These books are made for walking: Shoes in literature

JK Rowling's list of what she wants to include when she guest-edits Woman's Hour includes "the myth and power of shoes": what a fantastic subject. Once you start looking, shoes shine out at you all over the place, from Cinderella's glass slipper to Dorothy's red shoes in the Wizard of Oz. (Though strangely they don't feature in Harry Potter much, apart from Hagrid, whose "feet in their leather boots were like baby dolphins".)

While men have shoes, too – think of Raskalnikov in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment scrubbing the bloodstains from his boots and worrying about his socks – it is women who wear the really important shoes in books, and you can track women's lives via the key items of footwear.

Let's start with some little girls: the Fossil sisters from Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes (and it's noticeable that many of her other books have been retitled and re-packaged to form a "Shoes" series). They have ballet shoes, white kid slippers, and tap and character shoes in patent leather with ankle straps.

This sounds twee, but it's not: the girls need to work and earn money, and these shoes are kit – even if there is a little sentiment involved in the way Posy cherishes her mother's ballet shoes.

In Judy Blume's teen classic Are You There God? It's Me Margaret, the heroine is nearly 12, and is told that if she wants to be one of the cool girls at her new school she has to wear loafers with no socks. Her mother thinks this is ludicrous, and Margaret gets blisters, but she does end up in a secret club.

Keeping your shoes clean is important for Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles. She and her friends on the way to church have to be carried across a puddle by Angel Clare to save their best shoes. But then later on, when she is trying to re-connect with him, she changes out of her boots, then has to watch the Clare family find them and carry them off in disgust, seeing them as trash – could it be more symbolic? "As Tess

thought of her dusty boots she almost pitied those habiliments for the quizzing to which they had been subjected, and felt how hopeless life was for their owner."

In Iris Murdoch's The Black Prince, Julian, who is in her mid-20s, meets up with the much older author Bradley – she's the daughter of his friend and rival. He meets her in the street outside a shoe shop: she is barefoot, she borrows his socks, he buys her a pair of purple boots. "Julian's delight was literally indescribable", and Bradley feels "a ridiculous and unclassifiable sort of glee". Shortly afterwards he realises that she had "gone away still wearing my socks". You might have to be a philosopher like Murdoch to unpick the multiple meanings of that scene.

Chick lit has a reputation for shoes and shopping, and the TV Sex and the City series made much of its Manolos and Jimmy Choos. But the original Sex and the City book, by Candace Bushnell, is a much more thoughtful and affecting affair. The shoes mentioned for Carrie are white patent leather boots, 50s-style satin pumps for an "early Stepford Wives' look" ("You look like a newscaster", Samantha tells her), and strappy sandals when she wants to look like Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction.

Virginia Woolf's The Years is little thought-of now, but was her bestselling book in her own lifetime. Going to bed, the heroine Kitty kicks off her shoes and thinks "That was the worst of being so large; shoes were always too tight – white satin shoes in particular". If you want to look for symbolism here, white satin shoes suggest weddings, which might also be constraining.

Vivian in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep (the Lauren Bacall role in the 1946 film) wears a mannish tweed suit, shirt and tie, and "hand-carved walking shoes" – a brilliant description instantly summoning up a picture of highly-polished brogues.

In Proust, the Duke and Duchess of Guermantes, late for a social event, don't have time to chat to Charles Swann, who has come to tell them – his great friends – that he has been diagnosed with a fatal illness. They are rushing off, no time to talk. But then the Duke sees that his wife is wearing black shoes with her red dress, and tells her off, insisting that she change them – emphasizing the couple's worthlessness (in case we didn't know).

Agatha Christie wrote the aptly named One Two Buckle My Shoe, featuring a brand new patent leather shoe with "a large gleaming buckle". As it turns out, this is a major clue. And Poirot (no great catch himself) is rather snooty about the woman wearing it: "Alas! Nearer 50 than 40," and so he is now "polite but no longer gallant". As women get older, both they and their shoes are becoming less visible.

In a Dorothy Parker short story, Big Blonde, the horrible life of Hazel plays out: she has outlived her beauty, but has to try to keep men happy, partly by wearing high heels – she teeters along "on her aching feet in the stubby champagne-coloured slippers". Even her attempt at suicide is a failure, and she wakes up dreading putting the shoes back on again.

But we can't have that as the only view of shoes in old age, so here's a poem: Jenny Joseph's Warning, the one that begins "When I am an old woman I shall wear purple" (which, for the benefit of those who think it was written specially for birthday cards, was chosen by Philip Larkin for his Oxford Book of 20th Century English Verse). This old woman is going to wear satin sandals AND go out in the rain in her slippers.

And finally, the most lovely shoe image in literature, from Cider With Rosie, involves what were probably cheap rough boots: when Laurie Lee is taken in hand by Rosie, they disappear under a wagon for a short perfect page of pleasure, and halfway through:

She took off her boots and stuffed them with flowers. She did the same with mine.
On the way home, "Rosie carried her boots, and smiled."

So that's my favourite shoe reference. Now the boots are on the other feet: what are yours?