 Writing in 1998 about a period more than 100 years before , Waters employs a continuity between the past and present , particularly as it relates to an outsider 's view of sexuality and gender . Diana bestows Nan with the finest gift she had ever received , an expensive watch that requires no winding . She has nowhere to be except at Diana 's beck and call , and never leaves Diana 's mansion without her . Emily Jeremiah uses this as an example of how Tipping the Velvet fits Judith Halberstam 's declaration that homosexual historiographies " produce alternative temporalities " . Gay and lesbian stories do not use the same rites of passage that most mainstream stories do , leaving aside the importance of birth , marriage , reproduction , and death . This transcendence of time is evident in the narration of the novel . It is Nan 's first @-@ person account of her own past , told many years later . When Nan divulges her past to Florence , Waters uses the first line of the novel to signify where she begins , cycling the story . 
