A Nancy for All Seasons

Tanja Blaschitz

A Nancy For All Seasons

DIPLOMARBEIT

zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Magistra der Philosophie

Studium: Lehramt Unterrichtsfach Englisch/ Unterrichtsfach Italienisch

Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt Fakultät für Kulturwissenschaften

Begutachter: Ao.Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Heinz Tschachler Institut: Anglistik und Amerikanistik

April 2010

Ehrenwörtliche Erklärung

Ich erkläre ehrenwörtlich, dass ich die vorliegende wissenschaftliche Arbeit selbststän- dig angefertigt und die mit ihr unmittelbar verbundenen Tätigkeiten selbst erbracht habe. Ich erkläre weiters, dass ich keine anderen als die angegebenen Hilfsmittel be- nutzt habe. Alle aus gedruckten, ungedruckten oder dem Internet im Wortlaut oder im wesentlichen Inhalt übernommenen Formulierungen und Konzepte sind gemäß den Re- geln für wissenschaftliche Arbeiten zitiert und durch Fußnoten bzw. durch andere genaue Quellenangaben gekennzeichnet.

Die während des Arbeitsvorganges gewährte Unterstützung einschließlich signifikanter Betreuungshinweise ist vollständig angegeben.

Die wissenschaftliche Arbeit ist noch keiner anderen Prüfungsbehörde vorgelegt wor- den. Diese Arbeit wurde in gedruckter und elektronischer Form abgegeben. Ich bestätige, dass der Inhalt der digitalen Version vollständig mit dem der gedruckten Ver- sion übereinstimmt.

Ich bin mir bewusst, dass eine falsche Erklärung rechtliche Folgen haben wird.

Tanja Blaschitz Völkermarkt, 30. April 2010

iii

Acknowledgement

I can no other answer make, but, thanks, and thanks.

by William Shakespeare

I would like to use this page to thank the following persons who made the com- pletion of my diploma thesis possible:

At the very beginning I would like to thank Professor Heinz Tschachler for his kind support and stimulating advice in the supervision of my diploma thesis.

I would also like to thank my dearest friends who have helped me with words and deeds throughout my education.

Special thanks go to my long-standing boyfriend Erich who has always listened to my problems and strongly motivated and encouraged me in hard times during my studies. Erich, together we have spent some awesome years of study!

Most of all, though, I would like to thank my parents and family for their financial and moral support during the time of my studies and writing of my diploma thesis. Without their help, I would not have had the opportunity to enjoy such a diversified study period. Had I not been able to study in Kansas City, I would have never gotten to know the girl sleuth, Nancy Drew.

Table of Contents

Ehrenwörtliche Erklärung ...... iii

Acknowledgement ...... v

Table of Contents ...... vii

List of Images ...... ix

Introduction ...... 1

The “Production” of the Nancy Drew Books: From the Past to the Present ...... 5

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 ...... 19 3.1 Nancy Drew throughout the 1930s and 1940s ...... 19 3.2 The Girl Sleuth from the late 1950s to the 1980s ...... 57 3.3 The Teenage Heroine from the 1980s into the 21st Century ...... 76

Conclusion ...... 89

Works Cited ...... 93

vii

List of Images

Image 1: Edward Stratemeyer ...... 6 Image 2: Mildred Wirt Benson ...... 8 Image 3: Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, circa 1930 ...... 10 Image 4: Dust jacket of The Secret of the Old Clock by Russell Tandy...... 20 Image 5: Dust jacket of Nancy‟s Mysterious Letter by Russel Tandy ...... 24 Image 6: Nancy in her car ...... 35 Image 7: A smoking flapper ...... 40 Image 8: Worried Nancy ...... 43 Image 9: White Supremacy in the US ...... 55 Image 10: Nancy seeing the moving van ...... 60 Image 11: Nancy‟s hand stuck to the wall...... 68 Image 13: Cover of Secrets Can Kill ...... 80

Chapter1 Introduction

Convinced that the inspiration was a happy one, she set off toward her father‟s office. He was engaged in an important conference when she arrived, and Nan- cy was forced to wait ten minutes before she was admitted to the inner office. “Now what?” her father asked, smiling as she burst upon him. “Is it a new dress you want?” Nancy‟s cheeks were flushed and her eyes danced with excitement. “Don‟t try to tease me,” she protested. “I‟ve stumbled onto something important, and I want information!” “At your service, Nancy,” Mr. Drew said. “But if it‟s about the Crowley case, I‟ve told you everything I know.” (The Secret of the Old Clock 62)

Nancy studied herself in the mirror. She liked what she saw. The tight jeans looked great on her long, slim legs and the green sweater complemented her strawberry-blond hair. Her eyes flashed with excitement of a new case. She was counting on solving the little mystery fairly easily. In fact, Nancy thought, it would probably be fun! “Right now,” she said to her two friends, “the hardest part of this case is deciding what to wear.” “That outfit, definitely,” Bess said, sighing with envy at Nancy‟s slender figure. “You‟ll make the guys absolutely drool.” (Secrets Can Kill 2-3)

These above quoted passages taken from two Nancy Drew novels of the years 1930 and 1986 should indicate what the thesis at hand will address: A discussion of various Nancy Drew stories of different time periods demonstrating how they have changed since their “birth” on April 28, 1930 in the United States with the title The Se- cret of the Old Clock up into the twenty-first century.

