Sarah Waters OBE is a Welsh author famous for her LGBTQ+ themed, Victorian-era works. Her novels, which often feature lesbian protagonists have won numerous awards, been translated into over 24 languages, and also appeared on David Bowie’s favourite 100 list.
Sarah Waters biography
Sarah Waters was born in 1966 in Pembrokeshire, a county in South West Wales. Her father, Ron, was an engineer and her mother, Mary, was a housewife. She has one much older sister, so grew up almost as an only child. Encouraged to be creative by her father, she wrote 'terrible gothic pastiches'1 and built Airfix models of classic planes.
A pastiche is a work of art or literature that imitates another work or works from a previous era. Unlike parody, a pastiche does not mock another work.
Following in her parent’s footsteps, Waters attended Milford Haven Grammar School. She has mentioned that provincial Wales did not generally promote explorations of sexual preferences outside the heterosexual. As a result, while at Milford, she dated a few teenage boys who were 'a bit effete'.1
Moving to Whitstable, she received a BA in English Literature from the University of Kent. This was followed by an MA from Lancaster University and then a Ph.D. from Queen Mary, University of London. Her thesis was titled 'Wolfskins and togas: lesbian and gay historical fictions, 1870 to the present', already indicating the themes of her future novels.
Despite beginning her first long-term lesbian relationship with a girl named Kate when she was 19, Waters only officially came out in the late 1980s. This step was made during a time of legal back-peddling on previous advances for LGBTQ+ rights.
Her first novel, Tipping the Velvet (1998), was begun while she completed her Ph.D. Since its publication, her books have won awards from the Somerset Maugham Award (2000) to the Stonewall Book Award (2001, 2003, 2007) and the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger (2002). She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (2009) and was awarded an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empirefor services to literature in 2019.
Section 28 or Clause 28 was a piece of legislation introduced by Margaret Thatcher's government in 1988. It prohibited the promotion of homosexuality by local government and resulted in many LGBTQ+ groups closing down or self-censoring.
The legislation was in place until 2000 in Scotland and 2003 in England and Wales. It was considered a regression from the Sexual Offenses Act 1967 which decriminalised homosexual sex. Sex between woman had never been officially illegal at that stage.
The Sexual Offenses Act was a bill originally introduced by Lord Aron in 1966 to the House of Lords. It was passed through the House of Commons by MP Leo Abse.
Sarah Waters partner
Waters has lived with her partner, editor Lucy Vaughan, since 2002. Vaughn works for a TV listing company and Waters has joked that she has 'far more readers than I do'.2
Fig. 1 - Sarah Waters
Sarah Waters: books
Sarah Waters focuses on the Victorian era and LGBTQ+ themes in most of her six novels. Extensive research and well-crafted prose are some features of her novels that have made her as widely read and awarded as she is today.
Sarah Waters: Tipping the Velvet
Waters wrote Tipping the Velvet (1998), her first novel, while she was a Ph.D. candidate. She wanted to write a book that she would like to read. After a long struggle to find a publisher, Tipping the Velvet was eventually published by Virago Press in 1998.
Set in London in the 1890s, the title comes from the slang term for cunnilingus (a sex act) apparently used in Victorian pornography. Following the personal development of the lesbian protagonist, Nancy 'Nan' Astley, the novel explores themes of sexuality, gender, and class.
Tipping the Velvet is considered to be both a picaresque novel and a Bildungsroman. The book has a protagonist who is portrayed as lower class. She survives on her wits, often committing what general society would consider questionable acts. These elements have led to the book being classified as a picturesque novel.
In contrast, Nan’s progressive journey of self-discovery and character growth do not fit with the 'once a pícaro, always a pícaro' protagonist of the traditional picturesque novel. Her journey to self-knowledge and acceptance has resulted in Tipping the Velvet also being described as a Bildungsroman.
A picaresque novel is a genre within literary prose. Usually featuring a lovable or at least relatable rogue for a protagonist, the picturesque novel often has satirical or comedic elements.
A Bildungsroman is sub-genre of the coming-of-age story. It features a protagonist's journey of spiritual or emotional growth rather than just a reaching of maturity based on age.
Tipping the Velvet: plot
The novel begins by introducing the protagonist, Nan, who is a naïve 18-year-old, working in her family’s oyster restaurant in Whitstable, Kent. She falls in love with a performer named Kitty Butler who is a visiting 'masher' or male impersonator. She goes to London as Kitty’s dresser and eventually becomes her performance partner. They fall into a romantic relationship that ends suddenly when Nan discovers Kitty in bed with her manager, Walter.
Nan is devastated and leaves. Disguised as a young man, she begins a life of prostitution. She briefly meets a socialist activist, Florence, who later takes her in as a housekeeper after the wealthy widow Diana throws her out on the street. Nan and Florence start a tentative relationship. Nan sees Kitty again at a rally but realising how diminished she had been by the relationship and the betrayal, she opts to stay with Florence.
