Tipping the Velvet

“My complexion, to be sure, was perfectly smooth and clear, and my teeth were very white; but these—in our family, at least—were counted unremarkable, for since we all passed our days in a miasma of simmering brine, we were all as bleached and blemishless as cuttlefish.”

Comparing her appearance to that of her sister and the other conventionally attractive women she sees on stage, Nan considers her mother’s encouragement to go on the stage. Her white skin, to Nan, doesn’t demonstrate this beauty, but the labor she does at the oyster parlor.

“And how would it be to live at Kitty’s side, brim-full of a love so quick, and yet so secret, it made me shake?”

After Kitty visits Nan and her family for an oyster supper, she asks Nan to join her as her dresser in London. As Nan considers her future, she asks herself rhetorically how she would feel, with a love so lively and, contradictorily, so secret. This mixture of pleasure and pain reflects her own pleasure at leaving for London and pain, as she will have to leave her family behind. The secretiveness of the relationship foreshadows Kitty’s eventual actions and betrayal.

“‘We are at the heart of London,’ said Mr Bliss as she did so, ‘the very heart of it.’”

As Nan and Kitty arrive in London, Walter Bliss shows them the theater district near Trafalgar Square, calling it the heart of London. Walter personifies the city and imagines performance as its literal heart, highlighting the importance of performance within the text.

“Below us, in the water, there were great slivers of ice six feet across, drifting and gently turning in the winding currents, like basking seals.”

Nan and Kitty watch the Thames River following the party, after they hear about Gully Sutherland’s death by suicide. The river, partly frozen yet filled with “basking seals,” represents the mixture of coldness and warmth that characterizes this night. Saddened by his death, Kitty later has sex with Nan, embracing both the pain of death and the joy of sex and intimacy.

“I was her foil, her echo; I was the shadow which, in all her brilliance, she cast across the stage. But like a shadow, I lent her the edge, the depth, the crucial definition that she had lacked before.”

Nan uses metaphor and vivid language to stress how she highlights and improves Kitty’s image and stage presence. While Kitty disparages Nan for being too convincing, Nan’s convincing performance makes Kitty remarkable, suggesting that Nan’s performance of gender is more authentic than Kitty’s.

“But she said she did not mind, and I understood she didn’t wish to talk of something that was painful to her. I knew it must be very hard for her, to think that Walker had guessed her secret, and hated it.”

Thinking about Walter’s distance with Nan, she imagines that her love affair with Kitty makes him uncomfortable. Nan doesn’t realize that Kitty’s silence and Walter’s distance result from their affair. The secretiveness around their relationship enables this misconception on Nan’s part, highlighting how such a secretive relationship is doomed to fail.

“She let me kiss her, then moved her head so that our cheeks touched.; then she put her arms about my waist and held me to her rather fiercely—quite as if she loved me more than anything.”

Nan prepares to leave for Whitstable to visit her family, and, unbeknownst to Nan, Kitty and Walter plan to meet while she’s in Whitstable. Reflective of Kitty’s own inner conflict, she hugs Nan. Kitty loves stardom, however, more than she loves Nan.

“London absorbed me; and for a little while I ceased, entirely, to think.”

Nan escapes her relationship with Kitty and vanishes in the crowds of London. The city absorbs her and her identity as she becomes part of the crowd. Giving London agency, Nan personifies the city as a living being, which she joins.

“I was indifferent to everything except my own grief—and this I indulged with a strange and horrible passion.”

Echoing Kitty’s own overwhelming grief, the night they discover news of Gully’s death and anticipating Florence’s overwhelming grief after Lillian’s death, Nan and her grief bridge the beginning of her search for love and its conclusion with Florence. Grief over lost romantic connections with women structures Nan’s life and the lives of women around her.

“There was a darkness, a heaviness, a stillness at the centre of me, that I had not known was growing there, but which gave me, now, a kind of comfort.”

Foreshadowing her relationship with Diana, Nan’s heaviness represents her lack of love and feeling necessary to survive Diana’s cruelty and Kitty’s betrayal.

“I was bleached of hope and colour, like the wallpaper.”

As Nan rents a room at a hotel frequented by sex workers with rooms that rent by the hour, she notices the bland and depressing setting. Connecting herself to this room, she conveys that, like the room, she has lost her character and identity. Calling herself a “renter,” she becomes available for hours like the room. Nan’s self-dehumanization reflects her precarious economic status.

“The djinn was out of the bottle at last; and I had settled on pleasure.”

When Diana meets Nan, Diana relates a Persian story from childhood about a djinn who offers a peasant either a short, pleasure-filled life or a long, ordinary one. The peasant, like Nan chooses a brief life, filled with pleasure, which foreshadows that Nan’s time with Diana will be short and filled with pleasure. Diana, like the djinn, offers temporary pleasure.

