach true success, and suggests Nan for the role. Nan is initially horrified by the idea, but takes to it. The duo become quite famous until Nan realises she is homesick after being gone from her family for more than a year. Her return home is underwhelming, so she returns to London early to find Kitty in bed with Walter. They announce that the act is finished and they are to be married.Astonished and deeply bruised by the discovery, Nan wanders the streets of London, finally holing herself in a filthy boarding house for weeks in a state of madness until her funds run out. After spying the male costumes she took as her only memory of her time with Kitty, Nan begins to walk the streets of London as a man and easily passes. She is solicited by a man for sex and begins renting
Male prostitution
Male prostitution is the practice of engaging in sexual acts for money. Compared to female sex workers, male sex workers have been far less studied by researchers, and while studies suggest that there are differences between the ways these two groups look at their work, more research is needed.Male...
, but dressed only as a man for male clients, never letting them know she is a woman. She meets a socialist activist named Florence who lives near the boarding house, but before she can get to know her, Nan is hired by a wealthy widow with licentious tastes named Diana. Although realising—and initially enjoying—that she is an object to Diana and her friends, Nan stays with her for over a year as "Neville", dressed in the finest men's clothes Diana can afford. The relationship erodes, however, and Diana throws Nan into the streets.
Nan stumbles through London trying to find Florence, which she eventually does; Florence is now melancholy, however, with a child. Nan stays with Florence and her brother Ralph, working as their housekeeper. Nan and Florence grow closer during the year they live together, and Nan learns that the a previous boarder with Florence and Ralph had a child and died shortly after giving birth. Florence was deeply in love with the boarder but her affections were not returned. During an outing to a women's pub, Nan is recognised by former fans, to Florence's astonishment, and Nan divulges her own spotty past to Florence. Cautiously, they begin a love affair. Putting her theatrical skills to use, Nan assists Ralph in preparing a speech at an upcoming socialist rally. At the event Nan jumps onstage to help Ralph when he falters, and is noticed once more by Kitty, who asks her to come back so they can continue their affair in secret. Realising how much shame Kitty continues to feel, how much of herself was compromised during their affair, and that her truest happiness is where she is now, Nan turns Kitty away and joins Florence.
Style
The greatest literary strengths in Tipping the Velvet, according to reviewers and literary scholars, are the vibrant portrayal of the districts and streets of London, and Waters' ability to create sympathetic and realistic characters. Her use of synaesthesiaSynesthesia in literature
Synesthesia is a neurological condition in which one or more sensory modalities become linked. However, for over a century, the term synesthesia has also been used to refer to artistic and poetic devices which attempt to express a linkage between the senses...
in lush descriptions particularly interested Harriet Malinowitz in The Women's Review of Books. For example, Malinowitz cites the scene when Nan first meets Kitty, removing her glove to shake Kitty's hand. Very much an oyster girl, Nan's hands are covered with "those rank sea-scents, of liquor and oyster-flesh, crab-meat and whelks, which had flavoured my fingers and those of my family for so many years we had ceased, entirely, to notice them." Nan is mortified that she smells like a herring, but Kitty assuages her fears, kissing her hand and telling her she instead smells like a mermaid. Malinowitz includes this and other descriptions of sights, sounds, and smells in Victorian London as examples of elements that are "breathlessly and wittily detailed".
Although Waters was born in Pembrokeshire
Pembrokeshire
Pembrokeshire is a county in the south west of Wales. It borders Carmarthenshire to the east and Ceredigion to the north east. The county town is Haverfordwest where Pembrokeshire County Council is headquartered....
, Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
, she considers herself a London writer because of her intense affection for the city, due in part to her immigration to it. Specifically, Waters is moved by walking through London and seeing remnants of many historical eras: "It's ... almost like it's peopled with ghosts—again, jostling up against each other or passing through each other. I find that very exciting." Her love for the city is apparent to many reviewers. In the Lesbian Review of Books Donna Allegra writes, "[S]he summons the era's attitudes and ambiance projecting them onto the screen of the reader's mind with Dolby wrap-around sound such that you feel you're vacationing on all points between Chelsea and the East End."
