Lesbian Desire and Mainstream Media: Sarah Waters's Tipping the Velvet on the Screen
Abstract
The subversive potential and transformative strength of the neo-Victorian genre is explored and consolidated by writers such as Sarah Waters. In her debut novel Tipping the Velvet (1998) the author makes explicit what was virtually impossible to express in Victorian times, but also what is still struggling for socio-cultural recognition. However, can the TV adaptation of Waters's lesbian Bildungsroman be said to achieve the same? This article explores the adaptation of the novel, broadcast on British television in 2002, and discusses whether or not its re-presentation of female same-sex erotics discredits the issue of lesbianism. Resumen: Gracias a Sarah Waters, entre otras, la crÃtica especializada ha reconocido la capacidad subversiva y transformadora del fenómeno conocido como Neo-Victorianism. En la novela Tipping the Velvet (1998) la autora hace explÃcito lo que era imposible expresar en la época victoriana, pero también lo que todavÃa no ha encontrado total reconocimiento desde el punto de vista social y culturalmente. Sin embargo, ¿se puede afirrmar que la adaptación televisiva de la novela resulta asimismo subversiva? Este artÃculo analiza la adaptación emitida en la televisión británica en 2002 y cuestiona si la representación del erotismo lésbico subraya la normalización de la figura lesbiana.
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Lesbian Desire and Mainstream Media: Sarah...
Lea Heiberg Madsen
LESBIAN DESIRE AND MAINSTREAM MEDIA:
SARAH WATERS'S TIPPING THE VELVET ON THE
SCREEN
1
Lea Heiberg Madsen, University of Malaga
Email: l.madsen@uma.es
Abstract: The subversive potential and transformative strength of the neo-Victorian genre
is explored and consolidated by writers such as Sarah Waters. In her debut novel Tipping
the Velvet (1998) the author makes explicit what was virtually impossible to express in
Victorian times, but also what is still struggling for socio-cultural recognition. However,
can the TV adaptation of Waters's lesbian Bildungsroman be said to achieve the same?
This article explores the adaptation of the novel, broadcast on British television in 2002,
and discusses whether or not its re-presentation of female same-sex erotics discredits
the issue of lesbianism.
Keywords: Sarah Waters, neo-Victorian, female same-sex erotics, Tipping the Velvet
on the screen.
TÃtulo en español: El deseo lésbico y la polÃtica de los medios: la adaptación televisiva
de Tipping the Velvet de Sarah Waters
Resumen: Gracias a Sarah Waters, entre otras, la crÃtica especializada ha reconocido la
capacidad subversiva y transformadora del fenómeno conocido como Neo-Victorianism.
En la novela Tipping the Velvet (1998) la autora hace explÃcito lo que era imposible
expresar en la época victoriana, pero también lo que todavÃa no ha encontrado total
reconocimiento desde el punto de vista social y culturalmente. Sin embargo, ¿se puede
a rmar que la adaptación televisiva de la novela resulta asimismo subversiva? Este
artÃculo analiza la adaptación emitida en la televisión británica en 2002 y cuestiona si la
representación del erotismo lésbico subraya la normalización de la gura lesbiana.
Palabras claves: Sarah Waters, novela neo-Victoriana, Tipping the Velvet, erotismo,
lesbianismo, adaptación televisiva.
Ever since the rise of the neo-Victorian novel, there has been a constant and signi cant
increase in publications of and on neo-Victorian ction, testifying to its popularity with the
public as well as with scholars. The particularly high production of neo-Victorian feminist
novels is a clear sign of the genre's suitability for the feminist discourse which, as Gayle
Greene observes, is concerned with escaping repetition and ensuring progress (1991: 291).
2
1
Date of reception: 27 May 2010
Date of acceptance: 18 July 2010
2
Among many others, Sarah Waters's Tipping the Velvet (1998); Af nity (1999); Fingersmith (2002); Michel
Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White (2002); Barbara Chase-Riboud's Hottentot Venus (2004); Belinda
Starling's The Journal of Dora Damage (2006).
