Nan King’s Orientation in Sarah Waters’s Tipping the Velvet: A Journey of Gender and Sexual Self-Discovery Following “The Slantwise Direction of Queer Desire”

Q4 Social Sciences

Gender Studies Pub Date : 2021-12-01 DOI:10.2478/genst-2022-0005

Elsa Adán Hernández

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract In Tipping the Velvet (1998), Sarah Waters explores the notion of “gender performativity” as studied by Judith Butler (1990, 1993). Its protagonist, Nancy Astley, becomes aware of her sexuality and comes up with doubts about her gender as responding to the stable label society has put on her. This naïve girl moves from performing gender on stage to cross-dressing off-stage amid the crowds of London, not following, as Sarah Ahmed (2006) puts it, “the straight line” (p. 70). The aim of this paper is to explain how this straightness – both in terms of direction and heterosexuality – is the term Nancy, later on renamed Nan King, does not feel comfortable with. Throughout the novel, Nan’s discovery of a whole world of sexual and identity possibilities leads her to look for her own orientation, as her position in relation to the rest of “objects” around her is a queer one.

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南王在莎拉·沃特斯《拨动丝绒》中的定位:追随“酷儿欲望的倾斜方向”的性别与性自我发现之旅

在《拨动丝绒》(1998)一书中，Sarah Waters探讨了Judith Butler(1990,1993)所研究的“性别表演性”概念。小说的主人公南希·阿斯特利开始意识到自己的性取向，并对自己的性别产生了怀疑，这是对社会给她贴上的稳定标签的回应。这个naïve女孩在伦敦的人群中从舞台上的性别表演到舞台下的异性扮装，而不是像Sarah Ahmed(2006)所说的那样，遵循“直线”(第70页)。本文的目的是解释这种直率——无论是从方向还是异性恋的角度——是南希(后来更名为Nan King)感到不舒服的原因。在整部小说中，南发现了一个充满性和身份可能性的世界，这促使她寻找自己的取向，因为她与周围其他“物体”的关系是一个奇怪的位置。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Gender Studies Social Sciences-Gender Studies

CiteScore

0.30

自引率

0.00%

发文量

157

审稿时长

14 weeks

期刊介绍： Gender Studies is a journal addressing academics and a general readership at the same time and its main goal is to provide a gendered approach to literature, language and society and also to highlight attempts of educationalists and Gender Studies esperts in various parts of the world to institutionalize Gender Studies in the academe. The GS journal publishes high-quality peer-reviewed articles from various Humanities and Social Sciences areas. The GS journal is interdisciplinary—gender proving an excellent analytical category enabling a new perspective on literature, anthropology, social and political studies, cultural studies, linguistics and mass media studies. The GS journal provides state-of-the-art research in all such fields.