Tipping the Velvet

I remember Tipping the Velvet when it was on TV years ago.  I must have only been about twelve or thirteen and decided to watch it on the telly recently installed in my bedroom because some of it is set in Whitstable.  My dad worked there at the time and he had told me all about the filming.  Now, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I, at twelve or thirteen, was far too young to be watching stuff like that- even now the only bit that I really remember involves a pretty painful looking leather strap-on.  In retrospect, that’s probably why it took me so long to convince my parents to let me have a TV in my room at all.  It’s a fantastic book, though.  Sarah Waters is brilliant at the good story simply told type book.  And, I assume, it’s well researched and factually accurate.  I don’t know enough about Victorian sub-culture to claim otherwise. 

For those not familiar with it, Tipping the Velvet is the story of Nancy Astley, an oyster girl who falls in love with the musical halls and one of their rising stars, Kitty Butler.  Leaving behind the Kentish coast for the capital, she becomes involved in Kitty’s male impersonation act as the pair fall into a relationship.  The novel follows Nancy as her various relationships fall apart and through her time as a rent boy and tart for the wealthy Diana.  Eventually, she ends up growing up and settling down, leaving behind childhood romances for actual proper love.  In all these respects, it’s pretty much just a coming of age story.  One with the snazzy backdrop of Victorian London and the counter culture of lesbianism in the late 1800s.

I think one of my favourite things about the book is the fact that it isn’t just about lesbianism.  Throughout, Waters plays with gender in a terrific way.  Despite her secure sexuality, Nancy is pretty gender fluid.  When she first dresses as a man for her and Kitty’s act, she is deemed “too masculine” and she uses this later to pass as a man during her rent boy days.  As this evolves she becomes more comfortable in trousers than in skirts, she is Diana’s “boy.”  Nancy is comfortable adopting male characteristics and uses this to emphasis her natural androgyny.  But she manages to do this, while retaining her female sexual identity.  It’s quite fascinating.

I was less impressed, however, by the end of the book.  It’s horribly contrived.  Nancy manages to run into literally every woman she’s ever slept with in the space of about an hour in the same place.  It’s unrealistic in the extreme and just unbelievable.  It’s such a shame because it detracts from the book as a whole.  It’s impossible to stay with the narrative when exes are popping up from every nook and cranny which means the final conclusion to the book ends up feeling like a cheap rom-com as opposed to the well-crafted historical drama of the rest of the thing.  Added to this, Diana returns because of her involvement in the ridiculously named Suffrage magazine, Shafts.  Despite the fact that it sounds like low grade porn, this was a real magazine and it actually sounds like it was quite a good one for the time.

So, there we go: Tipping the Velvet.  I liked it.  It’s pretty much what you’d expect from a coming of age drama set in a time when the sexuality it is exploring is forbidden.  It’s far more simple plotwise than the only other of Waters’ books I’ve read, The Fingersmith, but this is necessary.  Nancy’s not so book-smart, and I don’t think she’d cope well with too many twists or turns in her life.  She has simple motivations- love, a roof over her head- and a warm bed.  Tipping the Velvet is just the story of how she get these things.

Next time is Salman Rushdie’s Shame.