Tipping the Velvet

The end of Part 1 reveals Kitty’s internal conflict over her Authentic Life and Coming Out as Kitty moves further away from her true self. Wearing the costume of a masher and sleeping with Nan, yet frightened to be called a “tom,” Kitty grows conflicted: She struggles with the thrill of male impersonation and the comfort of being a future wife to Walter. Nan doesn’t regret leaving Whitstable nor confessing her truth to Alice, while Kitty treats her true desires like her costumes that can be taken on and off at will. Torn between desire and expectation, Kitty lies to Nan and grows erratic. Kitty demonstrates that a disguised love, hidden from view, can never make Nan happy.

Kitty and Nan are foils to one another in their expressions of Gender and Performance. Kitty’s act depends on it being an act, while Nan’s happiness depends on the opposite. After Walter suggests that Nan join as another male impersonator, Kitty points out that the illusion depends on people seeing that it is not complete—Kitty’s impersonation remains an impersonation. Nan, however, “looks like a boy, […] she looks like a real boy. Her face and her figure and bearing on her feet. And that ain’t quite the idea now, is it?” (118). Nan’s boyish costume reflects her true state, as she declares, “[W]hatever successes I might achieve as a girl, they would be nothing compared to the triumphs I should enjoy clad, however girlishly, as a boy” (123). As Nan leaves the theater and Kitty, she carries bags of men’s suits, which symbolize her true self.

Walter’s motives never seem clear, and he seems somewhat unbothered by Nan and Kitty’s relationship. Kitty becomes more uncomfortable over time—invited out to dinner by “toms,” she lies and tells them that Nan and she have plans with Walter. While a lie, Kitty foreshadows the truth, as Walter and Kitty grow close before Nan ever returns to Whitstable. When LGBTQ+ people enter heteronormative relationships to hide their identity, their spouse is often called a “beard.” Like the oyster at dinner with Nan’s family, Walter is Kitty’s beard and hides her true feelings. The novel connects Gender and Performance at a fundamental level. The heckler’s remarks at the Deacon disrupt the performance of gender that Kitty has played at: Rather than a costume she can put on and off, Kitty realizes that her actions with Nan and her stage act are visible to others. Hearing the heckler,

[T]he audience gave a great collective flinch. There was a sudden hush: the shouts became mumbles, the shrieks all tailed away. Through the limelight I saw their faces—a thousand faces, self-conscious and appalled (141).

The play in their performance evaporates as their act becomes serious. Faced with these accusations of same-sex attraction, Kitty leaves the stage literally and figuratively. The Deacon, where Kitty’s illusion cracks, suggests how Class and Society in Victorian England affect these performances of gender. Contrasting the Deacon with more upscale theaters, Nan suggests that “it could be unnerving to work the prim West End theatres, where ladies [are] too gentle or well-dressed to bang their hands together or to stamp” (136). The reactions to their performance appear more authentic in a theater such as the Deacon. The revelation of Kitty’s actual desires underneath her performance threatens the safety she imagines in a future with Walter; Kitty’s relationship with Nan requires that she always be able to write off her desires on an inauthentic performance.