Miranda Seymour
Miranda Seymour
Miranda Jane Seymour is an English literary critic, novelist, and biographer.Miranda Seymour was two years old when her parents moved into Thrumpton Hall, the family's ancestral home in Nottinghamshire. This celebrated Jacobean mansion is on the south bank of the River Trent at the secluded...
in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
remarks on the "breathless passion" of the narrator's voice as being absolutely convincing, citing as an example Nancy's statement to her sister at the start of the book about why she continues to visit Kitty Butler:
... It's like I never saw anything at all before. It's like I am filling up, like a wine-glass when it's filled with wine. I watch the acts before her and they are like nothing—they're like dust. Then she walks on the stage and—she is so pretty; and her suit is so nice; and her voice is so sweet... She makes me want to smile and weep, at once... I never saw a girl like her before. I never knew that there were girls like her.
Donna Allegra and Christina Patterson in The Observer also praise Nan as a passionate and captivating character. Patterson and Mel Steel in The Independent compare her resourcefulness to that of Moll Flanders
Moll Flanders
The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders is a novel written by Daniel Defoe in 1722, after his work as a journalist and pamphleteer. By 1722, Defoe had become a recognised novelist, with the success of Robinson Crusoe in 1719...
. Of her three Victorian-set novels, Waters uses humour and "an attractive lightness of touch" most effectively in Tipping the Velvet, according to Paulina Palmer. Nan the narrator describes the irony of her "curious gaslit career" as a rent-boy only to end up—in Diana's words—as her "tart". Waters had such fun writing the novel that she told Robert McCrum from The Observer in 2009 that if she had no obligations to meet stemming from her subsequent success as a writer that she would continue writing Nan's story.
Genre
Nan's path through the plot indicates that Tipping the Velvet is part BildungsromanBildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
, and her journeys through the streets of London invoke elements of a picaresque novel
Picaresque novel
The picaresque novel is a popular sub-genre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts, in realistic and often humorous detail, the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society...
. Scholar Emily Jeremiah characterizes the story as a Bildungsroman: a coming-of-age adventure but one that far surpasses a simple coming-out
Coming out
Coming out is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity....
story. Stefania Ciocia in Literary London writes that the plot has classical elements of a fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
as it follows the main character's growth and progression, and has a moral ending that includes a course of events where Nan forsakes three suitors for her—in this case—Princess Charming. Nan finds true love with Florence, who is a bit dowdy, somewhat stout, certainly not wealthy, and driven to improve the world; the least likely of all the characters. A review in Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
states that the series of events leading to Nan finding love are "unpredictable and moving".
Nan's experiences eventually reveal serious faults of the society she moves through, the primary element of a picaresque novel. For this and other reasons, Waters' books are frequently compared to stories by Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
; the reader follows Nan's movement from sheltered naif to exuberant theatre performer to rent-boy to mistress to housewife then socialist orator, showing allegiance to none of these professions or ideals. Michael Upchurch in The Seattle Times writes that Nan's inability or unwillingness to adhere to any profession or setting, remaining malleable until the end of the novel indicates she is her own worst enemy. Likewise, Marianne Brace in The Independent considers Nan selfish and unsympathetic.
Ciocia writes that with half the novel taking place in theatrical settings, Nan may be playing a role as character in her own life or a play on a stage set in a theatre or the streets of London. She starts as a spectator watching Kitty onstage, and later with Kitty, watching how men move and behave to improve their act. She becomes a performer, with Kitty, as a renter and again for the predatory Diana and her friends. Finally she takes the role of director as she assists and impels Ralph to perform his speech. At this point, she is able to reconcile her identity and the story ends. Waters consciously chose to create a complicated plot, and was impressed with Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
Dame Iris Murdoch DBE was an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels about political and social questions of good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious...
's claim that she herself had entire stories worked out well in advance of writing them, a method Waters used with Tipping the Velvet.
Sexuality
Sexuality and sexual identity is the most prevalent theme in the novel. The title is an obscure Victorian pornographic slang reference to cunnilingusCunnilingus
Cunnilingus is an oral sex act performed on a female. It involves the use by a sex partner of the mouth, lips and tongue to stimulate the female's clitoris, vulva, or vagina...
