i think this is that Q&A
books.guardian.co.uk/Prin...22,00.htmlSarah Waters Q&A
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Desire, betrayal and 'lesbo Victorian romps'
Read the Booker shortlisted author's responses to readers' questions on class, sex, desire, and betrayal, the TV adaptation of Tipping the Velvet, and the cost of Victorian blowjobs.
Tuesday November 5, 2002
The Guardian
Question: Do you think it's a good idea, now that you've carved out a lucrative market in "lesbo Victorian romps" to become yet another writer focusing on "relationships"? I like the romps. Novels about modern relationships are two a penny.
Sarah Waters: Well, I like the romps, too. (Actually, only Tipping is a romp: why, oh why, did I ever allow the phrase "lesbo Victorian romp" to cross my lips?) But having done three novels of a similar style and setting, I thought it was time for a change. I won't deny that I have also been worried about writing a book that's "just about relationships". But how about if I said it was going to be a novel about love and the loss of love, desire and the loss of desire, betrayal and the corruption of innocence? Does that make it sound any better?
Really, the next novel should have lots of the elements of the old ones, they just won't be played out on the same grand gothic canvas. Anyway, I don't want to just find a lucrative publishing niche and stay in it. I can only write what comes up angling to be written; and the 1940s relationships novel is what has come up this time.
Q: Are you happy with the BBC dramatisation of Tipping the Velvet and do the actresses successfully represent the characters you had created in your head?
SW: On the whole, I'm extremely happy with the dramatisation. Everyone involved was keen to keep the programme faithful to the spirit of the novel, which made the adaptation process a thoroughly enjoyable one for me. But quite apart from that, like lots of other queer viewers I have just been delighted to see this very positive, rather gorgeous lesbian story on peak time British TV.
Some of the actresses are almost exactly as I had pictured them - Anna Chancellor, in particular. Keeley Hawes, I thought, made Kitty (who is rather a cipher, I think, in the book) much more complex and compelling; and of course, is beautiful in just the right way. Jodhi May is really too pretty to be Florence, but was wonderfully attractive and likeable - a good mix, I thought, of feistiness and vulnerability.
Rachael Stirling's Nancy was not really the Nancy I had imagined (I have always thought of Nancy as more sort of golden, in a Dorian Gray-ish way; and - crucially - more butch). Again, however, she made the character appealing, and more spirited, in ways I had not anticipated, and liked very much.
Q: How do you feel about the comparisons drawn between your work and the work of Jeanette Winterson? Do you find the classification of your work (and Winterson's) as lesbian fiction reductive or do you think it is a useful way for readers to consider your work?
SW: The whole Jeanette Winterson comparison thing is, I think, pretty meaningless - more an example of lazy journalism, for it got raised in one review of Tipping the Velvet years ago and has been regularly trotted out ever since. I'm flattered to be compared with Jeanette; it doesn't hurt sales of my books to have her name flashed about on the cover; but I'm sure that she'd be the first to agree that our work has absolutely nothing in common besides the lesbian themes.
I'd far rather critics and readers paid proper attention to the diversity of writing by lesbians rather than trying to lump us all together under one umbrella; though having said that, I'm happy to invoke the label lesbian fiction if it seems meaningful to do so. (As it might be meaningful, for example, to call my work historical fiction.) I tend to overstate the lesbian tag in interviews, if only because I have this naive political faith that you simply can't say the word too many times. I may be wrong there, of course.
Q: Queer as Folk led a heterosexual audience to believe that they were achieving an insight into the lives of gay men. Do you think the TV adaptation of Tipping the Velvet will have similar consequences for the heterosexual perceptions of lesbianism?
SW: No, not really, mainly because neither the book nor the drama had that sort of agenda - or rather, because they had other agendas, too. I hope the adaptation and its reception will have a positive impact on straight perceptions of lesbianism, but ultimately I think the theatricality of the show works against us reading it in a naturalistic way. I tried to get that effect in the novel, too, even though many readers often take the book as a kind of lesbian social history. I hope it's much more playful than that.