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Critics have argued that "[n]eo-Victorian novelists take their cues from a second wave of
predominantly female and, in part, feminist researchers, who reclaimed female subjectiv-
ity from the hitherto predominantly male de nition" (Voigts-Virchow 2009: 110). Most,
however, also recognize the neo-Victorian genre as a "hybrid space" (borrowing Voigts-
Virchow's expression) where it is possible to argue "against long-established clichés"
(Llewellyn 2009: 28), and to address issues that remain highly relevant at present. Neo-
Victorian re-workings, thus, often imply a revision of now as much as of then.
Sarah Waters debuted in 1998 with Tipping the Velvet, for which she has won great aca-
demic and popular recognition, and with which she successfully, and in a very overt manner,
introduced 'the lesbian' into mainstream popular culture. What is commonly known as her
neo-Victorian trilogy –which, apart from Tipping the Velvet, includes Af nity (1999) and
Fingersmith (2002)– has marked not only the author's breakthrough as a writer of ction but,
arguably, the very realm of neo-Victorian literature. Her debut novel, nevertheless, remains
the most path-breaking of the three in its explicit representation of women's same-sex erotics.
That is, in Tipping the Velvet Waters leaves little to read between the lines when it comes to
same-sex passion and sexual dynamics. Subtlety is, in other words, substituted with explicit
eroticism and sex. As M.-L. Kohlke remarks: "Waters breathes life into Terry Castle's no-
tion of the 'Apparitional Lesbian ,' giving her esh, blood, sex, and cunt...[t]here is nothing
remotely spectral or unreal about lesbian sex here..." (2006: 9). Thus, the female characters
in Tipping the Velvet live out their erotic passions–aloud.
As many critics observe, Waters's neo-Victorian lesbian Bildungsroman works on vari-
ous levels. Tipping the Velvet is an example of how the neo-Victorian "mode" (borrowing
Mark Llewellyn's expression) offers multilayered readings and may reveal as much about
the author's present as about the re-imagined past. Waters, in effect, is not merely revising
the past. As a neo-Victorian writer she engages in revision through re-presentation. She,
accordingly, digs out the hidden and buried, lls in the gaps, and lends her voice to the
silenced Victorians. Her voicing of the unspoken, however, is double-edged. As Llewellyn
argues, she criticises "[Victorian] modes of dealing with social and sexual transgression,
but also the late twentieth and early twenty- rst-centuries' responses to similarly perceived
deviance" (2004: 213). Waters's re-workings of issues surrounding female same-sex erotics,
thus, is a re-evaluation of the position of the lesbian of both then and now; or, as Paulina
Palmer suggests, a renegotiation of the lesbian's "abject role" (2007: 49). In other words,
Waters challenges both past and persisting perceptions of female (homo) sexuality.
Tipping the Velvet has already been much celebrated for its transgressive and subversive
qualities–and Sarah Waters, for the conviction and strength with which she has put both
her lesbian narrative and herself, as a minority writer, on the map of mainstream culture.
However, Waters comes to ll a gap in manifold ways. Tipping the Velvet , as some suggest,
is not literally a re-presentation nor is Waters a re-producer, since the Victorian lesbians
were never represented in the rst place. She is not "re-writing", Eckart Voigts-Virchow
remarks, "[b]ecause there is no Victorian novel on lesbian subculture" (2009: 120). At the
same time, Tipping the Velvet marks a turning point for the lesbian discourse in mainstream
culture at present, where it remains marginalised and, as critics argue, "lesbian ction is
literary monstrosity" (Llewellyn 2004: 213). Waters, however, escapes this persisting
marginalisation. As a writer she both represents and re-presents the position of the lesbian
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in popular culture, receiving academic and popular recognition on par with any other
mainstream novelist or, perhaps, to an even greater extent. However, not only has she suc-
cessfully ensured herself a place on the map as a lesbian writer, but also as one of the most
widely read neo-Victorian authors.
The subversive potential and transformative strength of the neo-Victorian genre is both
explored and consolidated by writers such as Sarah Waters. With Tipping the Velvet (and
her subsequent neo-Victorian novels) she makes explicit what was virtually impossible to
express in Victorian times, but also what is still struggling for socio-cultural recognition.
