In this book, three different scenarios of feminism which reflected on lesbianism are respectively presented: The male impersonator performance in the music hall The pornographic display and philanthropy in the upper-class ladies’ club The socialist feminist activities among the working-class. The city’s past Victorian ambience and societal structure are exposed from Nancy’s eyes to the readers. This is a “lively, gusty, highly readable” feminist novel ( Observer, n.d.) and lesbianism is a kind of attitude: The story mainly happens in London from 1888 to 1895, which is in the late Victorian period that the first-wave feminism was happening in the West. Ithas three parts and nineteen chapters with the first-person female narrator: Nancy Astley. In TTV, Waters describes the gender identities and class perceptions in that era by providing perspectives on Victorian lesbian narratives. There are not many canonical works that describe lesbianism in great detail, lesbianism is still a part of history and can be studied in the form of texts (ibid., n.d., 15). The Lesbianism did exist during that era based on the facts of lesbian romance in historical settings (Meuwese 2018, 15). Her first three novels: Tipping the Velvet (1998), Affinity (1999) and Fingersmith (2002), are all with lesbian protagonists in the Victorian era. Her books are largely influenced by her academic background and her research about the 19th-century pornographic literature and her PhD thesis (1996) on lesbian history played inspired roles in her debut Tipping the Velvet. As “one of the best storytellers alive today” ( Independent, n.d.), Waters’s writings are confident, precise and sensuous with irony and wit ( Observer, n.d.).
0 kommentar(er)
