“Walking and Watching” in Queer London: Sarah Waters’ Tipping the Velvet and The Night Watch

Abstract

This article argues that Sarah Waters’ representation of London in her historical fictions Tipping the Velvet and The Night Watch is used to delineate the gendered bodies and sexual identities of her characters. A historical summary demonstrates that female masculinity was slowly mapped onto sexual identity between the 1880s and 1940s in Britain. The article argues that Waters’ “inventive” use of this history allows her to question the construction of both historical and contemporary identifications. The way that Waters’ characters are constricted and liberated by London's urban landscape demonstrates the spatial and temporal contingency of both gender and sexuality.

KEYWORDS:

• representations of London
• urban space
• lesbian historical fiction
• female masculinity

Notes

1. Although many passing women had relationships with other women, same-sex desire was not highlighted in popular accounts, nor were these same-sex “marriages” portrayed as comparable to their heterosexual equivalents (Oram, 2007; Clark, 2002: 261–2).

2. An infamous case of a British woman living and passing as male was that of Colonel Barker in 1929 (Collis, 2001).

3. Radclyffe Hall's novel, containing an introduction by sexologist Havelock Ellis, was an open plea for greater understanding for the plight of the invert.

4. Wilson does contend, however, that “there has perhaps been an over-emphasis on the confinement of Victorian womanhood to the private sphere,” and that there were a number of opportunities that city life offered to women, particularly in terms of political or philanthropic work (1991: 31). Waters explores this through the East End socialist character Florence (1998).