Really, I see the novel and the show as being first and foremost interventions into genre rather than history: it just gave me a real kick to see the conventions of BBC period drama - carriages, corsets, kids bowling hoops in the street, etc - being hijacked for a thoroughly lesbian story. It made me understand even more that that was something I'd been aiming for with the book. Does that make sense?
Q: What happens to Nan may have happened to her - because of her social class and events in Victorian Britain - irrespective of her own inner knowledge of the blossoming of her core sexuality, don't you think? This would have been the likely fate of any adventurous, unprotected young woman whose wheel "slipped off the road and into the dyke", for want of a better expression. (Even so I can see parallels with what being a fledgling dyke was like in 1970s London - without the eye watering inhabitant of Diana's casket I might add! Many thanks for such a cry and a laugh!)
SW: I'm not sure I know what you mean. Isn't Nancy's sense of her own sexuality at the very heart of the story? She is led by love, by desire and by the search for community and identity through a range of distinctly lesbian worlds. (This is perhaps truer of the novel than of the show - which plays down the extent to which Florence is a self aware dyke with lots of dyke friends.) Those worlds, and her responses to them, are deeply inflected by class. They operate in the overlap of sexuality and class, don't you think? I'm glad you enjoyed it, by the way.
Q: Did a blowjob really cost that much in Victorian London?
SW: It's funny you should say that because I was surprised when I heard how much Nancy was charging, too. I've just had a look through my old notes but can't find my source. I do know that for information on Victorian renters and renting life I relied a lot on a fictionalised autobiography from the 1880s called Sins of the Cities of the Plain. You could have a look at this, if you're really interested. It's a great read, anyway.
Q: Sarah, thank you for the readings here in Calgary during your swing through Canada. The historical fiction panel you were a part of gave us a good session. I am curious about a remark you made to the effect that writers of historical fiction can expect their work to become obsolete, as being something written about the past in such a way as to interest the present, our present. That is, if I understood you right. Wayne Johnston countered well, though perhaps a mite too smoothly, saying that he still liked Shakespeare, who after all wrote magnificent and deliberately anachronistic historical fictions. But it struck me afterwards that he (and I) hadn't properly understood what you'd meant. Was it one of those throwaway lines born of the panel discussion's inevitably artificial context, or is obsolescence a theme you've been developing?
SW: Yes, that remark of mine went down like a lead balloon; though funnily enough I made the same remark to Michel Faber at a similar event in Vancouver, and he seemed to appreciate it much more - perhaps because our literary projects are rather similar. Or maybe I just expressed myself better then.
I think I used the word "old-fashioned" rather than "obsolete", and what I was getting at was the way in which every era recreates the past in different ways. That the way we imagine the Victorians is different now to how it was 60 years ago (when the Victorians were largely laughed at), or even 30 years ago (when John Fowles wrote The French Lieutenant's Woman), and will be different again to how the Victorians are recreated in the historical novels of 2040 and 2070. I'm very much aware, for example, that my own novel Tipping the Velvet was informed by cultural ideas (eg queer theory) specific to a particular era, and will look more and more dated as time goes on.
This doesn't mean (I hope) that it will become irrelevant or obsolete. But if as historical novelists and historians we accept that the past has no existence beyond our own narratives of it, then we have to let our texts lose their currency in this way... Is that any clearer?
Q: I have read all three of your books, and the depth of your characterisation and trickiness of your plots just keep getting better and better! Affinity's ending depressed me deeply though. Did you always intend to end it the way you did, or was a happy ending ever on the cards?
SW: A lot of people are made depressed by the ending of Affinity. Sorry about that. But yes, I always meant for it to have that ending, and in fact it depressed me, too. It was pretty awful, in fact, working inexorably towards that conclusion - the more so once I had begun to enter imaginatively into Margaret's life, and to like and feel sorry for her. That's the thing about coming up with these dastardly plots: it's all very well in advance, but when you begin to flesh out your characters and understand why they're doing the awful things they're doing, it gets rather agonising. I'm glad you like the trickiness, though. I think there's something life affirming about complex plots, even if they result in your characters getting hurt.