However, can the TV adaptation of her novel be said to achieve the same? In what follows,
I explore Andrew Davies's adaptation of Tipping the Velvet, broadcast as a three-part series
on British television in 2002, and discuss whether or not – as some critics suggest – "there
is something strange going on in the presentation of the lesbian desire" (MacPherson 2008:
270). As point of departure for my discussion, I analyse the re-presentation of female
same-sex erotics in a number of scenes, comparing the adaptation with the original. First,
however, I provide a brief introduction to period drama on screen, focusing on its recent
developments as a parallel to the trends of neo-Victorian literature.
Fiction set in the nineteenth-century, whether we think of novels, short stories, or
lms, is obviously nothing new. As one critic points out: "[t]he nineteenth-century novel
has been a staple of twentieth-century entertainment...[and] both American and British
audiences have an insatiable hunger for lms with historical settings and lms based on
great books" (Troost 2007: 75). However, historical series in the 1990s, as others observe,
were likely to be regarded a manifestation of cultural heritage rather than as portraying the
female experience:
The gender-blindness of the dominant British critical approach to heritage cinema is
suf ciently strange as to seem almost wilful, given the historical associations of femini-
nity with a (culturally constructed) disposition towards the pleasures of the (popular and
literary) novel, the costume lm, female-centred narratives and 'female' genres such as
romance and melodrama; and, last but not least, the pleasures of consumption. (Monk
qtd. in Kleinecke 2006: 160)
In recent years, however, the genre of period drama has indeed opened up for repre-
sentations of alternative experiences, giving room for those of the marginalised and the
minorities. Kleinecke suggests that there has been a "move away from patriarchal versions
of grand History toward histories that are lived and experienced...towards the discovery of
alternative truths, which very often focuses on female subjectivities" (2006: 160). This is
a tendency that manifests itself in lms, television series and, not least, in literature.
One of the rst de nitions of the neo-Victorian novel, provided by Dana Shiller in 1997,
stresses how this sub-type of the historical novel "plays on (and with) our certainties about
history...explores the ground between writing as though there are no persisting truths...and
writing as though there is indeed a recoverable past" (1997: 540-541). The neo-Victorians
go back to nineteenth-century England to revise, re-evaluate and revitalize the Victorians,
seeking, however, not so much to reproduce the great Victorian culture as to establish a
form of dialogue with it. The neo-Victorian text, thus, goes beyond its historical setting and
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plots. It deconstructs and subverts the Victorian novel, explores and re-works the nineteenth
century's preoccupations with, for example, race, gender and sexuality while, simultane-
ously, working as an approach to our own age's anxieties.
Just like the neo-Victorian novel provides a space for challenging dominant cultural
norms of both past and present, the adaptation of literature onto television may also open
up for ways to subvert and transgress boundaries. In fact, Troost's de nition of "Heritage-
style adaptations", as "British television serials that pride themselves on their historical
authenticity...display English heritage...[while]...simultaneously criti[cising] it" (2007:
82), echoes, to a certain extent, the neo-Victorian revisionist approach to Victorian culture
and history. So, a TV format may offer – as does the neo-Victorian novel – a kind of "third
space" (borrowing Voigts-Virchow's expression) where dialogues between past and present
can develop. As another critic, moreover, observes: "[t]elevision productions are a good
source of space for challenging pre-conceived notions of normality, and a closed reading of
the text in television format allows the 'reality' to become the 'truth'" (MacPherson 2008:
265). Television and (neo-Victorian) literature, then, are both potentially transformative
sites. This does not mean, though, that the two together double their potential. Indeed,
TV "has a potential for intimacy that arises from its domestic setting and its consequent
role within our everyday lives" (Cardwell 2007: 186), but it is also a highly conventional
format. In effect, the adaptation of such an unconventional and subversive text as Tipping
the Velvet onto a BBC prime-time series has proven to be a challenge which, according to
some critics, has been solved far from satisfactorily. The adaptation has been much criti-
cised for taking shortcuts in its re-presentation of lesbian sex, and some claim that Tipping
the Velvet on screen appears as a farce, and is turned into a mere spectacle for the viewer.
Among others, Pauline MacPherson maintains that the series is a "production that brings
the female back under the control of the male gaze" (2008: 274).
