Jaipur, Jan 29
Of the six novels Welsh author
Sarah Waters has written, five have lesbian couples as protagonists and
for someone who has championed gay rights through her writings, she was
extremely disappointed, like several others, with the Supreme Court's
2013 order recriminalising homosexuality.
"It was very
disappointing to know that they were again recriminalised. From the
outside world, this decision looked very disappointing," Waters told
IANS in an interview on the sidelines of the just-concluded Jaipur
Literature Festival.
"It is a backward move because the world is
such an odd place for gay people all around the globe. On one hand you
have liberal countries and on the other you have countries where it is
completely banned," she added.
Even though the 48-year-old
doesn't know which way India is headed where conservative movements are
challenging the existence of the LGBT community within the Indian social
system, Waters hopes things will change for good if the state
understands the importance of respecting this community's rights.
While
India will take some time to recognise the gay community, Waters was
blessed to have grown up in a country that had started to develop
liberal views in the early 1990s.
And this, indeed, helped her in
coming out of the closet about her sexual identity and being welcomed
in an open society where she could marry her partner.
One aspect of society however bothered her constantly.
"There
was never the right projection of gay or lesbian couples in the
mainstream. Their portrayal in the mainstream medium was confined to
certain stereotypes and I wanted to break those myths," she recollected.
Hence
she chanced upon the writing territory after completing her doctorate
in literature. She was surprised by the almost "negligible" reference of
lesbian couples in the historic times and always pondered over how they
would have behaved.
"My plan in the first place was to tell a
story through a novel that hasn't been told before in the mainstream and
I knew I was taking the chance of meeting the present with the past,"
she said.
"There were depictions about gay life in our history,
but it was because only men were arrested then. They were quite
flamboyant and would sometimes dress as women...so they had a record.
But what about women, what did gay women do?" Waters asked.
It
was in this quest that she delved into historical fiction and wrote
bestselling novels like "Tipping the Velvet"(1998), "Affinity" (1999),
"Fingersmith" (2002) - shorlisted for Man Booker Prize - and "The Little
Stranger"(2009), among others.
"These novels are opportunities
to explore their lives and try and imagine what it would have been like
to be a gay woman in Victorian times," she said.
Without knowing,
Waters' writings have made it to mainstream readers and she feels that
what she has been able to achieve is to present "positive
representations" of the lesbian couples because their relationship has
always been shown as "tragic" and "unhealthy".
"People have been
very cozy about lesbian relationships. I am glad my writings have been
able to break that stereotype," she said.
However, as a woman,
writing about lesbians and their sexual chemistry has put her into an
uncomfortable zone which, according to her, "puts a lot of pressure on
women authors to be modest in their writings."
"Even in the West,
sex is seen as startling when a woman writes about it and this
sexualises her. So, in my novels, there are sex scenes but not too
much....but they do get noticed. It is about women not having quite the
freedom," Waters concluded.
(Shilpa Raina can be contacted at [email protected])
