50 pages • 1 hour read
Sarah WatersTipping the Velvet
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Men’s Suits
Tipping the Velvet focuses on male impersonation and 19th-century ideas about clothing. These suits symbolize how Gender and Performance connect. From the Vaudevillian suits Nan wears with Kitty on stage to the expensive clothes Diana buys her, these suits and their quality reflect how Nan performs her true self and gender. As Kitty comments on Nan’s boyish appearance in her first suit, Nan sees the distance between her gender presentation and her costume. She observes that she is “clad not exactly as a boy, but, rather confusingly, as the boy [she] would have been, had [she] been more of a girl” (120). Nan’s paradoxical claim calls attention to her failure to appear as either who she is or who Walter and Kitty want her to be.
As she joins Diana’s household, Nan finds a wide and expansive wardrobe open to her. These clothes fit her and make her the boy she wants to be, but at a huge cost. Diana’s most extravagant gift is a suit that Nan swears “[is] the richest and loveliest [she] ever wore” (268). Calling it a “coming-out suit” (268), Diana buys it for Nan’s introduction to the Cavendish Club and her wealthy friends. Meeting these friends ultimately results in her removal from Diana’s household, and years later, she chafes against the treatment of Diana and her circle. Evicted from Diana’s house, she and Zena sell her men’s clothing, and she’s forced into ill-fitting women’s clothes. No costume, however fancy, fits Nan as well as the trousers she wore at Ms. Dendy’s and the trousers she begins to wear at Florence’s. Wearing these working-class men’s clothes, Nan connects with her true gender and sexual orientation.
Oysters
As the daughter of a fishmonger, Nan possesses intimate knowledge of oysters. Her background with oysters and how she introduces them to Diana and to Florence symbolize the importance of Class and Society in Victorian England. Her first description of oysters and her parents’ oyster parlor in Whitstable define oysters as a pleasure and a food enjoyed by all ranks of society. From the King, who “makes special trips to Whitstable […] to eat oyster suppers in a private hotel” (3), to run-of-the-mill Whitstable tourists, oysters blur the lines between social classes. She and her family dine on these delicacies, as the sea supplies both their income and food. After Nan and Kitty become close, and before they move to London, they visit Nan’s family’s oyster parlor together. Avoiding cutting her hand, as Nan helps her open the oyster, Kitty announces “she ha[s] never had a finer supper in all her life” (49). Kitty seems to be acting, as her comments about Whitstable at the socialist rally imply, and oysters elsewhere mark class distinctions, despite their supposed universal appeal.
At Diana’s 40th birthday party, oysters are included as part of the extravagant banquet. Without laborers to open the oysters, “one lady, unused to the trick of the shells, trie[s] to open one with a cigar knife” (307). Cutting “her finger almost to the bone” (307), she bleeds freely, and servants remove the oysters. Foreshadowing Nan’s own expulsion from Diana’s house that night, the cold reception the oysters receive demonstrates how Diana’s guests require laborers. Stressing the distance between Diana’s position and Nan’s, the oysters convey their incompatibility. Oysters, however, point to the compatibility of Nan and Florence, who share similar backgrounds and desires. As they grow close, Nan makes oysters for Florence and Ralph—as Florence eats oyster dinner night after night, she announces that if paradise had one food, it would be oysters. Eating these oysters in their cramped home, they have a more pleasant experience than Nan has at Diana’s extravagant gala.
Books
Throughout the novel, Nan encounters books in surprising ways, and these texts offer pain or pleasure, reflecting the struggle for Authentic Lives and Coming Out. From the black book at Diana’s party that describes lesbian identity to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Nan’s journey toward self-acceptance and love features these works.
At Diana’s 40th birthday party, Dickie, one of Diana’s friends, produces a book, which “[is] small and black and densely printed, with not a single illustration” (311). Unlike the erotica that Diana introduced to Nan, this book appears to be one of the clinical and scientific treatises produced in the late 19th century about the new medical concept of “homosexuality.” This book prompts violence at the party. Spurred on by the book’s clinical treatment of “homosexuality,” Diana and her friends attempt to sexually assault Zena, trying to examine her vulva in parody of a clinical setting. Diana hits Nan with the book, representing the literal and figurative harm caused by such texts.
Once Nan and Florence begin to date, Florence introduces Nan to Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Whitman is a poet known for his exploration of authentic identity and bisexuality that influenced his work. His verses sound odd to Nan, highlighting the distance she must travel to embrace her own identity. Nan attempts to change the rhythm and meter before “reading all the ludicrous passages […] in the silly American drawl of a stage Yankee” (393). While Florence reads these lines with passion, they appear silly to Nan, who hasn’t embraced her true self. As she and Florence grow together and become lovers, they read Edward Carpenter’s Towards Democracy as a prelude to sex. Reflecting Nan’s growth and her embrace of Florence’s political ideals, this poem introduces consensual sex between two adults, a stark contrast to Diana’s use of a medical text for violence and sexual assault.
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By Sarah Waters