In a recent article, MacPherson explores how "adaptations of literature to lm can
be read in order to understand the changing reality of female sexuality" (2008: 261), and
how, in the last few years, there has been a rise in adaptations of popular literature dealing
with controversial and challenging issues such as female sexuality and lesbianism. She
discusses the representation of lesbian identities on British television, "from Oranges to
Velvet", without hiding her profound dislike for Andrew Davies's re-workings of Waters's
novel. MacPherson views Tipping the Velvet on screen as almost opposed to the novel
which displays a "motivation to act for changes in society, or as a re-think of people's
perceptions about homosexuality" (2008: 263). She points out the all-male production
crew and post-modernist in uences as crucial factors for the adaptation's failure "in terms
of functioning as a subversive format" (MacPherson 2008: 271), and nds that it merely
"distorts and turns the lesbian love scenes into a comedic show" (MacPherson 2008: 270).
Jenni Millbank reaches a similar conclusion and remarks: "[i]t is, perhaps, still impossible
for lesbian desire to be received by mainstream media in any other way, as they after all, are
playing to their audience, whose heterosexuality requires reassurance of both its natural-
ness and dominance in the face of such rupture" (2004: 181). I believe, nevertheless, that
a more open reading than such is possible. That is, I do not regard the speeding up of the
action, unrealistic time frames, and its comic elements a clear expression of the adaptation's
"question[ing] the legitimacy of lesbian desire" (MacPherson 2008: 271). Nor do I nd
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that lesbianism is reduced to farce. In fact, I think the TV production in many ways reveals
the director's preoccupation with re-transmitting the 'spirit' of Sarah Waters's novel. As
Cardwell explains, ' delity' remains important in today's television and lm adaptations of
classic novels and contemporary literature. However, whereas it previously implied being
faithful to the words of the novel, nowadays " delity has been recon gured and adaptors
have become more concerned with conveying the 'spirit' of the source text...the af liation
to the source text remains, but it is possibly better conceptualized as a desire to show respect
to that text, rather than to be faithful to it" (Cardwell 2007: 193, original emphases).
Tipping the Velvet tells the story about Nance Astley who goes from being a young, in-
nocent oyster girl in Whitstable (England), to becoming a successful music-hall performer,
social-rights public speaker and con dent lesbian woman in London. As the narrator of her
own story, Nan re ects upon her experience and personal development in and through her
erotic relationships with a number of different women–relationships which involve betrayal,
abuse and severe emotional scars, but also tender love-making, and steamy hot sex. It is
through her encounter with the male-impersonator Kitty Butler that Nan rst experiences
an erotic awakening and initiates her psycho-emotional journey, exploring and gradually
discovering her (sexual) identity.
The very rst time Nan and Kitty make love is a key moment in the novel. Nan's nar-
ration of the experience has a poetic beauty to it while, simultaneously, it is loaded with
sensuality and crude eroticism. Waters depicts the two women who nally give in to their
sexual desire in highly emotional terms. Indeed, the scene is very moving – anyone who has
ever been in love cannot but relate to Nan's paradoxical feelings of bubbling pleasure and
aching pain – but it is also extremely erotic. In the rather long passage (Tipping the Velvet
98-105) which builds up to the actual love-making scene, Waters offers minute detail of
Nan and Kitty's preliminary touching and kissing, leaving little to read between the lines.
Their foreplay is very passionate, their desire very sexual. Thus, Waters is not merely hint-
ing at the women's passion for each other, but seeks, rather, to let it materialize. In effect,
she thoroughly avoids lesbian spectralization, symbolic female bonding, and offers instead
a straight-forward portrayal of female same-sex desire. In other words, Waters not only
makes it 'real', she also takes it to its climax–with moans, groans and orgasms. In the TV
adaptation, the scene remains very passionate and intimate (minute 45:45 and onwards,
episode 1). Moreover, as a central moment in the story of Nan Astley, the adaptation's
concern with the original details seems particularly high. This is re ected, for instance, in
its exact reproduction of the dialogue between the lovers: "'May I really touch you?'
I whispered. She gave again a nervous laugh, and tiltede her face against her pillow. 'Oh
Nan,' she said, 'I think I shall die if you don't!'" (Waters 1998: 105). Short after, the camera
similarly captures the detail of how "[Kitty's] own hands began to chafe distractedly at the
esh of my shoulders" (Waters 1998: 105). So, the lmic version arguably remains faithful
to novel's depiction of the love scene.
