Queer Phenomenology and Tactility in Sarah Waters's Neo-Victorian Fiction

Abstract

Sarah Waters’s neo-Victorian trilogy, Tipping the Velvet (1998), Affinity (1999), and Fingersmith (2002), have been largely discussed from many perspectives. Queer approaches have been utilised in the analysis of these three novels, bearing in mind that Waters has made clear her lesbian agenda. This article will consider Waters’s neo-Victorian trilogy from an altogether new perspective: Sara Ahmed’s notions of orientation and queer touch, which she draws from Maurice Merleau-Ponty and other phenomenologists. In addition, this article will analyse the relevance of the Victorian past through affective materiality and corporeal hermeneutics, in particular the sense of touch with a special emphasis on the hand and the skin. Lastly, Sarah Waters’s neo-Victorian fiction illustrates the sensuous interplay between the Victorian past and today’s culture by employing critical approaches such as phenomenology and sensory studies.