Tipping the Velvet

The beginning of the novel demonstrates Nan’s sheltered and ordinary existence, before introducing Kitty Butler. Butler’s act and Nancy’s background as the daughter of a fishmonger collide, and Nan’s adoption of the name “Nan” symbolizes her break with Whitstable and normative living. Their first meeting introduces their conflicting desires, signaling the novel’s focus on Authentic Lives and Coming Out. After Kitty kisses Nan’s hand as a gentleman might, Nan:

[S]aw [Kitty’s] nostrils quiver, and knew, suddenly, what she smelled: those rank sea-scents, of liquor and oyster flesh, crab-meat and whelks, which had flavoured my fingers and those of my family for so many years we had all ceased, entirely, to notice them (33).

Nan’s shame over her smell is symbolically linked to her shame over her desires as the two are linked in her first meetings with Kitty. Shame continues to plague Nan’s relationship with Kitty until the two part ways. As she moves to London, Kitty’s stated desire for a sisterly connection conflicts with Nan’s own wants. She decides to compromise, hiding her own feelings, agreeing that “it must be as she said: I must learn to swallow my queer and inconvenient lusts, and call her ‘sister’” (78). Foreshadowing how her past will haunt her, the smell of fish on Nan’s hands attracts Kitty, symbolizing their mutual desires—calling Nan her mermaid, Kitty finds something alluring that Nan assumes will disgust her. Nan’s shame surrounding her past continues to shape her actions, while Kitty’s shame around her desires for Nan lead to the dissolution of their relationship.

As Kitty eats with Nan’s family, she assumes the hair on the oyster shell signifies the male gender, exclaiming, “‘What a brute he is!’ Then she looked more closely at it. ‘Is it a he? I suppose they all must be, since they all have beards’” (49). Nan’s father, however, highlights how the oysters symbolize Gender and Performance. He states that the “oyster, you see, is what you might call a real queer fish—now a he, now a she, as quite takes its fancy” (48). Like Kitty, who sometimes presents as a man or woman, the oysters behave apart from gendered expectations. These oysters and their “queer” life reflect Nan and her own gender identity, while Kitty, who desires a normal heterosexual life, judges the oyster by cisgender standards.

Nan’s own identity and desire are made possible because of her background in Whitstable, signifying the importance of Class and Society in Victorian England with respect to gender and sexuality. Unburdened by the class restrictions of more urban locales, Nan can visit Kitty because “people [aren’t] so very prim about things like that in Whitstable” (16). What she describes as her lower-class background and her fishmonger upbringing brings her some feelings of shame as she introduces Kitty to her parents’ home with its “crampedness, and the dinginess—and the unmistakable fishiness—of [their] home to fret over” (44). Nan characterizes the “unmistakable fishiness” of her home as a sign of their lower social class, while it also reflects her identity that soaps and perfume can’t wash away; the presence of these shameful smells is linked to the opportunity to watch Kitty’s performances that Whitstable affords to Nan.