Q: I have read, and loved, all three of your novels. I have always loved historical novels, and, as a lesbian, I loved looking back in time at your "lesbo Victorian romps". I am very anxiously awaiting the time when the film of Tipping The Velvet will be available to viewers here in the States. Any idea when that might happen?
SW: None at all, I'm afraid. I know that it's going to be aired very soon in Canada (or may even have been aired already) on a small gay digital channel called Pride Vision. I also know that, because of the lesbian content, none of the US channels would put any money into the BBC production, so this may well mean they'll be unlikely to buy the series now. On the other hand, the success of the programme here might encourage them to take the risk. The best people to ask might be the production company, Sally Head Ltd.
Q: Sarah, I read Fingersmith earlier this year and was blown away by it as a terrific piece of sustained writing... have now embarked on Affinity which is also utterly splendid. You create characters who are emotionally very engaging and loveable - do you feel a very strong attachment to them? Do your feelings about them ever influence plot?
ps I liked Martel but you should have won the Booker
SW: Well, many thanks - I'm glad you've enjoyed both books. I'm also particularly pleased you responded so warmly to the characters: I tend to think that characterisation isn't my strong point; I think I'm much better at plot. But, yes, I do get attached to my characters, and some (in particular, Nancy in Tipping and Maud in Fingersmith) have voices and outlooks that feel very close to my own. I have never changed the fate of a main character because my feelings about them have grown or changed; it's more (see an answer above) that I've just felt terrible about putting them through the mill. But some minor characters have proved more likeable or interesting than I'd anticipated, and I have brought them back into the plot when I'd originally meant them to have fairly inconsequential roles: this is true of Zena in Tipping, and more especially of Charles the knife boy in Fingersmith. I liked him a lot.
PS I don't think I should have won the Booker, but thanks anyway.
Q: I really liked the way Tipping the Velvet was both contemporary and anachronistic (as many reviewers have pointed out). Were lifestyles such as Diana's really happening in the Victorian era or was that episode in the novel just a great excuse for an enjoyable and exciting sapphic fantasy?
SW: Well, we know that upper middle class men, both gay and straight, had very adventurous sexual lives, so I don't see why some women shouldn't have, too. And certainly women like Nathalie Barney and RenÀe Vivien were doing quite outrageous lesbian things in Paris, only a few years after Tipping is set. I wish I could show you hard evidence of Victorian ladies indulging in the sort of hijinks that Diana and her set get up to; I do have some 1890s photos of women having sex with a strap-on dildo; but on the whole, you're right: the episode was just an excuse for some sapphic jolliness. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Q: To what extent did you have any input into the dramatisation of TtV? I absolutely adored the book and although I enjoyed the BBC version I am rather confused as to why the third part was changed so much for television. Even down to entire conversations being reversed (when Kitty and Nan were in the pub). Was this done with your blessing? Are you pleased with the result?
SW: I didn't really have any creative input at all but Andrew was very generous about showing me drafts of the screenplay, asking for feedback, etc. I knew that some changes would have to be made during the adaptation: I think the changes Andrew made to the final part of part three, for example, make for great dramatic tension. But yes, like you I was rather less happy with the treatment of Florence, who is turned from being a very out and self aware lesbian with lesbian chums into a bit of an ingenue. I can't help but feel that this is a feature of the mainstreaming of the story - ie that straight audiences seem to be more comfortable with endlessly seeing gay characters come out, rather than with watching them being grown up lesbians in their own complicated lesbian world. It also obscures what was for me the poignancy of Nancy finally finding a place and an identity in that world. I never felt unhappy enough to fight for this change to be reversed, however. And the things I like about the show far, far outweigh the small grumbles I have about things like this.
Q: Was that you in the black hat in the audience sequence of the first episode?
SW: It was indeed. I went down to watch them filming some of the show, at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, and they dressed me up and gave me a part as an extra. (I didn't know they were going to use my face in the opening credits, however - that was a nice surprise.) It was fantastically exciting, not least because the scene they were filming was the scene, from early on, where Kitty throws her rose into the audience - a scene that was part of my very earliest vision of the book, and very close to my heart. The dress I am wearing, by the way, had once been worn by Nicole Kidman in Portrait of a Lady. I mention that because, funnily enough, people have many times commented on my striking physical resemblance to Nicole.
