Finding love in a hopeless place

KOCHI: The lazy life of eighteen-year-old Nancy Astley, a fishmonger working at her family’s oyster parlour in a coastal town in England, is rattled after she watched male impersonater Kitty Butler in a theatre production. A prolific begins there, and so does the lush plot of Sarah Water’s maiden novel, Tipping the Velvet. Set in Victorian-era London, filled with theatres, music halls and political demonstrations, this debut novel bravely explores the life of a Victorian woman and the queer awakening.

Waters looked for her readers among the 90’s lesbian community. The young author researched the oyster trade, music halls, and spent countless hours in the library reading up on the exciting bits of Victorian London. The book was embraced by readers from all walks of life, surprising Victoria herself. 

A smitten Nancy attends every show of her at the Canterbury Palace so Kitty notices her. She takes up a role as the artist’s dresser and companion, working in theatre production. As the pages turn, their sexual tension becomes palpable and they become partners in a new stage act that takes the viewers by storm — ‘two lovely girls in trousers, instead of one. But, the story doesn’t end there. After a devastating split, Nancy explores the ‘London scene’ so to say. Struggling for survival, with a series of erotic exploration, and being the kept woman of a wealthy widow, some hustle works as a male crossdresser, Nancy, at last, finds her love.

Waters artfully creates each scenario, a raw character, whose excitement of experiencing London transmits to the readers and her fall from the brief success will move everyone. The book is filled with music, lively pub scenes, gay girls filled with deceit, many betrayals. 

After the success of Tipping the Velvet, a story that drew many inspirations from the author’s own life, Waters went on to write Affinity and Fingersmith. Both of the works weaves a tale around lesbian lovers and domains of desire. Fingersmith travelled far to South Korea and became the much-celebrated movie The Handmaiden.