. Nick Rennison in Contemporary British Authors characterises Tipping the Velvet as an "unabashed and unapologetic celebration of lesbian eroticism and sexual diversity". Donna Allegra writes with appreciation of how the existence of Waters' characters in a heterosexual existence forces an analysis of closeted
Closeted
Closeted and in the closet are metaphors used to describe lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning and intersex people who have not disclosed their sexual orientation or gender identity and aspects thereof, including sexual identity and sexual behavior.-Background:In late 20th...
positions. The sexism of the period puts a stranglehold on women, forcing readers to compare women in the Victorian era with present-day sexual attitudes. Nan never has difficulty accepting her love for Kitty Butler and other women; Kitty's union with Walter, however, "reeks of lesbophobia", according to Allegra. Music halls could be rough in some areas, but Kitty is shown handling drunken and rowdy audiences with humour and grace. The only instance where she is overcome and flees the stage is when a drunken patron shouts a euphemism for a lesbian at her. This episode leads to the final scene of Part I when Nan stumbles upon Kitty and Walter in bed. Kitty does not display any pleasure in their union, but rather complacence tinged with shame. Allegra compares Kitty's desire for normality overshadowing her desire for love with Nan to "compulsory heterosexuality ... emblematic of and particular to lesbian existence".
Scholar Paulina Palmer asserts that Waters, in Tipping the Velvet and her two following novels also set in the Victorian era—Affinity
Affinity (novel)
Affinity is a 1999 historical fiction novel by Sarah Waters. It is the author's second novel, following Tipping the Velvet, and followed by Fingersmith.-Plot summary:...
and Fingersmith
Fingersmith (novel)
Fingersmith is a 2002 Victorian-inspired crime fiction novel by Sarah Waters.-Part one:Sue Trinder, an orphan raised in 'a Fagin-like den of thieves' by her adoptive mother, Mrs. Sucksby, is sent to help Richard 'Gentleman' Rivers seduce a wealthy heiress. Posing as a maid, Sue is to gain the trust...
—is establishing a literary tradition that has not existed: "Women engaging in same-sex relationships in the Victorian era were on the whole invisible and we have little knowledge of their literary interests." Waters, however, acknowledges that accuracy about lesbian life in the Victorian era is not her primary goal: "My purpose was not to be authentic, but to imagine a history that we can’t really recover." Short bursts of lesbian-themed literary activity occurred in 1920s with authors such as Natalie Clifford Barney
Natalie Clifford Barney
Natalie Clifford Barney was an American playwright, poet and novelist who lived as an expatriate in Paris....
and Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes was an American writer who played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing and was one of the key figures in 1920s and '30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role in the Greenwich Village of the teens...
. Another surge of activity published as lesbian pulp fiction
Lesbian pulp fiction
Lesbian pulp fiction refers to any mid-20th century paperback novel with overtly lesbian themes and content. Lesbian pulp fiction was published in the 1950s and 60s by many of the same paperback publishing houses that other genres of fiction including Westerns, Romances, and Detective Fiction...
occurred in the 1950s and early 1960s, during which several notable lesbian authors such as Ann Bannon
Ann Bannon
Ann Bannon is an American author who, from 1957 to 1962, wrote six lesbian pulp fiction novels known as The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. The books' enduring popularity and impact on lesbian identity has earned her the title "Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction"...
and Valerie Taylor helped to establish lesbian literary identity. These fictions helped to inform readers about the lives and cultural landmarks of lesbians when very little information existed. Waters states that she is not on a deliberate crusade to write about lesbians, but that it is a reflection of what she knows: "Lesbianism is at the top of the agenda for my books because it's at the top of the agenda for my life. It would be bizarre not to write about it." In 2009, as she reflected on her reasons for writing Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith, Waters said she was searching for her own identity as a lesbian writer.
Among Waters' Victorian-set novels, depictions of sexual encounters are also, according to Palmer, the most vivid in Tipping the Velvet. A review in The Advocate
The Advocate
The Advocate is an American LGBT-interest magazine, printed monthly and available by subscription. The Advocate brand also includes a web site. Both magazine and web site have an editorial focus on news, politics, opinion, and arts and entertainment of interest to LGBT people...
calls the book "riotously sexy", and The Seattle Times suggests the scene where Nan shows Kitty how to open and eat an oyster is evocative of Tom Jones
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, often known simply as Tom Jones, is a comic novel by the English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding. First published on 28 February 1749, Tom Jones is among the earliest English prose works describable as a novel...
