 Starting as a working @-@ class girl and experiencing music halls , prostitution , luxury , and a socialist struggle for utopia , Nan 's journeys through the class system in Tipping the Velvet are as varied as her gender portrayals and love affairs . Aiobheann Sweeney in The Washington Post notes , " like Dickens , [ Waters ] digs around in the poorhouses , prisons and asylums to come up with characters who not only court and curtsy but dramatise the unfairness of poverty and gender disparity in their time " . 
