“It is unafraid to be corny, unafraid to be purple,”

January 20, 2018 12:53 PM

‘It was an electric time to be gay’: Sarah Waters on 20 years of Tipping the Velvet [The Guardian] “What’s it about?” people sometimes asked me, when they had heard I’d written a novel – and I always had to brace myself, slightly, to answer. There was the awkwardness of explaining the rather risque title. There was the fact that I outed myself the moment I began to reveal the plot. And then there was the plot itself – because, oh dear, how lurid it sounded, how improbable, above all how niche, the tale of a Victorian oyster girl who loses her heart to a male impersonator, becomes her partner in bed and on the music hall stage, and then, cruelly abandoned, has a spell as a cross-dressed Piccadilly prostitute and the sexual plaything of a rich older woman before finding true love and redemption with an East End socialist.”
posted by Fizz (18 comments total)

KITTY BUTLER!! *screams, faints*
posted by loquacious at 1:12 PM on January 20, 2018 [3 favorites]

oh my god, I love that book, from the breathless innocence of the opening to the sturdy trade-unionist love of the ending

it is, however, in its linearity a useless example for all future Sarah Waters books with their fractured approach to time
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 1:22 PM on January 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

Fingersmith knocked me over, and I keep being lured by TtV, but I haven’t quite got there yet. This probably should be the impetuous....
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:25 PM on January 20, 2018

be lured, it's so worth it!

the author can, of course, only see the flaws in her first novel, but ignore her and enjoy a silly frothiness that she has never toyed with again.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 1:28 PM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

OMG a new (to me) author. I'm in!
posted by allthinky at 2:27 PM on January 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

I find myself wondering now: what’s going on for Kitty? Where did she come from? What makes her tick? If I were ever to write a sequel to the novel, hers is the story I might tell.

I would read the hell out of this.
posted by rtha at 2:43 PM on January 20, 2018 [5 favorites]

I fucking love Sarah Waters. I will read all the gothic lesbian romances. All of them.

For the Fingersmith fans out there, please be aware that it has a Korean film version called the Handmaiden, and it is a wild ride.
posted by soren_lorensen at 3:14 PM on January 20, 2018 [4 favorites]

See also: The Diaries of Anne Lister.

I liked Fingersmith, but Tipping The Velvet is way more fun.

If anyone else has any more recommendations like these, I want all of them, but there's just not a whole lot of Victorian/gothic lesbian drama and romance stuff out there, and like everything else most of it is awful or at least pretty bad. Or just not as good as those three.
posted by loquacious at 3:23 PM on January 20, 2018 [3 favorites]

Ohhhh man, Keeley Hawes did such a good job making Kitty Butler unsalvageable in the movie. But her story would not be without a certain interest. I love that they had that one girl from the Daniel Deronda miniseries as the socialist, I guess she is just typecast as the angel in every role.

Tipping the Velvet is more fun, but Fingersmith has a better plot I feel like. Or just a plot.

Can definitely endorse The Handmaiden. Although, as it is made by the guy who did Old Boy, squeamish people should skip the last 15 minutes!
posted by karmachameleon at 5:04 PM on January 20, 2018

I find myself wondering now: what’s going on for Kitty? Where did she come from? What makes her tick? If I were ever to write a sequel to the novel, hers is the story I might tell.

I would read it!!! Seriously, I’ve been so good about not buying books, but I would buy The Kitty Story in hardcover.
posted by betweenthebars at 6:40 PM on January 20, 2018

Honestly the older woman (forgetting her name) was my favorite of the lovers, character wise. That was just such a weird house. That'd make a great spinoff too.
posted by karmachameleon at 7:48 PM on January 20, 2018

If anyone else has any more recommendations like these, I want all of them

Fanny by Eric Jong (frothy picaresque narrative, not at all like Fear of Flying) isn't specifically lesbian - I think the main character is bi. It's been a long time since I read it but I remember it in the same vein as TTV.
posted by bunderful at 9:15 PM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

Her writing is so haunting, Tipping the Velvet, for me, was one of those books I put down, sighed heavily, then picked back up again and started anew. There's so many distinct parts and such a sense of foreboding the whole time, which is part of why I had to reread it again, knowing how it ended and not being so incredibly stressed out.

The first Sarah Waters book I read was The Paying Guests and I looooooved it but it is a BUMMER. I often hesitate to read popular books about queer women because it's save to assume they either get killed, raped, or never find love, etc so they are usually depressing (looking at you The Price of Salt). So it took me a long time to pick up Tipping the Velvet, knowing it was such a classic and not knowing much about it. But even if Waters' work is moody it's really gorgeous and fun to read, and not at all "baggy and overwritten" as the author views it as now!

I can't remember the woman's name, either, karmachameleon but she was one of my favorite lovers, too, so terrifying and powerful. (Not to be uncouth, but if I had read that book as a teenager desperate for any smutty material I would have spent a lot of time with my hand down my pants rereading those scenes.)
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 11:22 PM on January 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

Both BBC adaptations, Fingersmith and Tipping the Velvet, are available at youtube, btw.
posted by ojemine at 4:52 AM on January 21, 2018

Diana Lethaby was the rich woman, played in the miniseries by the glorious Anna Chancellor.

God, I loved - STILL love - this book. Always makes a top ten list of my favorites without fail. Only “Fingersmith” has come close to measuring up, for me. I found “The Paying Guests” a bit plodding (would love a story about the protagonist’s ex-lover and her new girlfriend though, they were interesting) and “Affinity” while gorgeously written, always makes me sad. I’ve got to get around to reading her others.

TtV is just so lush and enchanting, glitter and greasepaint and grief and giddiness, it’s such an great ride, and literarily I’ve always liked the way Nancy’s sex scenes evolved and changed depending on the stage of her life she was in. It was a striking narrative device to me.
posted by angeline at 6:28 AM on January 21, 2018 [2 favorites]

I've read and enjoyed Fingersmith and The Paying Guests, but I think this article (and all these comments) convinced me I need to move Tipping the Velvet to the top of my TBR pile. Thanks!
posted by mixedmetaphors at 10:18 AM on January 21, 2018

The thorn bushes have roses me too with the dread! Affinity is the same way! I was like come on, lady, become a ghost or vampire or whatever horrible thing is about to happen! It's so obvious something is about to happen just do it...

That being said, I do think Tipping the Velvet is way different in tone. Like you I have Well of Loneliness and other Woman-on-woman Love Classics at home. Though those books are Important, they are without question huge bummers. It is way nice that in Tipping the Velvet the heroine has a good time. I feel like Fingersmith is halfway in between in that they have a bad time, but at certain points they do have a good time.
posted by karmachameleon at 10:36 AM on January 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

For the Fingersmith fans out there, please be aware that it has a Korean film version called the Handmaiden,

IMO the film is actually superior to the book.
posted by kenko at 4:51 PM on January 21, 2018