There is a phrase which is often heard and frequently repeated that is used to describe people – people from the past who have made a particular impact or have striven and/or achieved something new.

Something apparently unexpected. Original.

Of course, they were ahead of their time.

But it has struck me recently, hearing the phrase used on the radio a couple of weeks ago, how absurd and inappropriate it is.

After all, we are all of our time. Whatever Our Time means.

Either reflective of it or in retaliation. We are not ahead of it.

The conversation that made me think about the phrase was on Woman’s Hour, discussing the production of Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes currently on at London’s National Theatre – which I am going to see with my childhood/adolescent/adult/forever friend, Carol. (I am avoiding the use of that damning term oldest friend!)

We both loved Noel Streatfeild’s books and must have read Ballet Shoes, a novel written in the 1930s, numerous times in our respective reading youths.

Anyway, back to the conversation on Woman’s Hour about the book and the production. The three girls that feature in the story – orphans Pauline, Petrova and Posy who are given the surname of Fossil – were described by the director and one of the actors as ahead of their time with their strong sense of ambition. Streatfeild tells us that the girls will:

try to put our name into history books, because it’s our very own and nobody can say it’s because of our grandfathers and we vow to try and earn money for Garnie until Gum comes home.

The director and actor went on to say how unusual this was, for three girls in the 1930s to have such desire and claimed (totally inaccurately, of course) that this was in an era that was pre-feminism of any kind.

What about the suffragettes and suffragists? I said aloud to the radio that did not reply.

What about all those writers of the 19th century? I spoke to the kitchen walls. The Brontes in their Haworth parsonage determined to get published? Jane Austen writing discreetly in her Hampshire drawing room? George Eliot defying social convention by living openly with a man to whom she was not married? Charlotte Perkins Gilman in The Yellow Wallpaper?

(No answer from the radio or my kitchen walls.)

And beyond the world of creativity it’s easy to think of names such as Amelia Earhart, Amy Johnson, Marie Stopes, Nancy Astor – I could go on all day.

Were they all living lives that were ahead of their time? Or simply living IN that time and reacting to the constrictions or the opportunities, the barriers or the avenues that they saw and chose to surmount and venture?

Because it’s surely the very recipe of an era that shapes people – it’s the place from where people peer out to see what to change or develop. What to achieve.

People like fictional Pauline, Petrova and Posy from Ballet Shoes.

I am currently reading Fidelity by an american writer, Susan Glaspell.

First published in England in 1924, but written in 1915, this is certainly a novel that could attract the inappropriate ahead of its time label.

But clearly not. Susan Glaspell exposes the limitations of life in a Midwestern town for women and essentially asks questions about fidelity in its broadest sense. There is a revealing conversation between Ruth, the protagonist who propels the plot, and her friend Annie:

‘Romantic love is a wonderful thing – while it lasts. Sometimes it opens up to another sort of love – and to companionship. With me – it didn’t.’

Annie goes on to explain how she has survived in her barren marriage:

It’s what we think that counts, Ruth. It’s what we feel. It’s what we are. Nobody holds my thoughts. They travel as far as they themselves have power to travel. They bring me whatever they can bring me – and I shut nothing out. I’m not afraid!

Annie shares with Ruth the books she is reading – and this is 1915 – and Ruth learns that:

there were new poets in the world; there were bold new thinkers; there was an amazing new art; science was reinterpreting the world and workers and women were setting themselves free. Everywhere the old pattern was being shot through with new ideas.

Evidently, Susan Glaspell’s book was indifferently received when first published – no doubt considered too ahead of its time. Yet it is so patently of its time, exploring ideas and thoughts prevalent in society in the first decades of the 20th century.

So when I go to see Ballet Shoes next week, I will consider the heroines Pauline, Petrova and Posy as representative and reflective of their author’s thoughts and ideas as she lived her life – Streatfeild was a Christmas Eve baby born in 1895 – rather than three aberrant creatures belonging to some future decade.

And let’s ban that irritating phrase of ahead of their time!

Happy New Year and here’s to lots of reading in 2025!