Thursday, March 25, 2004
COMMENTARY
A Bit of the Old, a Bit of the New, She's Still Our Nancy Drew
By Melanie Rehak
March 24, 2004
"My name is Nancy Drew. My friends tell me I'm always looking for trouble,
but that's not really true. It just seems to have a way of finding me."
Meet America's favorite girl sleuth, circa 2004. She's back in town, in
Simon & Schuster's newly launched "Nancy Drew Girl Detective" series, and
this time she's talking directly to us, in the first person. Of course,
Nancy has spoken to American women and girls from the moment she solved her
first crime, in 1930's "The Secret of the Old Clock." That the books have
been written by a succession of writers under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene
may be, more than anything else ‹ even that famous blue roadster ‹ the
reason that Nancy has endured. Thanks to her various creators, and just like
the rest of us, she's always changing.
In her earliest incarnation, Nancy was a fierce, occasionally gun-toting
firebrand who didn't bother with a boyfriend. If she had to steal evidence
at a crime scene, she did it with moral clarity and in a perfect frock. The
character was written in those first years by a tough-minded University of
Iowa graduate named Mildred Wirt Benson, who went on to become a journalist
and a pilot. She worked from outlines provided by Edward Stratemeyer, who
had cooked up the idea of Nancy, if not the particulars, in the late 1920s.
Nancy was beautiful, popular and smart; she also had qualities Benson
specifically admired ‹ she was preternaturally mature, extremely sensible,
very good at sports and didn't take guff from anyone. She was absolutely of
her era in prejudices, language, interests and appearance, with the
exception that she, like Benson, knew how to get what she wanted.
When Stratemeyer died in 1930, his two daughters took over the job of
writing Nancy Drew outlines. His elder daughter, Harriet Adams, became
especially invested in Nancy Drew. She was the product of her well-to-do
East Coast family, educated at Wellesley and the mother of four children.
Though she had wanted to work, the social mores of her class and time
prevented her from doing so. Her father's death, though devastating to her,
gave her the opportunity to fulfill her dream.
Under her watch, Nancy began to change. She acquired a long-suffering
boyfriend, Ned Nickerson. She stopped talking back. She treated her
housekeeper, Hannah Gruen, like a member of the family instead of mere hired
help, and was less apt to use complicated words.
By 1940, when "The Mystery of the Brassbound Trunk" was published, she had
even learned a thing or two about feminine wiles, using them on Ned to get
her car fixed ("You know just what needs to be done and I don't," she pleads
kittenishly), whereas she once would have gotten out the jack herself ‹ or
at least called the tow truck. Benson was still writing the books, but
little by little Adams was recalibrating Nancy: She was less Midwestern
upstart and more Wellesley girl with every passing year.
In the late 1950s and '60s, Nancy evolved yet again ‹ this time in response
to the world that was changing around her. Racial stereotypes, including
black characters who spoke exclusively in Southern slave-era dialect, had to
be excised from the books, along with clothing styles, appliances and any
number of other things that dated the series. Nancy and her pals, flighty
Bess and tomboy George, began to wear pants and stopped talking about the
running boards of cars. But still, the books remained ageless, existing in a
universe untouched by World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the psychedelic '60s and
the women's lib movement.
Simon & Schuster's new Nancy, on the other hand, is nothing if not a
profoundly 21st century gal. She has a cellphone and knows about Native
American ancestral burial grounds and GPS systems. She's deeply in touch
with her feelings; regarding the death of her mother when she was 3, a
subject always noted but never dwelled upon in the past, she confides in us:
"That's been hard to deal with sometimes."
Her trademark blue car is still in evidence, but it has a newfangled twist.
She appears on a deserted road to rescue Ned from a bike wreck and he dubs
her, with a flourish typical of the new Ned, "an angel driving her blue
hybrid."
Notice that she rescues him. Some of Benson's Nancy is back in these new
volumes, and she still has Adams' humanism too. As always, she's a girl who
sets an example worth following, a girl who makes you feel that in any
challenging situation, you'd turn to your own pals and say, as her friend
George does in the middle of a difficult new case: "We'll just go out there
and ask ourselves, 'What would Nancy Drew do?' "
A Bit of the Old, a Bit of the New, She's Still Our Nancy Drew
By Melanie Rehak
March 24, 2004
"My name is Nancy Drew. My friends tell me I'm always looking for trouble,
but that's not really true. It just seems to have a way of finding me."
Meet America's favorite girl sleuth, circa 2004. She's back in town, in
Simon & Schuster's newly launched "Nancy Drew Girl Detective" series, and
this time she's talking directly to us, in the first person. Of course,
Nancy has spoken to American women and girls from the moment she solved her
first crime, in 1930's "The Secret of the Old Clock." That the books have
been written by a succession of writers under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene
may be, more than anything else ‹ even that famous blue roadster ‹ the
reason that Nancy has endured. Thanks to her various creators, and just like
the rest of us, she's always changing.
In her earliest incarnation, Nancy was a fierce, occasionally gun-toting
firebrand who didn't bother with a boyfriend. If she had to steal evidence
at a crime scene, she did it with moral clarity and in a perfect frock. The
character was written in those first years by a tough-minded University of
Iowa graduate named Mildred Wirt Benson, who went on to become a journalist
and a pilot. She worked from outlines provided by Edward Stratemeyer, who
had cooked up the idea of Nancy, if not the particulars, in the late 1920s.
Nancy was beautiful, popular and smart; she also had qualities Benson
specifically admired ‹ she was preternaturally mature, extremely sensible,
very good at sports and didn't take guff from anyone. She was absolutely of
her era in prejudices, language, interests and appearance, with the
exception that she, like Benson, knew how to get what she wanted.
When Stratemeyer died in 1930, his two daughters took over the job of
writing Nancy Drew outlines. His elder daughter, Harriet Adams, became
especially invested in Nancy Drew. She was the product of her well-to-do
East Coast family, educated at Wellesley and the mother of four children.
Though she had wanted to work, the social mores of her class and time
prevented her from doing so. Her father's death, though devastating to her,
gave her the opportunity to fulfill her dream.
Under her watch, Nancy began to change. She acquired a long-suffering
boyfriend, Ned Nickerson. She stopped talking back. She treated her
housekeeper, Hannah Gruen, like a member of the family instead of mere hired
help, and was less apt to use complicated words.
By 1940, when "The Mystery of the Brassbound Trunk" was published, she had
even learned a thing or two about feminine wiles, using them on Ned to get
her car fixed ("You know just what needs to be done and I don't," she pleads
kittenishly), whereas she once would have gotten out the jack herself ‹ or
at least called the tow truck. Benson was still writing the books, but
little by little Adams was recalibrating Nancy: She was less Midwestern
upstart and more Wellesley girl with every passing year.
In the late 1950s and '60s, Nancy evolved yet again ‹ this time in response
to the world that was changing around her. Racial stereotypes, including
black characters who spoke exclusively in Southern slave-era dialect, had to
be excised from the books, along with clothing styles, appliances and any
number of other things that dated the series. Nancy and her pals, flighty
Bess and tomboy George, began to wear pants and stopped talking about the
running boards of cars. But still, the books remained ageless, existing in a
universe untouched by World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the psychedelic '60s and
the women's lib movement.
Simon & Schuster's new Nancy, on the other hand, is nothing if not a
profoundly 21st century gal. She has a cellphone and knows about Native
American ancestral burial grounds and GPS systems. She's deeply in touch
with her feelings; regarding the death of her mother when she was 3, a
subject always noted but never dwelled upon in the past, she confides in us:
"That's been hard to deal with sometimes."
Her trademark blue car is still in evidence, but it has a newfangled twist.
She appears on a deserted road to rescue Ned from a bike wreck and he dubs
her, with a flourish typical of the new Ned, "an angel driving her blue
hybrid."
Notice that she rescues him. Some of Benson's Nancy is back in these new
volumes, and she still has Adams' humanism too. As always, she's a girl who
sets an example worth following, a girl who makes you feel that in any
challenging situation, you'd turn to your own pals and say, as her friend
George does in the middle of a difficult new case: "We'll just go out there
and ask ourselves, 'What would Nancy Drew do?' "
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