How do you think Waters portrays Nan's character development? How is Nan different to the girl she was when she left Whitstable?
Sarah Waters: Fingersmith
Set in London in the Victorian era, the novel follows the journey of protagonist, Sue Trinder. She lives with a group of skilled pickpockets or fingersmiths, in a house run by a baby farmer, Mrs. Sucksby.
Sue is pulled into an elaborate swindle scheme by Gentleman. He wants to con a seemingly naïve heiress, Maud Lily, out of her fortune by seducing her and then having her committed to a 'madhouse'. Sue is roped in to assist by gaining Maud’s trust. In a plot twist that unseats her narration, Sue is the one institutionalised.
Maud takes over the narrative, describing her troubled upbringing as her uncle's assistant in his creation of an extensive bibliography of literary pornography. In yet another twist, she is double-crossed by Gentleman, who takes her straight to Mrs. Sucksby. There Maud learns that she and Sue were swapped at birth and it is Sue who is the heiress. Mrs. Sucksby further reveals that Maud is her daughter and that the inheritance was split between her and Sue but now Mrs. Sucksby is controlling it all.
In a lucky coincidence, Sue is assisted to escape the asylum and returns to confront Maud and Gentleman. Gentleman is stabbed to death in the resulting confusion and scuffle. Mrs. Sucksby, suddenly finding some ethics, saves the two women by confessing to his murder and is hanged. Sue and Maud end up together.
Fingersmith was a word originally used by James Vaux in the 19th century. Thought to describe a midwife, it also came to mean anyone who was skilled with their fingers, especially thieves or pickpockets.
Between the 18th and 20th century in the United Kingdom, women could be institutionalised by their husbands, brothers or fathers. Often requiring little more reason than the woman being too opinionated, unruly or just inconvenient, men could ensure a women's vulnerability and submission by having her committed.
Other than motives of the need to exert power or control, there were financial reasons too. Until the Married Woman's Property Act of 1882, a committed wife's assets would have passed directly to her husband. This would have been the situation that Mrs Sucksby sought to exploit.
Fingersmith: themes
The novel has Water’s usual Victorian and LGBTQ+ themes as can already be identified upfront in
her double entendre title. The novel also has a feminist perspective on pornography and Victorian gender relations.
In addition, the unreliable narration and layers of double-crossing and truths revealed play into the duality of history as a reliable source of truth and the epistemology of what we think we know.
A double entendre is a phrase open to two interpretations, one of which is usually a little too sexually suggestive or socially awkward to say directly.
Epistomology is the study or theory of knowledge and how it is created.
Sarah Waters: writing style
Sarah Waters was long considered a lesbian writer of Neo-Victorian fiction but more recently she has been read as a contemporary novelist who approaches themes of queerness, sexuality, class, and gender.
Neo-Victorian literally means post Victorian. It is a term to describe more modern works set in the Victorian era and containing themes related to the works of that time.
Although her works are supported by extensive historical research, they are ultimately fictional. However, in novels like Fingersmith, Waters uses fictional narrators and narratives to address the thin or even sometimes blurred line between historical fiction and historic fact.
Waters is open about her literary influences from Oscar Wilde and George Gissing to Victorian Sensation novels. The use of pastiche is evident in many of her works, but she has lately mentioned her progressive move towards character development and away from what is termed 'historiographic metafiction'.
Waters also self-deprecatingly called her work 'lesbo historical romps'.3 She has since distanced herself from the description but it gives further insight into her unusual ability to pack literary themes into novels that can also pass as 'just entertainment'.
Victorian sensation novels are considered to have begun in the 19th century with novelists like Mary Braddon, Ellen Wood and Wilkie Collins. They tended to be dramatic, occasionally far-fetched and sought to create high levels of suspense for the reader.
Metafiction is when a work of fiction self consciously refers to the process of writing or creating a literary work.
Historiographic metafiction is a blend of historical fiction and metafiction that subverts accepted histories to highlight suppressed or alternate viewpoints.
Sarah Waters - Key takeaways
- Sarah Waters was born in 1966 in Wales.
- She wrote her first novel, Tipping the Velvet, while doing her Ph.D. but it was only published in 1998.
- Her regular themes include queer sexuality, gender, class, and history as a construct.
- Considered a Neo-Victorian author, Waters has gained both commercial and literary success.
- Her awards include the Stonewall Award and the Somerset Maugham Awards as well as an OBE for services to literature.
References:
1 Michelle McGrane, 'Sarah Waters on Writing', Litnet. 2007
2 Robert McCrumb, 'What Lies Beneath', The Guardian. 2009
3 Arifa Akbar, 'Sarah Waters: 'Is there a Poltergiest within me?'', The Independent. 2009
References
- Fig. 1 - Sarah Waters (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sarah_Waters_(cropped2).jpg) by Kimsaka (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kimsaka) is licensed by CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en)
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