It has been argued, though, that in the subsequent depictions of the sexual relations
between Kitty and Nan, "the camera is used to present the action as speeded up...and to
focus upon comedy" (MacPherson 2008: 210). Some claim that, with his adaptation of
Tipping the Velvet, Andrew Davies merely creates a 'spectacle'–undoing, in a sense, what
Waters achieved in the rst place with her novel. As previously mentioned, MacPherson
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perceives "its predominantly male production team and the in uences of postmodernism"
(2008: 271) as complicating factors for the retransmission of its original subversive quality.
There may, nevertheless, be many reasons why the adaptation, generally, goes for a more
rapid and non-explicit re-presentation of Nan's sexual encounters.
Davies, as I suggest above, is successful in his re-transmission of Nan and Kitty's rst
night as lovers. Notwithstanding a few changes in the dialogues and a slight speeding-up
of the events, the adaptation indeed conveys the emotions involved and the highly erotic
atmosphere of the moment in line with the novel. By re-producing, in large, Waters's depic-
tion – respecting the centrality of the scene as well as its explicit erotic expression – Tip-
ping the Velvet on screen arguably re-presents the lovers' rst time as close to the original
representation as possible (for a production aimed at a prime-time audience). This, conse-
quently, makes it unnecessary to display in detail the many subsequent sexual encounters
between Nan and Kitty. I am thereby not saying that the detailed descriptions of lesbian
sex in the novel are irrelevant. The graphic sex and, not least, the very varied depictions of
female same-sex erotics in Tipping the Velvet, contribute to the unique quality of Waters's
work. However, as the adaptation makes sure that we get the picture the rst time, it here-
after remains clear what goes on in their bedroom at night. In other words, we know that
they have hot, passionate sex, without it being explicitly shown over and over again. So,
in contrast to MacPherson who maintains that "Tipping the Velvet [is] transformed into a
male voyeristic lesbian fantasy" (2008: 272), I nd that the adaptation rather avoids such
transformation. That is, would it not be precisely an invitation to voyeurism if passages
such as the following were explicitly shown on TV?:
Here she was wet, and smooth as velvet. I had never, of course, touched anyone like
this before – except sometimes myself; but is was as if I touched myself now, for the
slippery hand which stroked her seem to stroke me: I felt my drawers grow damp and
warm...I ceased my gentle strokings and began to rub her, rather hard...between her legs,
with one wet ngertip. (Waters 1998: 105)
One of the last erotic scenes in the novel portrays Nan and Flo–and though it is the
last, it is far from being the least explicit:
...and after a moment I felt her move within me, rst with one nger, then with two,
I guessed, then three...At last, after a second's pressure, she had her hand in me up to the
wrist. I think I called out – I think I shivered and panted and called out, to feel the subtle
twisting of her st, the curling and uncurling of her sweet ngers, beneath my womb....
(Waters 1998: 428)
The women's love-making, nevertheless, conveys much more than simply good sex.
Nan's orgasm works as a symbol for her having reached a certain climax in her develop-
ment. She is now an experienced, self-con dent lover and partner of Florence Banner. On
screen, the scene is re-presented in terms of a fading image of the women cuddling and
kissing. Again, as in the case with Kitty and Nan, the lack of explicit visualization of their
love-making does not disturb me. Non-explicit, here, is not equal to invisible or super -
cial. Nan and Flo are there, their passion is there, and their erotic desire is materialized–it
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simply cannot be gazed at. The adaptation, then, moves on and focuses on other aspects of
Nan's growth which, as clearly perceived in the novel, are as signi cant for her story. In
effect, the adaptation remains a TV version of Waters's lesbian Bildungsroman and avoids
transforming it into a show.