. This follows a marked difference in recently-written fiction by and for lesbians. Frank depictions of lesbian sexuality specifically penned by women have been quieted by censorship that equated lesbian sex with aberrant mental behaviour, or employed it as an erotic element controlled by, and for the benefit of, men. Lesbian literary scholar Bonnie Zimmerman writes, "Lesbians have been reticent and uncomfortable about sexual writing in part because we wish to reject the patriarchal stereotype of the lesbian as a voracious sexual vampire who spends all her time in bed. It is safer to be a lesbian if sex is kept in the closet or under the covers. We don’t wish to give the world another stick with which to beat us."
Gender
Nan not only experiences a series of misadventures and lesbian relationships, but also shifts from female to male at the same time, giving the reader an opportunity to view London society from multiple perspectives. Gender masquerade and reaction to it permeates the novel. According to Harriet Malinowitz, Waters uses the symbolism of clothing such as skirts, pants, stays, braces, bonnets, ties, and chemises "with the sort of metaphorical significance that Melville gives to whales". Stefania Ciocia declares that in all of 19th century English literature, the only type of character who was able to enjoy adventures native to the picaresque novel were males who acted as the observer or stroller, walking through the city from one district to the next. The single exception to this was Moll Flanders, a prostitute. Nancy Astley behaves as both, giving her the ability to offer her perceptions of London society as both a man and a woman..jpg)
Vesta Tilley
Matilda Alice Powles , was an English male impersonator. At the age of 11, she adopted the stage name Vesta Tilley becoming the most famous and well paid music hall male impersonator of her day...
capitalised on the fact that both men and women were able to laugh at common perceptions of femininity and masculinity.
Writing in 1998 about a period more than 100 years before, Waters employs a continuity between the past and present, particularly as it relates to an outsider's view of sexuality and gender. Diana bestows Nan with the finest gift she had ever received, an expensive watch that requires no winding. She has nowhere to be except at Diana's beck and call, and never leaves Diana's mansion without her. Emily Jeremiah uses this as an example of how Tipping the Velvet fits Judith Halberstam
Judith Halberstam
Judith Halberstam, also Jack Halberstam, is Professor of English and Director of The Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California. Halberstam was an Associate Professor in the Department of Literature at the University of California at San Diego before working at USC...
's declaration that homosexual historiographies "produce alternative temporalities". Gay and lesbian stories do not use the same rites of passage that most mainstream stories do, leaving aside the importance of birth, marriage, reproduction, and death. This transcendence of time is evident in the narration of the novel. It is Nan's first-person account of her own past, told many years later. When Nan divulges her past to Florence, Waters uses the first line of the novel to signify where she begins, cycling the story.
Even the novel's language bridges this divide. Waters often employs the word "queer" to describe the unusual or remarkable, instead of its post-1922 connotation
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
to refer to homosexuality. She also uses the term specifically to highlight what is unusual as it applies to gender, or Nan's own emotions toward Kitty. Nan's father uses the symbol of the oyster, what he calls a "real queer fish" that exhibits both male and female characteristics, and compares it to Kitty who sits before them in feminine attire though they have seen her on stage dressed as a man. The landlady of the boarding house where Kitty and Nan are staying appraises Nan's first male costume, and is troubled by the "queerness" of it because she looks too much like a man, instead of a woman pretending to be a man. Donna Allegra suggests that by using the contemporary term for prostitutes, "gay girls", Waters is winking at her readers.
Class
Starting as a working-class girl and experiencing music halls, prostitution, luxury, and a socialist struggle for utopia, Nan's journeys through the class system in Tipping the Velvet are as varied as her gender portrayals and love affairs. Aiobheann Sweeney in The Washington Post notes, "like Dickens, [Waters] digs around in the poorhouses, prisons and asylums to come up with characters who not only court and curtsy but dramatize the unfairness of poverty and gender disparity in their time".Paulina Palmer sees the reading material available in the various locations of Nan's settings as symbols of the vast class differences in Victorian London. Specifically, Diana keeps a trunk full of pornographic literature which she and Nan read to each other in between sexual encounters. She is an extremely wealthy resident of the London neighbourhood St John's Wood
St John's Wood
St John's Wood is a district of north-west London, England, in the City of Westminster, and at the north-west end of Regent's Park. It is approximately 2.5 miles north-west of Charing Cross. Once part of the Great Middlesex Forest, it was later owned by the Knights of St John of Jerusalem...