“She had created me anew: the old dark days before were nothing to her.”

Nan describes her first encounters with Diana, claiming that Diana’s luxurious life erases the sadness and isolation Nan felt before. Diana doesn’t judge Nan for her choices as a sex worker or for the things Nan did to survive, unlike Kitty, whose judgment led to her own shame.

“There was a flintiness to her tone that was more frightening, more shaming, than her sadness had been; but I found myself, again, vaguely piqued.”

Nan moves in with Diana, giving up her freedom for the comfort and opulence of Diana’s household. As she moves out of Ms. Milne’s house, Nan finds herself interested in the harshness of Ms. Milne’s tone. Reflecting her attraction to Diana, who responds with anger and cruelty, Nan finds her hardened heart pulled to those like Diana.

“At that, there came a very queer and kind expression to her face; and she nodded, and swallowed—and I saw I had convinced her.”

In convincing Florence to let her stay the night, Nan lies and tells her that a gentleman abused her. Nan describes Florence’s facial expression as queer, meaning odd—Nan didn’t have sympathy or kindness from Diana. There’s a double meaning to queer in this description, as Florence, like Nan, identifies as a lesbian.

“After she had gone my leaden limbs seemed all at once, and quite miraculously, to lighten.”

After spending a night at Florence’s home, Nan stays and rests while Florence goes to work. Nan uses figurative language to describe her brief respite from her precarious economic position.

“There were two rugs upon the floor, one ancient and one threadbare, the other new and vivid and coarse and rather rustic: the kind of rug I thought a shepherd, suffering some disease of the eyes, might weave to while away the endless gloomy hours of a Hebridean winter.”

As Nan cleans Florence’s house, she notices two rugs, one old and the other new, which Nan later learns was made by Lillian. Calling it rustic, Nan uses descriptive language to contrast it with the old worn rug, anticipating her new life at Florence’s house. Like the old clothes she will soon trade in, the old rug symbolizes the old life and poverty that Nan will soon leave behind, while Lillian’s rug is an authentic expression of love between her and Florence.

“I was ready to hang up my crook and return to my palace. But the palace doors, of course, had been closed on me.”

Recalling the costume worn by one of Diana’s friends, Nan misses the luxury she has left behind. This shepherd costume symbolizes Nan’s desire to give up the work of cleaning Florence’s house for Diana’s leisurely existence. This costume is revealed to be Nan’s authentic self, as she was only ever allowed in Diana’s palace on Diana’s terms.

“She had given me work, as a lady might give work to a shiftless girl, come straight from prison.”

Nan describes the distant relationship between Florence and herself, as she recounts how Florence busies herself with her social work. Highlighting the power imbalance between Florence and Nan, Nan compares herself to a woman without work, newly released from prison. Diana’s opulent manor is likened to prison in this analogy.

“And when I looked at Florence again, her eyes were turned away from me and seemed rather dark. I thought then that, after all, she would never really want a girl like me in paradise with her, not even to stew the oysters for her tea; and the thought, just then, seemed a dreary one.”

During oyster season, Nan frequently cooks oyster dinners for Florence and Ralph. As Florence looks away, thinking about Lillian and losing herself in grief, Nan assumes that Florence doesn’t and can’t love her. Oysters represent home and comfort for Nan, and Florence’s love for the oysters symbolizes Nan’s hope that they might be a family.

“I certainly never beat the dirt from Lillian’s gaudy rug again—but smiled when people stepped on it, and took a dreadful pleasure in watching its colours grow dim.”

Once Nan discovers that the rug she earlier described as vivid and rustic was made by Lillian, she imbues the rug with all the envy she feels for Lillian and her memory. Symbolizing her wish for Lillian’s memory to fade, she grows content with the fading colors of Lillian’s rug.

“She had taken the towel from her head, and her hair was spread out over the bit of lace on the back of her chair, like the halo on a Flemish madonna.”

Nan imagines Florence as a saint before Florence becomes an object of desire and love to Nan. She compares her to a Flemish painting of Mary, with a pronounced halo symbolizing her sanctity and virtue.

“She had seemed chaste as a plaster saint to me, once; she had seemed plain. But she was not chaste now—she was marvelously bold and frank and ready; and the boldness made her bonny, made her gleam, like a kind of polish.”

Nan and Florence become lovers, and Nan traces Florence’s change. Describing Nan’s evolving view of Florence, Nan compares her original view to one characterized by distance and worship. Comparing Florence to a plaster saint, unchanging and flat, Nan now perceives Florence as daring. This dynamic nature offers a balance for Nan, uniting both Diana’s alluring and daring behavior with Florence’s kindness.