Lesbian Audiences

Something that struck me from the reading we did for Tipping the Velvet was the idea that Waters was quoted as targeting the book "primarily towards lesbians." It was a curious quote that came up during the Tipping presentation - the idea that a book can have a targeted aesthetic audience, as opposed to a target market audience. It seemed to me to be kind of a strange statement at first - why would the book need to "appeal" to lesbians more than any other demographic? Surely it could appeal to a rather broad spectrum of readers? But that got me thinking about the reasons one writes a novel. If one wants to make money, universal appeal (or as close as you can approximate) is certainly the way to go. But if one wants to talk about gender analysis and deconstruction, and has the focus of being read by a sympathetic or at least content-literate audience, then certain other ideas become easier to make work. Once you have the lesbian audience in mind, you can highlight certain elements of female or lesbian literature. That first-person vs. third-person argument, for instance. The movement of time and the structure of the plot, focusing on character development over external action. The attention to details associated with the feminine eye or perception. It's interesting to think about how the choice to appeal to lesbians influenced the style of Tipping the Velvet.