What MacPherson repeatedly criticizes is the speeding up of and use of comedy in the
adaptation's portrayal of lesbianism. However, I do not recognize the "farcical perform-
ance" (MacPherson 2008: 271) she sees. In fact, one of the most comic moments in the
entire adaptation involves heterosexual sex, namely, the scenes in which Nan prostitutes
herself in the disguise of a girlish soldier (minute 11:52 and onwards, episode 2). Here,
in my opinion, the novel's female/lesbian perspective indeed comes to expression: on the
one hand, by ridiculing the men Nan prostitutes herself to; on the other, by depicting her
as emotionally detached and not the least sexually aroused by the male sex. In line with
the novel, the adaptation captures how:
[a]s they strained and gasped, and whispered their desires to me in some alley or court
or dripping lavatory stall – I would have to turn my face away to hide my smiles...well,
they were all gents and (whatever their own opinion on the matter) with their trousers
unbuttoned they all looked the same. I never felt my own lust rise, raising theirs. (Waters
1998: 206)
Although the adaptation, to a large extent, omits the more gloomy sides of Nan's ex-
perience on the streets, it successfully re-transmits the concept of performativity involved
in her occupation as a renter. With a series of rapid shots of Nan in different costumes, and
with lively, circus-like music to accompany her 'show,' the TV production, like the novel,
foregrounds the irony in Nan's sad situation. However, what the adaptation does fail to
reproduce is Waters's double-edged use of comedy here. In the novel, the depiction of Nan
as a renter in terms of comic performance can be read as ironic in itself–as an expression
of the protagonist's self-deceit. Nan's show is, in other words, ambiguous: she is perform-
ing not only for the sake of fooling the men she is with, but also herself. Behind the secret
smiles and fancy costumes she hides, in fact, her desperation and self-loath.
From this point and onwards, the adaptation lets Nan's narration continue in a comic
mode. This strategy, however, is not too farfetched since Nan, at this point, is still running
her show. To escape reality, as I argue above, Nan herself perceives life as a theatre with
her as the main actor. This, in effect, gives Davies the opportunity to go on playing with the
theatrical and farcical in the scenes that follow. It is, thus, through the use of comic elements
that Davies chooses to re-present Nan's rst sexual encounter with Diana Lethaby, one of
the most erotically loaded and sexually explicit scenes in the novel. However, the 'spirit' of
the original (borrowing Cardwell's expression) is de nitely there. The scene builds up to the
sexual climax with a teasing slowness, and where the adaptation differs or is less explicit in
erotic detail it reproduces the exact words of the original dialogue: "'If you were the King
of Pleasure,' she said, 'and I were Queen of Pain...' Then in a different tone: 'You're very
handsome Miss King'" (Waters 1998: 239). As in the novel, Diana remains semi-dressed
during the sexual act. The adaptation, however, covers up much more than the women's
naked skin. There is, in other words, no "catching hold on her nipples...hard ngering" or
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sign of how "the dildo that serviced her also pleasured me" (Waters 1998: 243). The scene
is accompanied by symphonic music playing louder and louder, as if trying to drown the
"breaths [that] became moans, then cries" (Waters 1998: 243) which, consequently, remain
vague sighs in the adaptation. Not only does it result in a much softer, almost implicit,
erotic encounter, the TV production practically erases the whole particularity of woman-
to-woman sex. Nan and Diana, in this sense, become standardized; what in the novel is so
strictly lesbian about their sex is merely present through the fact that the lovers are women.
Indeed. At one point, Nan and Diana could even be mistaken for a heterosexual couple,
their love-making differing little (or none) from a conventional sex scene in a conventional,
prime-time movie.
According to MacPherson, "the convention and the use of comedy destabilises the
seriousness of female sexualities in this television production" (2008: 274). I agree
that conventions take too much over and that the TV production consequently fails to
celebrate lesbianism on par with the novel. However, I do not think that the adaptation
opposes the intentions of the original, nor do I consider its comic approach particularly
destabilising. As I have previously argued, comedy can be read in several ways, and its
central role in the TV series does not consequently discredit the issue of lesbianism. In
fact, Waters herself frequently turns to comedy to tell her story and Tipping the Velvet
has often received the label 'romp.' Moreover, as Jayne Caudwell similarly argues, it is
necessary to consider the gaze of the lesbian, who "[as] spectatrix experiences a diversity
of pleasure and displeasure" (2004: 237), before dismissing the adaptation's portrayal
of lesbianism as a failure. In her research into how lesbians perceived Tipping the Velvet
on screen, Caudwell nds that "[i]f we accept poststructuralist notions of power then we
can focus on the polysemic...begin to explore multiple meanings and therefore provide
an understanding of the lesbian gaze" (2004: 235).