Q: Was the dildo used in the BBC production what you had envisioned in the book, or was it purely to make an aesthetic point (sorry)?
SW: No, the dildo wasn't at all how I'd imagined it, though I only really realised that when I saw what they'd come up with. I'd pictured it as having a more polished, ruddier surface, more tightly stuffed, and with little stitches - rather like an elongated cricket ball. The one in the show doesn't look functional to me. I wouldn't like to use it, anyway. Its edges are too rough. It's also absurdly long. And all that gold paint inside you! - yeugh. It's a bit Ken Russell, really. They also never had it strapped on tightly enough. But it's pretty, I suppose.
Q: Sarah, in the TV drama, Nan has such a strange accent/voice - was this your intention? I can't remember Nan sounding like this in your book. Also, in the book I wanted Nan to stay with Florence - but in the TV drama, I wanted her to choose Kitty. This I suspect was down to the fact that the TV adaptation explored Nan's and Kitty's relationship more intensely. Why do you think they did that? It almost seemed like they had run out of time. I really enjoyed it nonetheless.
SW: It's funny you had that reaction because, actually, lots of people seem to want Nancy to go back to Kitty in the book, but found the TV Florence more compelling - ie exactly the opposite response to you. And I felt it was the Nancy/Florence relationship that, in the series, was explored in more depth - partly because the action slows down a bit in part three, and allows for more in the way of character and plot development. I suspect it might come down to people's individual response to the characters and the actresses portraying them.
As for Rachael's voice - I can't really comment on that. I know I fudge her accent shamelessly, in the book: it's sort of generic Victorian, south England, working class. That's what it became in the series, too, I guess.
Q: Does it worry you that a great many people will have bought your book (and watched the TV series) not because they're interested in the social dynamics of Victorian London but because they wanted to read about/see some hot G-G action without having to go to the porn section of the bookshop/watch Channel Five? Don't you think this devalues your work slightly or do you just see it as a few more copies shifted?
SW: This doesn't bother me at all. I feel secure in reaching a lesbian audience and a gay-friendly audience more generally, and those are my priorities. If other people are getting turned on by the book and series for more dubious reasons, then good luck to them! I would hate to have someone tell me what I could and couldn't get turned on by. Also, let's face it, the book's not that racy, and the series is even less so. If people are really looking for some hot G-G action, there are better places they could look.
Q: Which writers first inspired you? Victorian and contemporary? And what do you want to write about in the future?
SW: I've always been a huge Dickens fan. Great Expectations, in particular, seems to speak very particularly to my own preoccupations with class, sex, desire, betrayal and guilt, and odd echoes of that novel crop up in all sorts of places in my books. I like the gothic strain of Victorian fiction, rather than the realist one - preferring Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon to George Eliot and Trollope, for example. In terms of modern authors, I know I've been influenced by ambitious late 20th century historical novelists such as AS Byatt, Peter Carey, Thomas Keneally and John Fowles. Adam Thorpe's Ulverton I think is a masterpiece. Angela Carter has also been an inspiration.
But I owe a debt to some less obviously literary novels, too. Philippa Gregory's Wideacre trilogy first illuminated for me the breathtaking feminist effects that could be achieved within the format of the sensational historical genre; Chris Hunt's historical novels - in particular Street Lavender and N for Narcissus - showed me the similar things that could be done for a gay agenda. Really, these two writers have had a huge impact in me, and I sometimes forget to acknowledge that.
As to what I want to write about in the future: well, the book I'm working on now is about lesbian relationships in 1940s London. I still have a hankering for the Victorian period, however, and may well return there in the future, in perhaps a slightly different style. But the 1950s also appeal. Fingersmith has been received quite enthusiastically as a sort of crime novel; I would love to do something else in that tradition - perhaps (if I might put myself in Patricia Highsmith's exalted company for a second) a female Talented Mr Ripley. I'd like that a lot.
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by themagicpixie » Tue Nov 12, 2002 5:11 am 
at: 11/14/02 7:14:35 pm