1 2 Introduction

Nancy Drew stories belong to the genre “series books”, books that “take place in a timeless world where the characters never grow any older or only grow older in the most gradual form” (Inness 2). The plots are rather formulaic, and the reader hardly meets fully developed characters. The Nancy Drew books are mainly aimed at girls and young women, but the texts also have a lot of adult fans. Large numbers of readers have collected their favorite books they read as children and still look back over them as grown-ups, especially because Nancy Drew, the main character of the books, has influenced their personalities throughout their lives.

From the year 1930 to the year 2003, more than seventy years, Nancy Drew Mystery Stories have been written, and starting in the eighties, certain spin-off series like the Nancy Drew Files (1986-1997) or the Nancy Drew On Campus series (1995- 1998) appeared on the market. When the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories after the release of 175 different novels came to a stop, Simon & Schuster, a famous publishing company, started to bring out the Nancy Drew Girl Detective series in 2004, a series that authors still write on today enchanting the minds of various girls and teenagers all over the world. Some of the Nancy Drew novels have even been translated into foreign lan- guages, for example French and German.

Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, stories about Nancy Drew, the famous amateur girl detective who solves numerous cases at the ages of sixteen and eighteen, was written over a seventy-year span and the series continues today based on the original. Thus we come to ask ourselves the following questions: Have the plots of the Nancy Drew novels in terms of content and structure changed through the ages? Has famous Nancy Drew, the protagonist of the Nancy Drew stories, been modified in her eighty years of existence? How have her relationships to other recurrent characters, like her father Car- son Drew, her steady boyfriend Ned Nickerson, or her best friends Bess Marvin and tomboy George Fayne altered? Have social constructions such as class, race, and gender been dealt with differently through the ages or has there been consistency over time? What could be the reasons for possible alterations in the books? And one further interesting question: Who is Carolyn Keene, the “author” of the Nancy Drew books, who has written novels over almost eighty years? What author can write novels for eighty years?

Introduction 3

I will discuss the last question about the “author” of the Nancy Drew novels in chapter two of the thesis, The “Production” of the Nancy Drew Books: From the Past to the Present. In this chapter, we will find out who actually came up with the bright idea inventing an amateur girl detective, called Nancy Drew, embellishing the lives of numerous girls and young women, and who has written the storylines for almost eighty years. It goes without saying that Carolyn Keene has been one “author” of many who have worked on this series. We will learn that the authors have not written the books like typical authors do who work in a cozy atmosphere and write down their own thoughts and ideas. Rather they have had to follow strict guidelines and have “produced” the stories in the exact way other people prescribed.

Chapter two will also address what parents, librarians, and educators have been thinking about series books and the mode of how they become “manufactured”. In this context I will look toward the two famous intellectuals, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, members of the Frankfurt School, who have dealt with the “culture industry”, a term that perfectly describes the “production” of the Nancy Drew books.

In chapter three of this thesis, we will find the answers to the questions mentioned above concerning the change of the Nancy Drew plots and with them the modification of the central characters and their relations to each other, and how the social aspects of class, race, and gender have been dealt with differently in the novels throughout almost eighty years of Nancy Drew‟s existence. To answer these questions, I have consciously divided chapter three, A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008, into three sub-chapters: Nancy Drew throughout the 1930s and 1940s, The Girl Sleuth from the late 1950s to the 1980s, and The Teenage Heroine from the 1980s into the twenty-first century. In this chapter I work on the following chosen novels: The Secret of the Old Clock (1930), The Mystery at Lilac Inn (1930), Nancy‟s Mysterious Letter (1932), The Haunted Bridge (1937), The Clue in the Jewel Box (1943), The Secret of the Old Clock (1959), The Mystery of the Glowing Eye (1974), The Thirteenth Pearl (1979), The Phantom of Venice (1985), Secrets Can Kill (1986), Without a Trace (2004), and Pageant Perfect Crime (2008).