Sarah Waters's vivid depictions of lesbian erotics are too explicit for a prime-time tel-
evision broadcast–not because she represents women's same-sex desires, but because her
portrayal involves steamy hot, graphic sex. Whereas some critics see Davies's adaptation as
a "production that nds itself easily incorporated into the male heterosexual voyeurism in
which, as a novel, Tipping the Velvet does not participate" (MacPherson 2008: 274), I nd,
as previously said, that it rather escapes it. By toning down its display of lesbian sex, the
adaptation comes to depict female homosexuality in a much broader sense than merely its
erotics. Davies, obviously, turns Waters's novel into a prime-time, TV version. However, his
'standardization' of lesbian eroticism on the screen, needs neither to be perceived as a re-
appropriation of female sexuality nor as an expression of disrespect or lack of seriousness. It
is true that Davies's adaptation tones down and largely erases the particularity of lesbianism
in the sex scenes. This way of standardizing sex between women, nevertheless, can be read
as a representation of 'lesbian' as a normalized sexuality. By tting it into a conventional
TV format, the screening of Tipping the Velvet, thus, becomes an act of subversion.
So, an open reading of Davies's adaptation instead of a closed – or as Millbank suggests,
by avoiding "reductive readings of cultural texts as if they contained and passed on simple
'messages' about sex and sexuality" (2004: 157) – allows us to discover in it a tribute to
Waters and her efforts to re-present a literary and cultural minority. It celebrates her story,
her characters and, to a certain extent, succeeds in re-transmitting the intentions behind
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the novel. Andrew Davies introduces lesbianism, as identity and normalized sexuality, into
prime-time television and, thus, into the mainstream of popular culture–something Sarah
Waters did four years earlier with her novel.
To conclude, both as novel and in TV format, Tipping the Velvet works to challenge
dominant socio-cultural perceptions of female identity and sexuality. However, literary
and audiovisual productions obviously draw on different strategies of expression and rep-
resentation. Whereas the novel depicts lesbianism through explicit eroticism and graphic
sex the adaptation down-tones the sexual. Although Waters's approach to the issue of fe-
male homosexuality appears both refreshingly innovative and highly boundary-breaking,
Davies's production proves that on TV, sometimes, less is more. By focusing on lesbian
identity as much as on 'the lesbian' as sexuality, the adaptation captures lesbianism in a
broader sense and not merely for the sake of eroticism. Davies successfully brings Waters's
lesbian Bildungsroman into the living rooms of thousands of British families, and fore-
grounds – in line with the novel –several different aspects of the story about Nan Astley
whose transformation is much more than a sexual one. As Waters brilliantly portrays in
her novel, Nan develops into an independent, politically involved, young woman and self-
con dent lesbian. The adaptation is open for a similar reading: Nan's sexuality is part of
her identity, but it is not all she is.
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![Matthias Stephan]()
The concluding chapter of the book looks forward to what kind of literature can be presented in light of postmodernism. The chapter looks at types of literature often posited as coming after postmodernism and discusses how those genres (Postpostmodernism, Neo-Victorian, and Post-Ironic and New Sincerity) can be read in light of the postmodern structure of consciousness. The chapter further presents three potential 'outs' of postmodernism, ways in which literature could be written in relation to this concept of postmodernism, including looking at optimistic ways to consider the legacy of literary postmodernism, and its continued influence on both literary and theoretical frameworks in the twenty-first century.
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![Sarah Cardwell]()
Practices, perceptions, and prejudices: film versus television adaptations Since the birth of cinema, filmmakers have adapted an eclectic range of sources, including many and varied sub-genres of literature-from classic eighteenth and nineteenth-century novels to "pulp" fiction, from thrillers to romances, from melodramas to ghost stories. The breadth and variety of film adaptations is clearly visible to most cinema-goers. When one speaks of television adaptations, in comparison, one tends to refer more particularly to prolific "classic serials": relatively faithful adaptations of classic, mostly nineteenth-century, works of literature. So-called classic serials have formed a flourishing and prominent genre on television since the earliest days of broadcasting, and have constituted a significant portion of television's dramatic output. Television adaptations of classic novels are comparatively more prominent than adaptations of other kinds of sources, not necessarily because they outnumber them, but for two powerful reasons. First, they are more frequently advertised as adaptations, rather than being subsumed into other generic categories-compare The Mayor of Casterbridge (1978), Middlemarch (1994), and Pride and Prejudice (1995) which are clearly marked as classic-novel adaptations, with series such as Miss Marple (1985-1992), Inspector Morse (1987-2000), and The Ruth Rendell Mysteries (1987-2000), which are regarded primarily as detective serials, and only secondarily (if at all) as adaptations. Second, classic-novel adaptations share a generic identity: they "look" similar to one another (or so it is claimed), so that their visibility is heightened, along with their tendency to be categorized straightforwardly as adaptations.
