To browse Academia. This essay analyzes the performative aspect of gender identity in a queer romance, Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters. As the novel is set in Victorian times it serves as a means of contrast with the contemporary state and at the same time represents a feminist and lesbian recreation of the silenced history line.
Following the life story of Nancy Astley, Waters connects her search for identity with the theatrical performances through which the protagonist explores her body and polarities between the masculine and the feminine. The essay deals with the challenges and options that arise from the rejection of compulsory heterosexuality and points out the fluid and stage-like character of identity formation. September 8, Although the Victorians were categorically pioneering in the implication of many radical developments, industrially, socially, and even globally; one area in which variety was rarely seen was in the discourse of sexuality.
Over the past twenty years or so, a new form of historical text has emerged, which has come to be known as the Neo-Victorian novel. This study will examine Sarah Waters three Neo-Victorian texts; Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, and Fingersmith, assessing the treatment of both sexuality and gender, and the relationship they have with space.
In Tipping the Velvet, the study will look at how the protagonist journeys through a number of different spaces, and assess her sexual development within each space, discussing how theatricality is used to conceal identity. It will also analyse how Waters imagines the male gaze, and look at the treatment of Victorian ideals surrounding masculinity and femininity.
It will also show how Waters uses intertextuality to convey her own transgressions. The main point of concern will be to judge just how progressive these novels are in their portrayal of lesbianism, and whether Waters succeeds in finding a conceivable space for lesbians within an authentic historical novel. Issues of sexploitation proliferate in social media and the news all over the planet. Se han empleado los estudios queer para el analisis de estas novelas ya que la autora ha puesto en evidencia su punto de vista y orientacion lesbicas.
