Lights, Curtains, Romance!
Since birth, Nancy Astley has only ever known the life of an oyster-girl. From sunup to sunset, she helps her family shuck oysters, prepare dishes, and serve the people of Whitstable. Whenever she needs a break, she and her sister take a train to a theater where they can be entertained by all sorts of acts. One fateful year, a masher (male impersonator) by the name of Kitty Butler takes the stage, her voice and charisma enthralling the crowd, and Nancy most of all. Before she knows it, she's fallen deeply in love with Kitty.Nancy has to keep her newly discovered passion to herself, proven when her sister begins to treat her coldly after Nancy tells her about how Kitty makes her feel. Things get even harder when Kitty takes notice of Nancy's frequent visits to the theater, inviting her to her dressing room one night. They soon form a close-knit bond that Nancy initially mistakes for friendly affection on Kitty's part. However, their time together soon reveals that Kitty loves her just as much as she loves Kitty.
Before she knows it, Nancy is swept up into theater life, soon becoming a masher herself. Unfortunately, their relationship will be put to the test, and Nancy's new life may come crashing down around her before she can stop it.
Tipping the Velvet is a 1998 historical romance novel by Sarah Waters. The book was adapted into a three-part serial in 2002 for The BBC, and a stage play in 2015.
This novel includes examples of:
- Aristocrats Are Evil: Diana Lethaby and her decadent friends cruelly exploit lesbians younger and poorer than themselves for sex.
- Bifauxnen: Nancy can easily pass for a pretty young man, so much so that her first proper costume as Nan King had to be altered so she'd be less convincing.
- Boyish Short Hair: Kitty has hers cut short to perform in her masher act, with Nancy later doing the same when she joins her. They also become lovers as well, with this echoing Nancy's self-realization that she's a lesbian.
- Butch Lesbian: There a number of lesbians who seem to prefer men's clothing and masculine mannerisms. Nancy also gets a bit more butch over the course of the story once she realizes she vastly prefers presenting as male to wearing typical feminine clothing.
- Cast Full of Gay: The main character and most of the supporting characters are lesbians and there are several minor characters who are gay men.
- Chummy Commies: Florence and Ralph are both committed socialists and easily the nicest people in the story.
- Closet Key: Nancy didn't know she was a lesbian before she met Kitty.
- Coming-Out Story: Nancy realizes she's a lesbian upon meeting Kitty, who becomes her lover, and she later tells her younger sister. However, her sister is repelled by Nancy's feelings, giving her the cold shoulder from then on.
- Death by Childbirth: Cyril's mother, Lilian, died giving birth to him. As a result, Ralph and Florence adopted him.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Nancy makes her peace with her past and seems to be happy after going through great hardships, but she does not get back together with Kitty nor find fame and fortune. However, she finds a new love in Florence and new purpose through helping Florence in her political activism.
- Gaydar: Nancy seems to sense- or at least hope- that Florence is a lesbian like her. At first she thinks she's mistaken as Florence seems to be married with a child. It turns out that the man she first saw is Florence's brother, Ralph, while the child is one they adopted. Later, it's confirmed that Florence really is a lesbian, and the two become lovers.
- Get Thee to a Nunnery: "Tipping the velvet" sounds like theatrical lingo, fitting for a story that has a focus on the stage. Historically, it meant cunnilingus.
- Have a Gay Old Time: The language is consistent with the time period the story is set in. This means that "gay" is routinely used to mean "happy", "gay girl" refers to prostitutes, and "queer" is routinely used to mean "strange."
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: Soon after Nancy joins Kitty's act as Nan King, the shear novelty of a masher pair helps launch the two of them into stardom. At the same time, Kitty and Nancy become a couple. However, they need to keep their relationship under wraps or else they'll be ridiculed and laughed out of showbiz, something that Kitty is very paranoid about. When an audience member calls them a pair of "toms", it shakes up Kitty's confidence so badly that she calls off that night's show. It also leads Kitty into starting an affair with Walter. When Nancy catches them in a clear post-coital state, she runs away from home in a blind rush. Her heartbreak quickly morphs into a depression in which Nancy isolates herself from practically everything and everyone. It isn't long before "Nan King" becomes a thing of the past, made swifter after Kitty and Walter start performing together.
- It's All About Me: Nancy puts a lot of her own needs and wants first before others. When she first meets Florence and learns what she does for a living- helping the poor find affordable housing-, Nancy admits that she doesn't give one iota about the poor.
- Last Girl Wins: Florence is the one Nancy ends up with in the end. Nancy actually met her in the middle of the story and then forgot about her when Diana came along, but she didn't get to know Florence until after leaving Diana.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Kitty may dress up as a boy for the stage, but is conventionally feminine outside the theater. Mrs. Lethaby, Zena and Florence could also qualify.
- Lover and Beloved: A number of the rich lesbians in Mrs. Lethaby's circle have partners much younger than them who are kept women. Nancy is Diana's Beloved ostensibly, though she's more essentially a sex slave.
- Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple: A lot of the lesbian couples depicted are working-class butch women who are in men's clothing beside aristocratic rich feminine lesbians wearing typical high society fair expected for a woman: dresses, hats, gloves, etc.
- Open-Minded Parent: Nancy's parents are rather accepting of their daughter's decision to leave Whitstable and pursue a career as Kitty's dresser. Nancy's father points out that she's old enough to choose her own path in life and, while he may not fully agree with her choice, he'll support her either way. He only asks that she not forget her family or hometown.
- Recursive Crossdressing: When Nancy first tries on a male costume, Kitty and Walter both realize that she looks too much like a man: part of the appeal of male impersonators is seeing a woman play at being a man, so being too convincing will just make the audience confused. To fix this, Nancy's masher costume gets trimmed with lace and ribbons in order to better clue in the audience that she's actually a woman
- Sex Slave: After Diana plucks Nancy off the streets, Nancy becomes Diana's live-in prostitute who is subject to the whims and desires of her mistress.
- Streetwalker: For a period of time, Nancy works as a prostitute, servicing gay men while pretending to be one of them. She conducts all of her business on the streets, as she can only give out handies and blowjobs.
- Sweet Polly Oliver: After leaving the stage, Nancy first dons a male outfit to avoid street harassment from men. When she becomes strapped for cash, she's pondering how to get more when she's hit on by a gay man. Due to her work as a male impersonator, Nancy is an expert at making others mistake her for a man and thankfully this particular gay man only wants a handie. This makes Nancy realize that working as a prostitute for gay men might be an efficient way to earn money.
- True Companions: Nancy eventually creates a family for herself with Florence, Ralph, and baby Cyril. There's a scene where the adult members speculate as to who would be in their personal heavens with them, and each one lists all the others.
- Unproblematic Prostitution: The biggest concern Nancy has when she's out on the streets is her clients finding out that she's a woman. She's actively choosy about her clients, avoiding anyone obviously drunk or aggressive, and the thought of catching any diseases never crosses her mind. Once she starts living with Diana, all of these concerns become nonexistent.
- Wholesome Crossdresser: Nancy finds that she's more comfortable in men's clothing even when offstage as this saves her from harassment by men, and thus starts dressing like that most of the time. None of the people who know about this habit give her grief over it, some of them even helping her out by buying her male clothing outright.
