Tipping the Velvet

Oh! I remember what I was going to talk about!

One of the books we've been assigned in my Intro to Lit class is Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters. It is an absolutely beautifully written novel based in Victorian England. Here, this tells you a bit about it... WooHoo Wiki!

Anyway. One of the things about this novel is that it does have sex scenes. As far as literary sex scenes go, these are very tame. There is no 'throbbing man meat' to be found anywhere. Well...of course not...it's about a young lesbian...anyway. You get the idea. I've read some very racy books - the Kushiel series is one of my favorites, and I have a healthy love for the Sookie Stackhouse books as well as the Merry Gentry series. Don't judge me, sometimes I just like smut! So yes. The scenes in Tipping the Velvet...not bad at all. They aren't nasty, they aren't overly explicit...they are tame, and pretty sweet (well, for the most part.)

Several of the students in the class have expressed their utter disgust in the book. One student went so far as to say, 'I am so disgusted in the sex scenes in this book that I'm not going to finish reading it.' Unfortunately, many of those who have said they were disgusted or repulsed by these scenes have also made it very clear that their disgust really comes from them being lesbian sex scenes.

Oh Noes! We can't take a literary piece and enjoy it, despite portions that make us feel uncomfortable! We can't stretch our imaginations and our comfort zones to find the amazing themes and the beautifully crafted story!

Earlier today, there was a post by a classmate who made the comment that, 'I find it hard to believe that the strongest connection in a lesbian relationship would be the sex...' He essentially said he hated that Waters made all lesbian relationships seem like they are all about sex.

Hey! I read a book once about a husband who abused his wife. That means that all heterosexual relationships are abusive, right? Uh no. Wrong!

So, I called him on it. One of my comments made mention of the fact that it didn't matter that the characters were lesbians - that this story could have very well been about a heterosexual couple who experienced the same issues. Another classmate asked why she wouldn't have just written about a heterosexual couple instead...

All in all - I've been very amused by my classmates responses to this novel. Some of them loved it, some of them were ambivalent, and a few of them absolutely hated it. I keep trying to ask them why, to poke at their brains and make them actually step back and examine what makes them hate the book. I've gotten a few responses, which have been very interesting. Though now that I think about it, I wonder if I shouldn't leave those thought provoking questions to the professor to ask...

At the end of the day, I highly recommend this novel. It is amazingly well written. The characters are robust and believable, and it made me tear up at the end. All in all - it gets 7 out of 10 stars on April's Scale of Novels.