-
![Jenni Millbank]()
This article explores three narratives of violently transgressive lesbians in a prison setting. The stories are two English novels, Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter (1985), Affinity by Sarah Waters (1999) and an English TV series, Bad Girls (1999-ongoing). A number of disruptive and counter-hegemonic aspects run through these stories including their portrayal of violence as a reasonable response to oppressive social conditions, a distinct problematizing of heterosexuality and the metaphor of a prison panopticon to explore the constraints imposed on all women's lives. The article argues that the representation of lesbian desire in all three tales is truly radical in that it acts to dissolve unequal power dyads, although it also comes to question the extent to which it is possible, even in fiction, to sustain such rupture in the face of dominant cultural imperatives to 're-capture' and 'domesticate' homo-normative images.
- Linda V. Troost
The nineteenth-century novel has been a staple of twentieth-century entertainment. For decades, film companies have been producing adaptations of novels by Charles Dickens, Emily and Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, William Makepeace Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, and Henry James, as have television companies like the BBC and ITV. Why are these authors so popular? First of all, they tell good stories. They also have name recognition and prestigious cultural associations. They provide good visuals. Finally, their works are out of copyright. Judging by the rate of production and consumption, both American and British audiences have an insatiable hunger for films with historical settings and films based on great books. For some, historical films and serials provide entertainment, allowing a temporary escape from a modern world of care, predictability, or dullness. For others, they provide fare more intellectual than the blockbuster films that dominate at the multiplex cinema. In particular, they appeal to women (an audience that film companies have often neglected) with their foregrounding of relationships and women's issues. With the development of home VCR and DVD players, films and television serials have gained an extended life. No longer does a television adaptation vanish from the cultural consciousness after its broadcast. The success of newer adaptations even means a release on DVD of older versions, too. Thanks to the phenomenal reception of the 1995 Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, the BBC and ITV Austen adaptations from the 1970s and early 1980s have been released in inexpensive DVD versions.
- Mark Llewellyn
This article examines Sarah Waters' novel, Affinity , in the light of Victorian discourses concerning the nature of criminal women, spiritualism and lesbianism. Placing Waters' novel into the context of these discourses, the essay highlights the parallels between late Victorian and late-twentieth-century lesbianism, particularly in the ways in which Waters herself draws parallels between her central protagonist and diarist, Margaret Prior, and her own role as a contemporary lesbian author.
- Marie-Luise Kohlke
This paper explores contemporary writers' compulsive fascination with the nineteenth century erotic, the multivalent forms of literary re-imaginings of sexual history, and the infusion of present-day socio-political concerns into the literary striptease. Covering a range of neo-Victorian novels, including texts by Margaret Atwood, A. S. Byatt, Michel Faber, J. G. Farrell, John Fowles, Brian Moore, and Sarah Waters, this essay traces the myriad motives for excursions into the Victorian sexscape and their implications for contemporary culture and postmodern identities. Whether exposing the Victorian sexual double standard, recuperating repressed and forgotten histories, constructing genealogies of sexuality, or ironically enacting twentieth/twenty-first century voyeurism, the neo-Victorian novel can be relied upon to deliver a sexsational read.
- Barbara Chase-Riboud
... Auteur(s) / Author(s). GOULD SJ ; Résumé / Abstract. ... Curiosité suscitée par sa stéatopygie et les particularités des parties génitales (conservées au Musée de l'Homme, ainsi que son squelette). Commentaire des préjugés raciaux de l'époque. Revue / Journal Title. ...
Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277176491_Lesbian_Desire_and_Mainstream_Media_Sarah_Waters%27s_Tipping_the_Velvet_on_the_Screen
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