Petite Marie

 If I could pick one magical power; forget flight or invisibility, I would go for dance…

Ballet has this certain, je ne sais quoi. The long hours of isolating and rigorous training, the structure of the ballet world, and last but not least: the identity.

I dropped out of the ballet when I was fifteen. Not because I sucked, though I think if that were the case it would have made it easier for me. But that is a story for another time.

These days, I absorb ballet through pop culture and the occasional live performance. 

Now close your eyes, please. Oka, I admit it´s a stupid question to ask, especially from a reader. So, read first, and then close your eyes for a few tics if you please. Not long, I promise.

Imagine this: a young woman, a young girl, a child still. Waiting backstage during the 

dress rehearsal of a performance in which she´s earned a role. We´re at the Paris Opera, the year is, let´s say eighteen hundred eighty. 

 A faint glow floats across the stage into an empty theatre. The girl flounces her skirt in preparation to make her entrance. She´s no different from countless dancers at the Paris Opera, who didn´t dance there for fame or immortality. They danced for survival – one performance at a time. For them, human animals who glare at each other, virile and impersonal, pretending to have class. They went to this place to be distraught. They watched emotional collapses and exaggerated versions of a familiar feeling. They could tell themselves stories there, about who they were. Sip elegant drinks and live the grandest of stories. 

They went there to see and be seen. Claiming beauty and grace, unable to separate themselves from what is true, and what they told about themselves.

You can open your eyes now. Maybe I should have told you, that you probably know the little girl I asked you to picture before your mind´s eye. Oh yes, I´m quite sure of it. 

By now you´re probably questioning my sanity. I know we are all too young to have seen her in person. Still…

I´m talking about Marie. Petite Marie. Now she´s a one-third life-size sculpture, dressed in a real bodice, tutu, and ballet slippers. She even has a wig of real hair. All but the hair ribbon and the tutu are covered in wax. And can be seen in museums and art galleries: Edgar Degas’ Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. 

 I want to be honest in dealing with this little girl. This tiny life. I don´t want to settle for what everybody else already said about her. I want to “Know” about her.

When was her birthday? What did she think about, what were her dreams, what were her hopes? 

I know I´m running ahead on my story, forgive me for that. I don´t feel the need to spoil it, neither do I wish to write up false hopes. I owe it to you, dear reader, to be honest. There were enough lies and deceit in the life of this little girl. It would be obscene of me to add to it.

You won´t find her soul in my story. I tried; I really did. But I´m not a historical detective and I´m not a medium. I could not find her soul. All I can do, is write a vessel for her, and who knows? Maybe her soul will appear…

Her name was Marie. Marie van Goethem was born to poor Belgian parents who had fled to Paris. Her mother was a laundress.

Marie had an older sister and a younger sister. All three girls were dancers at the Paris Opera from an early age. Make no mistake! This was grueling labor. They were trained from as young as six years old and made their stage debut around age thirteen. It was also a means for young girls to find rich caretakers.

The sisters would pose for artists, as a means to make extra money. It also got Marie got kicked out of the Opera. She missed too many classes while posing.

The dancers were commonly referred to as “Petits Rats.” Petit Rat, or little rat, has its origins in the noise made by the pointe shoes of the young dancers on the wooden floors of the rehearsal rooms situated in the attics of the Paris Opera.

They frequented cafes as an object of admiration and opprobrium, attraction, and repellence. The girls excited interest mostly for their sexual indiscretions and their romantic entanglements. Cheap novels were written about their fictitious exploits. They were described as threats to bourgeois men: they would infect them with venereal diseases or steal their money, even bring ruin to entire families…

Except for aristocratic women, history failed to record the identities of models in works of art. A poor girl like Marie was the exception to the rule.

Marie was a dancer. I don´t know how she danced or how she felt about dancing. She was never heard from.

Renoir put it crudely: “A work shouldn´t stink of the model.”

The models were only meant to be looked at. Marie was nothing but a little rat. Her interior life? Nobody cared.

She did not even know how to read or write. The dancers’ entire lives were spent scraping together meals and attention. 

Celebrity is not always power. To reconstruct Marie´s life means calling out the tension between Marie the performer, meant to titillate the bourgeoisie, and Marie the girl who operated in the margins.

It´s always a white male gaze that controls the image of women, subduing their voices and their stories: almost nude figures, passive, lying supine for the gaze of the male viewer.

-“She´ll do better as a rat at the opera, than as a pussy at the bordello.” One viewer said, on the fact that Degas dressed Marie´s statue at all: this was cause for shock at the exhibition. Nude women were normal, but to have one dressed was a scandalous choice for bourgeois viewers.

-“Does there truly exist a model this horrid and repulsive?” a journalist wondered.

Degas, a fan of phrenology had shaped Marie´s face so that it matched the popular notion of a criminal. He gave her a sloping forehead, a protruding jaw, prominent cheekbones, and thick hair.

The very same spectators who were quick to call Marie ugly, usually had subscriptions to the opera house, to have their 

pick of young teenage girls.

Marie also posed for a statuette called: the schoolgirl.

A schoolgirl is what she might have become if economic necessity and social inequality had not kept her from it… a charming schoolgirl.

It´s intrusive to gaze and pry into the lives of the unknown. When art critics spoke of the nude, they also spoke of power, of the ways important men used the nudes painted on ceilings or hanging from walls to comfort themselves. When they felt outwitted, they could always look up for consolation. It reminded them that they were still men.

On the other end of the spectrum, glimpses into the lives of those women carry a sense of illicitness, power, and shame. 

We are invited to use Marie as a way to explore poverty, class, Parisian entertainment. But what is there to be said of Marie herself?

I felt like a ravenous voyeur, going through her paperwork, hoping to learn what Marie did in her spare time. What did Marie think about Degas? Was she worldly-wise, sweet, and submissive, used to simply obey? Was she embarrassed to stand naked before the stern male artist? We are all complicit, if not guilty, because we all have contributed to the erasure of these women´s lives, and now we peek over the fence in the hope that they will lay themselves bare.

I was unable to construct or even reconstruct a set of believable hypotheticals about Marie´s life. So grand me permission, to write on her behalf – perhaps – a plausible synopsis:

Marie probably never saw the sculpture at the exhibit on the Boulevard des Capucines, not far from the Paris Opera. Maybe a grisette 

passed along the news along the lines of: 

-“Everyone is running off to admire you. Are you the new Mona Lisa?”

I wanted to be honest in dealing with Marie, not settle for what everyone else said about her.

Did Marie think she would have a better life as a model? Less pain and more money?

I am not a historical detective nor a medium. I was not able to find Marie´s soul, but I hope my story can be a vessel to make her soul appear.