a novel's idea

So I decided to take a break from reading the fantasy genre. I took inspiration from my other fixation, the BBC drama department - and finally read Tipping the Velvet. If you know anything about Victorian colloquialisms, well, you might get what the book is about… sort of. I thought I knew what it was about because I watched the movie a couple years back… and decided to read it before ordering it from Netflix.

The end of the book surprised me… because it is not what they ended up doing in the movie. Although the basic idea is there… but whilst reading the last two chapters in the breeze of two fans this morning, I stumbled on a passage that I felt compelled to capture. It is too long for a Facebook post… so even if it ends up just being for my own perusal in future reference, here it is.

“Is it because working people are spendthrifts? Because we would rather use our money to buy gin and porter, and trips to the music hall, and tobacco, and on betting, than on meat for our children and bread for ourselves? You will see all these things written, and hear them said, by rich men. Does that make them true? Truth is a queer thing, when it comes to rich men talking about the poor. Only think: if we broke into a rich man’s house, he would call us thieves, and send us to prison. If we set a foot on his estate, we would be trespassers – he would set his dogs upon us! If we took some of his gold, we would be pickpockets; if we made him pay us money to get the gold back, we would be swindlers and con-men!

“But what is the rich man’s wealth but robbery, called by another title? The rich man steals from his competitors; he steals the land, and puts a wall about it; he steals our health, our liberty; he steals the fruits of our labour, and obliges us to buy them back from him! Does he call these things robbery and slave-holding, and swindling? No: they are termed enterprise; and business skill; and capitalism. They are termed nature.”

Sarah Waters wrote this in the setting of late era Victorian England. She reminds me (and a bunch of other readers) of Dickens, though she is very much a 21st century author. But in spite of the historic context, well… she basically took an idea right out of my own head about our culture. I won’t go further to explain it… because I think it does well enough on its own.

But curious, though, that some battles for justice are the same… no matter the side of the pond… or the century… or the veneer of fiction.