On the basis of numerous text passages taken from these Nancy Drew novels, we will find out who the intelligent, brave, determined and adventurous amateur girl detective is who enters the scene for the first time in 1930 driving around in her blue

4 Introduction roadster, solving her cases courageously and even faster than the male police do, has a father who always approves of what his daughter does or says, and “uses” her steady boyfriend Ned Nickerson to support her in her detective work. We will also look at what other people around Nancy think about the courageous “model for early second- wave feminists” (Heilbrun 18) whose mother died when she was a mere child, or in later volumes, still a baby. How the plots and the central characters have changed over the years and why Nancy, “the teenage detective who was once a symbol of spunky female independence” might have evolved “toward a Barbie doll detective” (qtd. in Re- hak 306), we will get to know in chapter three. Other remarkable changes throughout the years concern the representation of minority groups in the Nancy Drew novels and the portrayal of people who belong to social classes other than Nancy and her family.

Concluding the introduction, it needs stating that since this thesis attends to series books that are supposed to be built up similarly, have comparable plots, and most of the times the same main characters - at least in those texts written in the same time period, I will not pay the same amount of attention to all novels I have selected. Some of the texts will be dealt with in more detail; others will be used to quote only some passages.

Chapter 2 The “Production” of the Nancy Drew Books: From the Past to the Present

The Stratemeyer Syndicate, Edward Stratemeyer, proprietor, of Newark, N.J. and New York City, can use the services of several additional writers in the preparation of the Syndicate‟s books for boys, books for girls, and rapid-fire detective stories. These stories are all written for the Syndicate on its own titles and outlines and we buy all rights in this material for cash upon acceptance. Rates of payment depend entirely upon the amount of work actually done by a writer and the quality of same. All stories are issued under established trade- marked pen names unless otherwise agreed upon…We are particularly anxious to get hold of the younger writers, with fresh ideas in the treatment for stories for boys and girls. (qtd. in Rehak 89)

This advertisement was placed in the Editor magazine in 1926 by the Strate- meyer Syndicate run by the successful juvenile writer Edward Stratemeyer. With this advertisement, Edward Stratemeyer tried to find writers for his company who would be interested in composing series books.

Born on October 4, 1862, Stratemeyer became the author of many series books and dime novels in the late nineteenth century. First he sold his work to various magazines, then he became a free-lance writer under various pseudonyms for Street & Smith, “a New-York-based publishing house that was one of the most prolific sources of both story papers and dime novels” (Rehak 9). A description of Street & Smith‟s work was given in the magazine Publishers Weekly:

5 6 The “Production” of the Nancy Drew Books: From the Past to the Present

[Street & Smith] employs over thirty people, mostly girls and women…It is their duty to read all the daily and weekly periodicals in the land…Any unusual story of city life - mostly the misdoings of the city people - is marked by these girls and turned over to one of the three managers. These managers, who are men, select the best of these marked articles, and turn over such as are available to one of a corps of five and transform it to a skeleton or an outline for a story. This shell, if it may be so called, is then referred to the chief manager, who turns to a large address-book and adapts the skeleton to some one of the hundred or more writers on book. (qtd. in Rehak 10)

Lower-class single women and girls who acted as the initial readers did the rather unskilled jobs to earn a living, while men were the managers who made the bigger decisions. During this time period this division of work was typical, because a man was “ambitious”, “aggressive” and “assertive” while a woman was expected to be “neat, clean” and “agreeable” (Woloch 171). These were unsuitable qualities for managers. Still, in the late nineteenth century, more and more young women entered the workforce, whether they worked in classrooms, offices or industry, but they were always paid much less than men. The man was the bread-earner of a family, had a better reputation in society, and earned more than a woman for the same kind of job. Women wage Image 1: Edward Stratemey- earners were regarded as second-class citizen, be- er1 cause society believed that their true place was at home (Woloch 170-73).

After having left Street & Smith in 1895, Edward Stratemeyer worked on his own stories, and in 1899 he published his first successful juvenile series, the Rover Boys under the pseudonym Arthur M. Winfield (Rehak 22). Outstanding in his business, Edward continued writing series books under various pseudonyms for children. Since Stratemeyer had many ideas for book-writing and was of the opinion that the

1 Taken from: http://www.lib.umd.edu/RARE/SpecialCollection/nancy/stratemeyer.html

The “Production” of the Nancy Drew Books: From the Past to the Present 7 market was not saturated, he came up with the bright idea to form the Stratemeyer Syn- dicate in 1905, based on the Street & Smith publishing house (Rehak 23-6).

Soon Edward submitted titles and short plots to interested publishers. If the publishers were fascinated by his books, Stratemeyer expanded the outlines and hired ghostwriters, who worked under pseudonyms, writing the plots for him. Often many people wrote on one series under one pseudonym. In the end, Edward again proofread the manuscripts and made changes if necessary (Johnson 30-3). No one would ever know who actually wrote the books, because the ghostwriters had to sign contracts “as- signing all rights to the book, the character, and the pseudonym to the Stratemeyer Syndicate” (Johnson 32).