, and identifies as a Sapphist—a contemporary term for a lesbian. Nan uses the euphemism "tom" throughout the novel, particularly to refer to herself and other working class lesbians. Although "tom" was used as a Victorian reference to lesbianism, Waters admits it was probably not as prevalent as her characters suggest it was.
Waters includes a historical reference to the medical profession starting to acknowledge and identify female homosexuality in the 19th century when a friend of Diana's named Dickie reads aloud during a party from a medical text describing the histories of several acknowledged lesbians, including Dickie's own. One story discussed among the wealthy women at the party is about a young woman with a large clitoris
Clitoris
The clitoris is a sexual organ that is present only in female mammals. In humans, the visible button-like portion is located near the anterior junction of the labia minora, above the opening of the urethra and vagina. Unlike the penis, which is homologous to the clitoris, the clitoris does not...
, which they consider congenital in lower-class women. They attempt to prove their point with Diana's maid Zena, but Nan prevents this humiliation, which precipitates her final rift with Diana. Using Dickie's book to strike Nan across the face, Diana gives her a black eye and bloody cheek before throwing her out into the street with Zena. Nan goes to Florence's house, which is filled with socialist literature. Although Diana is a supporter of women's suffrage, she discourages Nan from reading such literature, confiscating any political material Nan picks up. In contrast, Nan feels hopelessly uninformed when Florence and her friends engage in heated political debates. She asks questions, but feels stupid about not knowing the answers. Florence introduces her to the writings of Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
, Eleanor Marx
Eleanor Marx
Jenny Julia Eleanor "Tussy" Marx , also known as Eleanor Marx Aveling, was the English-born youngest daughter of Karl Marx. She was herself a socialist activist, who sometimes worked as a literary translator...
, and Edward Carpenter
Edward Carpenter
Edward Carpenter was an English socialist poet, socialist philosopher, anthologist, and early gay activist....
, which they sexualise by using as an introduction to intimacy.
Critical reception
Tipping the Velvet was critically acclaimed upon its release and Waters' writing style highly praised. Harriet Malinowitz wrote that the story is an "utterly captivating, high octane narrative" and Mel Steel of The Independent wrote, "Could this be a new genre? The bawdy lesbian picaresque novel? Whatever it is, take it with you. It's gorgeous." Kirkus ReviewsKirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus . Kirkus serves the book and literary trade sector, including libraries, publishers, literary and film agents, film and TV producers and booksellers. Kirkus Reviews is published on the first and 15th of each month...
also praised it, writing "Waters' debut offers terrific entertainment: swiftly paced, crammed with colorful depictions of 1890s London and vividly sketched Dickensian supporting characters", comparing the depiction of Nancy's parents to the fishing community in David Copperfield
David Copperfield (novel)
The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery , commonly referred to as David Copperfield, is the eighth novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a novel in 1850. Like most of his works, it originally appeared in serial...
, and adding that it "pulsat[es] with highly charged (and explicitly presented) erotic heat". John Perry in The San Francisco Chronicle stated that it "has the qualities of an extravagantly upholstered armchair. Tricked out in gaudy fabric and yards of fringe, it offers a sensual experience that leaves the reader marveling at the author's craftsmanship, idiosyncrasy and sheer effort." Perry did acknowledge, however, that modern optimism was probably the impetus driving Waters' vision of a lesbian past.
Hadrian
Hadrian , was Roman Emperor from 117 to 138. He is best known for building Hadrian's Wall, which marked the northern limit of Roman Britain. In Rome, he re-built the Pantheon and constructed the Temple of Venus and Roma. In addition to being emperor, Hadrian was a humanist and was philhellene in...
's lover, the page Antinous
Antinous
Antinoüs or Antinoös was a beautiful Bithynian youth and the favourite of the Roman emperor Hadrian...
who was drowned in the Nile, for a masquerade benefiting Diana's friends in a hedonistic bacchanalia that ends violently with Nan cast out of the house into the cold, highlighting it as a passage of "startling power". Although Seymour was disappointed with the ending, she wrote, "If lesbian fiction is to reach a wider readership—as much, though far from all, of it deserves to do—Waters is just the person to carry the banner."
