Ballet Shoes

Audiences praise Pauline’s performance as Alice, and the praise starts to go to her head. At home, she tells her sisters to fetch things for her, saying that she has become accustomed to people helping her at the theater. At the show, she tries to command Winifred, who got the role of the understudy. Nana is “shocked that anybody she [has] brought up could behave so atrociously” and tells Pauline to fetch her own items (133).

Pauline’s pride comes to a head when she’s disrespectful to the stage manager. She’s supposed to hang a cotton wrap over her clothes, and when the play first started, “Pauline was very good at remembering it, but after a bit she thought it a bore and left it hanging where Nana had left it” (134). For several days, the stage manager asks her to get the wrap, but she refuses. Finally, he comes to her room and asks her in person, but she still refuses.

Mr. French, the managing director, steps in and asks what’s going on with Pauline. Nana thinks it’s for the best that she receive a scolding and tells him everything. Mr. French then firmly tells Pauline to get the wrap, and she replies, “Get it yourselves if you want it fetched” (136). This is the last straw, and Mr. French tells Pauline that for the next performance, Winifred will play Alice, and Pauline must sit it out as the understudy.

After Pauline has a good cry about it, she starts to wonder if she was being rude. That night, she talks to Nana about it, who tries to comfort her, saying, “Pride has to come before a fall, and that’s the law of nature; you’ve got your fall, and now you’ve got to be brave and get up again” (138). Pauline later apologizes to Mr. French. He tells her that it’s all right but emphasizes the lesson: No one is so talented that they can’t be replaced.

Now, Petrova is in her final year before she’s old enough for a license. She has improved at dancing; “in fact, there [is] nothing wrong with her work, except that it bore[s] her” (143), and she shows it. The one part of the week that she loves is when she goes to the garage on Sundays. Often, she and Mr. Simpson go in his car to watch planes fly or see car races at tracks. Petrova loves planes the most and starts to dream of flying one someday.

Posy, meanwhile, immerses herself in dancing, and Madame Fidolia asks Sylvia to have her at the school for half of each day. Posy is especially excited when she finally gets to “wear the little shoes her mother had given her; […] they were always too big, but [this] autumn they [fit]” (144). She’s careful to pull them out only on special occasions, but she eventually outgrows them. She tries to pretend that they don’t pinch her feet for fear of them being thrown out, but Madame Fidolia offers a solution: She asks to keep the shoes as a souvenir and makes a glass case for them so that she can hang the shoes on the wall.

Sylvia’s financial worries worsen; the girls don’t have much acting work at the moment, so the family’s main income is from the boarders. At Petrova’s birthday picnic, which Mr. and Mrs. Simpson arrange, Pauline gathers her sisters to renew their vow again but amend it, adding that they vow to help Sylvia (or Garnie, as they call her) by earning money.

Then, the girls receive news that feels so miraculous that they wonder if making the vow had anything to do with it. They receive word that “Pauline [is] to go and see them about the part of Peaseblossom, and Petrova [is] to be seen for the ballet of fairies” for an upcoming production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (150). The girls sleep soundly that night, ready to make good on their vow.

Two girls are auditioning this time, and the weather is warm, so the Fossil sisters need dresses again. Petrova offers her birthday money to buy materials for new dresses. The project becomes a group effort for everyone at the house: “Cook made the slips, Mrs. Simpson whipped the frills, which took hours, and Sylvia made up one dress and then the other” (153). Once Pauline and Petrova put the dresses on, they’re all pleased with themselves and their hard work.

After waiting for a while at the audition, Pauline hears her name called. She’s stunned when she’s asked to walk on the stage and then leave. When she asks if the panel wants to hear her Shakespeare monologue, they say they don’t. Pauline won’t let it go easily: “It [is], she thought, very mean to bring her down, and then refuse even to hear her” (155). Suddenly, she hears a familiar laugh: It’s Madame Fidolia. She curtsies and then rushes offstage to find the panel in the audience. They tell her that almost all of the casting panel saw her as Alice and that they know she’ll make a perfect Peaseblossom.

The young girl who was supposed to audition for the role of another fairy, Mustardseed, hasn’t shown up. Pauline tells them that they should ask to see Petrova read for the part. Petrova thought that she would only have to sing and dance for her audition, so she’s surprised when she’s asked to recite a monologue as well. She performs the boy’s speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V. She does well until she suddenly forgets a line. Luckily, Pauline comes to her rescue and whispers her lines from the wings of the stage, and Petrova gets through the rest of the monologue perfectly.

Pauline and Petrova are both cast for their roles. They’re still celebrating when Winifred, disheveled, runs toward them: She was supposed to be seen for Mustardseed. She asks if she’s too late, explaining, “I was at Canvey Island, and Mother only got the letter today—they forgot to forward it” (160). Petrova awkwardly tells her that she’s too late and that she’ll be playing Mustardseed.

Winifred is clearly hurt but tells Petrova that she’s glad the role went to her if she couldn’t get it herself. Nana encourages her to try to find Mr. French and ask about being an understudy. She also offers to iron Pauline’s dress for Winifred to wear to the audition the next day so that she can try out for the fairy ballet. After Winifred leaves, Nana turns to Pauline and says that she hopes she doesn’t mind that she offered her dress, but Winifred desperately needed something besides her old, tattered dress for the audition.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream turns out to be the most spectacular production that Pauline has been in yet, and she warns her sister not to start thinking that every production will be as grand. Petrova isn’t as impressed and is often bored at rehearsals; “when [she is] not wanted for the fairy scenes, or to work on one of the innumerable ballets” (168), she finds a corner and reads her book on airplanes.

One rehearsal that she and Pauline both love is the day they get to fly on stage. At the end of the play, Oberon, Titania, and the fairies are lifted into the air. The younger dancers are elegant in their harnesses, but the adults have a harder time with it. As they watch the adults struggle, they think that “[t]he whole flying rehearsal [is] more like a game than work, [and] they [laugh] so much” at the adults’ awkward, stiff, and clumsy movements (169).

Finally, the day of the performance comes, and both Fossil sisters do exceptionally well in their roles. This is the first play that Posy gets to attend. Even though Dr. Jakes prepares her by telling her the story of the play, Posy is mostly bored. However, despite her usually snobbery about the quality of dancing, she enjoys the dances.

In bed at home that night, the sisters can’t sleep. First, Pauline asks Petrova if she thinks she’ll like working on the stage. Petrova thinks about it but realizes that despite the fun she had in the flying rehearsal, she’ll have less time to study planes now that she’s working, so she doesn’t think she’ll like it. Then, Posy starts an argument with them about the move that the principal dancer did at the end. They get so loud that Nana has to come into their room and tell them to quiet down and go to sleep.