Tipping the Velvet: A Novel by Sarah Waters
|
List Price: Our Price: $6.99 You Save: $8.01 (53%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $4.95 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Tipping the Velvet: A Novel
Book Review: Perseverance for an Oyster-girl
Summary: 4 Stars
One can only imagine living in Victorian London with its fa?ade of fastidiousness and propriety lying on top of realities of grime, poverty, and decadence, let alone coping with the taboos of homosexuality. The author gives us a glimpse into this world through the voice of Nancy Astley, a simple and na?ve oyster-girl of eighteen living in a seaside village with a completely predictable life, who has her life completely transformed by her unexpected and total fixation on the songstress and male-dresser Kitty Butler performing at the local music hall. Nancy experiences a great deal of anxiety over her sudden passion for a female, yet also exhilaration, as she becomes Kitty's dresser, sweetheart, and then lover, finally moving to London with Kitty and her agent, Walter.
The stresses associated with sexual labeling soon result in Kitty casting Nancy, now called Nan King as part of the stage act, aside over fears of being labeled a "tom," or lesbian. Nancy, no more than a na?ve and infatuated show girl, is devastated with this turn of events and basically hibernates for months. The book follows Nancy as she carves out a meager existence as a male impersonator for "rent" in the back alleys of London; temporarily moves to the top of the economic order by becoming, in essence, the sexual slave of an aristocratic, sybaritic older woman; and then forms an unlikely attachment with a female labor organizer.
The book best captures the reader when the passion and resilience of Nancy comes into clear view, especially in her awakening after first encountering Kitty. However, the multiple changes in living locations and conditions and the finding of new partners start to become wearisome. One suspects that Nancy was unrealistically lucky. In her dire circumstances she never experiences hunger, sickness, venereal disease, or street violence - all of which were highly likely in those times.
No doubt that eroticism - mild as it is - and lesbian relationships are central to this book, but the growth, education, self-understanding, and the sorting out of options for Nancy are the bigger story.
Book Review: Odd Mixture of Literary Fiction and Erotica
Summary: 2 Stars
"Tipping the Velvet" is in some ways a very traditional novel. In line with its Victorian setting, its structure is close to that of the nineteenth-century "Bildungsroman", a German term that literally means "novel of education" but which is perhaps better translated as "novel of character-formation". A young woman travels to London from the small provincial town where she has spent her childhood, in search of fame and fortune. After a series of adventures and highs and lows of fortune she eventually finds happiness with her true love. In a nod to Dickens the heroine, Nancy Astley, comes from the North Kent region which was the setting for several of his novels, most famously "Great Expectations". Nancy's home town, Whitstable, is situated roughly half-way between Chatham, where Dickens spent much of his own boyhood, and Broadstairs, where he owned a home as an adult.
In another sense, of course, the novel is shockingly modern. It deals with a subject- London's gay and lesbian underworld- which was forbidden to mainstream nineteenth-century novelists and which could only have been dealt with through the medium of clandestine erotica. The teenage Nancy is fascinated with the world of the theatre and falls in love with Kitty Butler, a star of the music hall. Kitty takes Nancy under her wing, first as her partner in her stage-act and later as her lover. After Kitty deserts her to marry a man, Nancy goes through a number of reverses of fortune, including impersonating a boy in order to make a living as a male prostitute, being the plaything of Diana, a wealthy lesbian, and finally finding happiness with Florence, an idealistic East End Socialist.
The book is divided into three parts, the first dealing with Nancy's life with Kitty, the second with her life on the streets and with Diana and the third with her life with Florence. Of the three, the first was by far the best; the chapters dealing with Nancy's realisation of her sexual orientation and of her growing feelings for Kitty were sensitively handled and well done. Unfortunately, the plot goes rapidly downhill after Nancy and Kitty split up. Nancy's decision to go on the streets as a "male" prostitute is never made remotely plausible. Even if she has recently been crossed in love, this would be a bizarre thing for any woman to do, and even more so for a lesbian who dislikes the idea of sexual relations with men. There were plenty of alternatives open to Nancy; she could have tried to continue her stage career as a solo performer or, if this was unattractive to her, returned to her family in Whitstable. The chapters dealing with the time that Nancy spends as the lover of the cruel and capricious Diana struck me as being much closer to sado-masochistic fantasy than to serious historical writing Diana herself is too much of a caricature to be credible, partly strict dominatrix and partly a female version of the wicked Squire Jasper from a melodrama.
The book's final part, dealing with Nancy's relationship with Florence, was rather dull and made for a disappointing ending. The author seems to be sympathetic to the political Left, and obviously regarded Florence as the book's true heroine. Unfortunately, Ms Waters does not have the knack of making morally good characters interesting; Florence is so impossibly noble and saintly as to be completely colourless. Her equally idealised brother Ralph is also equally colourless, as well as a bit sexless; the author's ideal man seems to be one who is nominally heterosexual but who has little interest in or success with women. Florence and Ralph are too good to be true whereas Diana is too bad to be true.
One feature of the book is the frequent wordplay, punning on the differences between modern and Victorian sexual slang. The title is an archaic term for a sex act, and we learn that a lesbian in the 1890s was a "tom" whereas an effeminate gay man was a "mary-anne". I doubt if I have ever read a novel that makes such frequent use of the word "gay", not in its modern sense which did not exist before the mid twentieth century, but in both its original sense of "cheerful" or "colourful" and in its nineteenth-century slang sense of "engaged in prostitution". Nancy is made a heavy smoker, so as to allow Ms Waters maximum opportunity to use the word "fag". Even the heroine's Christian name was presumably chosen because of its association with homosexual men. This wordplay always seemed rather too knowing and quickly became tiresome.
This, and another of Sarah Waters's novels, have recently been serialised on British television; presumably the BBC thought that they would be popular with two separate audiences, the "lad's mag" brigade hoping to see two actresses in bed together and the lovers of historical drama who might accept them as an acceptable substitute for Dickens or Jane Austen. The novel also seems to have been written for this dual audience, coming across as an odd mixture of highbrow, literary historical fiction and lowbrow pornography. (There are numerous erotic passages, far more than there would be in most mainstream novels dealing with heterosexual love). It succeeds more on the second level than on the first.
Book Review: A great introduction to Waters' style
Summary: 4 Stars
"Tipping the Velvet" recalls the adventures of Nancy, the girl from the seaside town, whose family owned a seafood restaurant in the 19th century England. Nancy, "the oyster girl", as she describes herself, changes her life after one summer night in the theatre, where she sees the girl performing an act dressed as a man. She falls in love with Kitty, the actress, befriends her, becomes her lover, gets the position as her maid and eventually moves to London to transform herself completely. In a relatively short time she manages to experience the whole spectrum of gender-bending world in Victorian London, fighting to find her identity and get accepted, and ultimately getting to understand the struggle of women for independence.
The novel is a great debut. It manages to grasp the nuances of that time and places accurately, tackles the problems with great precision and evokes emotions. My problem was that I have read it after having read "Fingersmith", which is much better, so I recommend to anyone wanting to try something written by Sarah Waters to go chronologically, not to be disappointed. It is not a fault of this novel, however, that the author developed, so four stars are honestly deserved.
Book Review: Entertaining period novel!!
Summary: 4 Stars
I enjoy Sarah Waters writing and in particular the window into the lesbian community or at least her fantasy of the lesbian community of the late 1800's. I loved the story of the oyster girl who becomes a dance hall entertainer and if I had my druthers I would have more of that and less of the relationship ups and downs. All in all a good read!!Book Review: A "lesbian" novel for straight readers
Summary: 2 Stars
I read Tipping The Velvet because of the rave reviews it has gotten, however, I was very disappointed. I expected a well crafted story about lesbians, lesbian relationships and lesbianism in Victorian England. I got none of the above. Nancy, the "heroine" of the story behaves in fantastically bizarre ways with no motivation to do so. One reviewer here said that Sarah Waters may be a man writing under a female pseudonym- I can agree with that in theory. The writing certainly sounds that way. For instance, every lesbian in this book is stereotypical- right out of a book of cliche. You have your mannish tom-boy, your pretty lipstick lesbian, your militant feminist political activist, your femme fatale in designer clothing and your menage of granola lezzies. Please. Can't a lesbian woman be...well, normal? Does she have to wear trousers in Victorian England and cut her hair short? Does she HAVE to be a sex crazed femme with a penchant for sadism? These sound like men's fantasy versions of lesbians, not the real thing.
Nancy goes from one awful situation to the next, and instead of going home to her loving family, she CHOOSES to turn tricks as a transvestite hooker in the dark alleys of London, which, I might add, at that time would have been raging with syphalis. But she decides to turn tricks, male of course, dressed as a boy, in the street. What? For fun?
While I think the author was trying to create a fiercely independant lesbian woman who knows what she wants in life, the effect is that she has created a callous, careless, trollop who is dim witted at best and has no clue what she wants. This character seems to think that dressing in boy's clothes and having short hair is what it is to be lesbian.
The relationship between Nancy and Florence makes no sense. Just because there is another lesbian under your roof, does not mean you must be together. I doubt that Victorian lesbians were quite that desperate as to be with another woman whom they have nothing in common with and whose past they morally object to, just because the other woman is a lesbian too.
As for the "erotic" scenes, they are poorly written and thinly veiled male-catered fantasies. It is also interesting (in a bad way) that the scenes involving sex with men are graphic, and the scenes involving women, are not as graphic.
Overall, I think that if you are a straight person, you might like this book. If you are a lesbian, you might laugh.
I gave the book two stars because it has an interesting backdrop.