Several reviewers compared Tipping the Velvet to Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson OBE is a British novelist.-Early years:Winterson was born in Manchester and adopted on 21 January 1960. She was raised in Accrington, Lancashire, by Constance and John William Winterson...
's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a novel by Jeanette Winterson published in 1985, which she subsequently adapted into a BBC television drama...
for a similar story of a woman's sexual awakening. Waters credits Winterson as an influence in lesbian writing, but states that the books are quite different and her writing is not like Winterson's at all. Waters suggests that reviewers have bracketed them together because Winterson was the only other lesbian author they could recall.
The popularity of her first novel cast a standard for Affinity to follow, which Waters consciously made darker, set in a women's prison with a character who connects with spirits of the dead. Waters found it daunting to follow the success of Tipping the Velvet and reviewers marked the differences in the main characters: where Nan adventurously seeks out and states her desires, Margaret in Affinity is compelled by desire, but internally struggles with it.
Tipping the Velvet won the Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Awards are awarded yearly by the US-based Lambda Literary Foundation to published works which celebrate or explore LGBT themes. Categories include Humor, Romance and Biography. To qualify, a book must have been published in the United States in the year current to the award...
for lesbian fiction in 2000, and the Betty Trask Award
Betty Trask Award
The Betty Trask Prize and Awards are for first novels written by authors under the age of 35, who reside in a current or former Commonwealth nation. The awards were established in 1984 by the Society of Authors, at the bequest of the late Betty Trask, a reclusive author of over thirty romance novels...
, given to Commonwealth citizens who have produced their first novel before reaching the age of 35. The Library Journal chose it as one of their Best Books of the Year for 1999, and the New York Times included it on its list of Notable Books of the Year.
Adaptations
Tipping the Velvet was adapted into a BBC television dramaBBC television drama
BBC television dramas have been produced and broadcast since even before the public service company had an officially established television broadcasting network in the United Kingdom...
serial
Serial (radio and television)
Serials are series of television programs and radio programs that rely on a continuing plot that unfolds in a sequential episode by episode fashion. Serials typically follow main story arcs that span entire television seasons or even the full run of the series, which distinguishes them from...
of the same name
Tipping the Velvet (TV serial)
Tipping the Velvet is a 2002 BBC television drama serial based on the bestselling debut novel by Sarah Waters of the same name. It originally screened in three episodes on BBC Two and was produced for the BBC by the independent production company Sally Head Productions...
, originally screened in three episodes on BBC Two
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
in 2002. It was produced for the BBC by the independent production company Sally Head Productions
Sally Head Productions
Sally Head is a British television producer. She began as a television script editor, before working as a producer, mainly for the BBC. Her credits as producer include First Born and The Life and Loves of a She-Devil and she was executive producer of the first four Prime Suspect television films...
, and starred Rachael Stirling
Rachael Stirling
Rachael Atlanta Stirling is an English stage, film and television actress. She is a two-time Olivier nominee for her stage work, but is best known for her performance as Nancy Astley in the BBC drama Tipping the Velvet.-Personal life:...
as Nan, Keeley Hawes
Keeley Hawes
Keeley Hawes is an English actress and model, known for many television roles. She is best known for her roles as Zoe Reynolds in Spooks and Alex Drake in Ashes to Ashes and Lady Agnes in the remake of Upstairs, Downstairs...
as Kitty, Anna Chancellor
Anna Chancellor
-Family:Chancellor was born in Richmond, London, England, the daughter of the Hon. Mary Alice Jolliffe and John Paget Chancellor. Through her mother's mother, Lady Perdita Rose Mary Asquith, Chancellor is the great-granddaughter of The Hon. Raymond Aquith and the great-great-granddaughter of Prime...
as Diana, and Jodhi May
Jodhi May
Jodhi May is an English actress.-Early life:Born in Camden Town, London, May first acted at the age of 12 in 1988's A World Apart. The role earned her a Best Actress award at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival, shared with her co-stars Barbara Hershey and Linda Mvusi...
as Florence. The BBC had previously aired a sanitized version of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (TV serial)
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit was a critically acclaimed 1990 BBC television drama, directed by Beeban Kidron. Jeanette Winterson wrote the screenplay, adapting her semi-autobiographical first novel of the same name . The BBC produced and screened three episodes, running to a total of 2 hours and...
in 1990 and some other scenes in dramas to follow, but none had been so explicit. Sally Head Productions defended the decision to air the entire program uncut. Waters was quite surprised that the BBC chose to produce and broadcast a television adaptation that faithfully followed the relish and detail of sexual escapades in the book. Stirling thoroughly enjoyed the role, despite her avowed heterosexuality: "To counteract any hard-core sex within it, there's a huge sense of humor and a huge sense of fun and frivolity and joy of life. It was so utterly believable that you never for a moment thought, Fuck, there's no reason why I'm standing here naked."
