Although Noel Streatfeild’s best known (and first) novel was published back in 1936, I didn’t read it in childhood. I was not a “ballet child”. My mother loathed what she called “little girls showing off” so there was never any question of it. I was in my twenties before I saw my first ballet although I had long been familiar with much of the music.
I discovered Ballet Shoes in the 1970s when I began teaching in girls’ schools and it made a good Year 7 class reader at a time when we had no National Curriculum shoving us towards “relevant” texts featuring death, multiculturalism, sexuality and the like. But I hadn’t read it, or even thought about it, for a long time. Then, earlier this month I saw and enjoyed Kendall Feaver‘s imaginative adaptation for the National Theatre which sent me scuttling back to the novel to remind myself of what Streatfeild actually wrote.
My first observation is that, although to some it might seem datedly “twee” and white, this is actually a pretty gritty novel. Here we have three adopted girls growing up in an unconventional family headed by a young woman and an older one. The youngest child, Posy, has actually been abandoned/relinquished at birth which is a difficult issue for any child at any time. Two of the lodgers are a female gay couple. This is clear but not overt in the novel. Nearly 90 years later Feaver can, and does, run with it openly in her adaptation.
Then there are the feminist issues. Petrova is not interested in the performing arts other than as a means of shoring up ailing family finances. She wants to be an engineer and we recognise that she probably will be. Pauline, a talented actor, is determined on a career of her own, as is the sometimes tiresomely single-minded Posy who dances: exactly the sort of child my mother would have detested and put down promptly. On the other hand, she too is focused on her own development and success. Yes, they are dependent on a man, sort of. The missing Great Uncle Matthew (GUM) is a palaeontologist who has been gone a very long time and no one knows whether he’s dead or alive. The money he left has run out. Each of them, therefore, has to pull her weight and it’s empowering and uplifiting for the reader. Considering the date of this novel, Ballet Shoes is remarkably progressive.
It’s also beautifully written and a good read. Every character is colourfully realistic. Moreover, I enjoyed the theatre references when I first encountered it and did so again now. There’s a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which Petrova, who’s not a natural, really struggles with Peaseblossom’s “I too” and a Richard III in which Pauline excels, as she does in a film where she plays Charles II’s sister which turns out to be her “break”. This was actually Noel Streatfeild’s own world. She was a RADA trained actor herself which is why rehearsal scenes and the like are so convincingly presented.
Ballet Shoes has never been out of print and is now, justifiably, regarded as a classic. Any young person reading it today could be the fifth or sixth generation in his/her family to enjoy the ups and downs of Pauline, Petrova and Posy as they grow towards their respective destinies. And there’s something special about a parent or grandparent handing on a book they remember with affection. My mother led me to a number of books which became lifelong favourites but, of course, none was about ballet. We’re all different, thank goodness.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave