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Interview
by Carol Seajay
Sarah
Waters started writing her first novel, Tipping
the Velvet, as
she was finishing a dissertation on lesbian and gay
historical fiction from 1870 to the present at the
University of London. Her burst
onto the literary scene with three very-lesbian-inclusive
romps through the underbelly of Victorian England – Tipping
the Velvet, Affinity, and Fingersmith – has
rescued lesbians from the cracks in history and taken
England by storm. Affinity won the Sunday Times Young
Writers of the Year Award; Channel Four
has produced both Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith; in
2003 she was named one of Granta’s best British
writers under forty; Fingersmith was shortlisted
for both the Orange Prize and the Man Booker Prize; Fingersmith and The
Night Watch have made the bestseller lists,
Here
in the states she has a passionate cult following
among queer and feminist readers, but our more Puritan
literary establishment has yet to catch on. Perhaps
they’ll get the message with her new book, The
Night Watch where Waters moves to mid-blitz
London to take up her themes. I caught up with her
while she was on tour in Ireland and Australia, before
coming to the U.S.
Where
did your fascination with the Victorian Era come
from?
The
fascination with the period really came as I was
writing Tipping, rather than before. I went
to the 1890s because it seemed a perfect decade in
which to set a lesbian historical novel (all the
socialism, the utopianism, the suffragism etc - plus
the general 'naughtiness'); but then I got increasingly
hooked on the Victorians.
Had
you always intended to be a writer?
I
hadn't written anything before Tipping,
so it was a real leap of faith. I'd always loved
writing as a kid, but I was always 'bookish', too;
my writing became academic rather than 'creative'.
But doing the PhD gave me a confidence with words,
and a daily writing routine. It was perfect training
for a novelist like me.
What
was your original goal when you started writing?
My
goal was to pursue some ideas which interested me
(much as I had in the PhD), and to write the kind
of novel I'd have liked to read myself – a
lesbian historical romance, that would be a bit ambitious,
and literary, too. I'd been reading lots of lesbian
historical novels and they all seemed to me to tell
the same small-scale story: two women meet in some
rural town, and fall in love; there's a frowning
patriarchal figure in the way - an elder brother,
or a minister who accuses them of witchcraft; but
finally they get together and escape into the forest
to become wise women. I wanted to write a story that
had lesbians at the heart of urban life; that played
with literary models; and, more importantly, showed
that there was not just one way of being a lesbian,
but many.
Was
the publishing world eagerly awaiting a series
of deep, accurate, racy Victorian lesbian tales?
It
took what felt like ages to find a publisher (actually,
less than a year, I think). I tried about 10 UK publishers,
large and small - including Virago - and they all
sent the manuscript straight back. I had just got
to a point where I was considering some of the American
gay presses when I got an agent. It took her a little
time to sell the novel, though - she had the idea
that she could place it with a very 'mainstream'
publisher, but didn't find any takers. It was very
disheartening; but I must have had some confidence
in my writing, because I'd already started Affinity when
we finally sold the book to Virago.
With The
Night Watch you’ve moved your storytelling
to WW II London, looking at women’s lives – and
pacifist men’s lives – as London
is being constantly bombed. What piqued your
interest and shifted your imagination to such
a different era?
I
wanted a change. Much as I loved the nineteenth century, I
didn't want to get stuck there. I'm not sure what
it was about the 1940s that really called to me;
but something did. One of my favorite films is Brief
Encounter; it has an utterly heterosexual plot,
but there's always seemed to me to be something
very gay about it - the lure of forbidden love; the
secret passion; the necessity to put family duty
over desire. These aren't that different to the sort
of issues that attracted me to the Victorian period,
really. But I was interested to see those issues
being played out on a very different social (and
physical) landscape.
I’m
haunted by your opening scene in Night Watch: Kay,
standing in the open window, considerably worse
for wear, with even her clocks and watches stopped. My
Irish grandmother used to ask me (usually at the
most inopportune moments), “How do you get
that way?” As a young person I always heard
it as abject disapproval, but more recently it’s
occurred to me that she really wanted to know.
Was this your question for Kay and the others?
Yes,
that was absolutely my question. I started with the
1947 setting and a group of characters who were all
clearly 'damaged' in some way (an early title for
the novel was 'Harm'). They were so damaged and tired
and jaded, in fact, I didn't know what to do with
them, didn't know how to move them forwards. Then
I realized that (especially given the '40s setting)
what was most interesting about them might be not
what was going to happen to them, but what already
had. The backwards structure made perfect sense to
me after that because that's what life is like -
getting to know someone new is, as you say, all
about getting to know about 'how they got that way'.
How
did you research lesbian lives during the war?
I
read everything I could get hold of - which, to honest,
wasn't that much. There have been some great collections
of lesbian and gay oral histories published
in the UK; there's a particularly good book about
London's lesbian club, The Gateways (From the
Closet to the Screen, by Jill Gardiner). I found
bits and pieces in odd places--in diaries, for example
(the young Joan Wyndham records seeing handsome “lezzies” in
Soho; the artist and writer Denton Welch talks about
his lesbian friends). There's a good novel of lesbian
love set in 1940s' London, called Winter Love,
by Han Suyin. I also talked to older lesbians, when
I got the chance.
Where
has your imagination turned now? Will you continue
with this era?
Yes,
people seem to finish The Night Watch wanting
a sequel... I think that's unlikely, to be honest;
but for the next book I do plan to move into the
early '50s. I've become very attached to the post-war
scene, and feel there's more about it that I'd like
to explore. I'd like to look more at how the war
really shook up the British class system, for example.
Carol
Seajay is the founder and editor of Books To
Watch Out For: www.btwof.com.
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