Screenwriter Andrew Davies said he was attracted to the story because it featured a girl transitioning into womanhood and it included his interests in Victorian erotica; he compared it to Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice is a novel by Jane Austen, first published in 1813. The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England...
—for which he wrote the BBC screenplay—"with dirty bits". Both Waters and Davies were concerned about the use of dildo
Dildo
A dildo is a sex toy, often explicitly phallic in appearance, intended for bodily penetration during masturbation or sex with partners.- Description and uses :...
s in scenes with Diana, but the BBC allowed it. When news releases told of the BBC featuring swearing and sex toys, the Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
reported that viewers began to protest. BBC representatives downplayed the gratuitousness of the story, comparing it to Moll Flanders
Moll Flanders
The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders is a novel written by Daniel Defoe in 1722, after his work as a journalist and pamphleteer. By 1722, Defoe had become a recognised novelist, with the success of Robinson Crusoe in 1719...
.
Waters especially appreciated the way Davies interpreted Kitty's ambivalence about being in love with Nan. He wrote the line for her, "I hate the way you make me feel", which according to Waters crystallizes Kitty's complicated emotions well. The music in the adaptation was written for the film. Waters wrote song titles but not lyrics in the music references in the novel. For one song, during Kitty and Nan's first performance in the adaptation, Davies wrote a composition that had Kitty show Nan—dressed and performing as brothers—how to pick up girls in the park. It involved Kitty teaching Nan how to kiss, which they do onstage in front of audiences who are watching women, dressed as men, who are in reality having an affair with each other beyond the view of the audience. Waters wrote a similar description as Nan compares their act to their relationship; their sexual encounters to their performance onstage, noting the irony that Kitty insisted on absolute secrecy yet there they performed in front of thousands: "You are too slow—you go too fast—not there, but here—that's good—that's better! It was as if we walked before the crimson curtain, lay down upon the boards and kissed and fondled—and were clapped, and cheered, and paid for it!"
A persistent rumour claims a film adaptation of Tipping the Velvet will be directed by Sofia Coppola
Sofia Coppola
Sofia Carmina Coppola is an American screenwriter, film director, actress, and producer.In 2003 she received the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Lost in Translation, and became the third woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Directing...
, starring Beyoncé Knowles
Beyoncé Knowles
Beyoncé Giselle Knowles , often known simply as Beyoncé, is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, she enrolled in various performing arts schools and was first exposed to singing and dancing competitions as a child...
and Eva Longoria
Eva Longoria
Eva Jacqueline Longoria is an American actress, best known for portraying Gabrielle Solis on the ABC television series Desperate Housewives...
. However, Longoria insists that everything about the rumour is false, right down to quotes cited to her and Knowles. Knowles also wonders where the false quotes and story originate from.
In 2009, UK playwright Amanda Whittington
Amanda Whittington
Amanda Whittington is a playwright and was born in Nottingham in 1968. After leaving school, she worked as a freelance journalist for a variety of publications and was a columnist for the Nottingham Evening Post....
wrote a stage adaptation of Tipping the Velvet. It was showcased by Guildhall School of Music and Drama at The Bridewell Theatre, London, in October 2009. Directed by Katharine Rogers
Katharine Rogers
Katharine Rogers is a British television actress.Rogers was born in London. Her first major television role was that of firefighter Josie Ingham in two series of London's Burning. She has since appeared in numerous well-known British television shows, including EastEnders, Doctors, Casualty,...
, the production featured original music hall songs and was praised for its authentic interpretation of the novel.
Citations
- References in Tipping the Velvet correspond to: Waters, Sarah (1 May 2000). Tipping the Velvet: A Novel: New York City: Riverhead Trade. ISBN 1573227889
External links
- Novel at Sarah Water's official website
- Tipping the Velvet at BBC Online