Men and women were writing for the syndicate, and one author‟s salary was between $75 to $150 per manuscript independent of gender and of how many copies were sold in the end (Rehak 25). So the Stratemeyer Syndicate and the publishers profited a lot from the “mass-produced” fiction.

In the article “Fulfilling a Quest for Adventure”, Mildred Wirt Benson2 informs us that she answered the Stratemeyer Syndicate advertisement mentioned at the beginning of the chapter. At that time Mildred was a graduate student of the School of Journalism at the State University of Iowa, who, already during her high school years, had written short stories published in magazines and newspapers, and continued to write articles and short stories during her years at university (59-65).

Stratemeyer needed help with his work and employed Mildred to continue the Ruth Fielding series already launched in 1913. The series is about an orphan called Ruth who lives with her uncle and their housekeeper Alvirah Boogs. Since Ruth‟s uncle does not show any affection for his niece and does not provide for her, Ruth wants to become independent from him. She attends college, and in the course of the series, she becomes a famous writer of moving pictures scenarios and opens her Ruth Fielding Film Com- pany in the male-dominated world of Hollywood. Tom Cameron, one of Ruth‟s friends, who helps her manage the company, wants to marry her, but she first resists. She wants to pursue her career and live her own life. When one day Tom vanishes mysteriously, Ruth realizes that she loves him and so they marry. Later she even has a baby (Rehak

2 Mildred was born as Mildred Augustine, but in 1928 she married Asa Wirt, and after her husband‟s death, she married George Benson in 1950.

8 The “Production” of the Nancy Drew Books: From the Past to the Present

102-06; White). The series was a great success until the moment when Ruth married and had a baby. Her marriage was the reason why readers lost interest in the character in the mid-1930s. From now on Ruth was not any longer the independent career woman who managed almost everything on her own but had a man and a baby on her side. These circumstances made it impossible to pursue her career as the director of the Ruth Fielding Film Company (Mason 15).

At that time, however, Mildred had already been writing other girls‟ series, one of them the famous Nancy Drew series. In 1929, Edward Stratemeyer came up with the glorious idea to create a mystery series with a single female heroine. He wanted to es- tablish a character that would differ from contemporary ones (Siegel 165). Most novels of that period were set within the “domestic world of the school and home” (Siegel 165), but Stratemeyer wanted an adventurous girl detective who would devote all her time to baffling mysteries.

The Hardy Boys mystery stories with the detectives Frank and Joe Hardy were popular among boys in the late 1920s, and adults also loved to read mystery stories by, for example, the

Image 2: Mildred Wirt Benson3 American author Dashiell Hammett and the British novelist Agatha Christie. Thus Edward Stratemeyer was convinced that also girls would love to read about an adventurous young girl detective (Rehak 107-08). He wrote outlines of the first five Nancy Drew books for Grosset & Dunlap, a famous publishing company, asking if they would be interested in a new series with a girl detective as the main character (Rehak 112). The outline of the Secret of the Old Clock, the very first of the Nancy Drew books, looked like this:

3 Taken from: http://www.lib.umd.edu/RARE/SpecialCollection/nancy/benson.html

The “Production” of the Nancy Drew Books: From the Past to the Present 9

THE SECRET OF THE OLD CLOCK

A large estate remains unsettled because of a missing will. Some domineering rich folks claim the entire estate. But Stella Strong thinks it should go to two deserving poor girls. A letter is found stating that the location of the will is described in a paper secreted in the old family clock. This clock has disappeared and efforts to find it had been in vain until Stella hears that it had been taken to a summer camp miles away. She arrives at this camp to find that the place has been looted and the clock is gone. How the old timepiece was finally recovered and how this led to the finding of the will makes interesting reading. (Rehak 113)

Except for some minor changes, Grosset & Dunlap was enthusiastic about the new series, and so Mildred Wirt, under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene, could start her work after Edward had sent her outlines of about three-and-a-half pages of the first Nancy Drew books. Edward got the first manuscript approximately four weeks later, and after a few small edits, Nancy Drew, the adventurous girl detective, finally entered the scene on April 28, 1930, in The Secret of the Old Clock (Rehak 113-16).

Even though born into the time of the Great Depression, the Nancy Drew series remained one of the most successful girls‟ series on the market while other series soon came to a stop (Rehak 116). The reasons which were behind the series‟ success in the depression will be discussed in chapter two of this thesis.

Unfortunately, Edward Stratemeyer could not live to see its huge success, because just twelve days after Nancy Drew had been published, Edward died of pneumonia (Rehak 123). In the article “The Ghost of Nancy Drew”, Geoffrey S. Lapin explains that after Edward‟s death in 1930, his two daughters Harriet Stratemeyer Ad- ams and Edna Stratemeyer took over the syndicate to continue their father‟s successful business. Since they had not been deeply involved in his book-packaging company before, it was hard for them to step into their father‟s shoes (par. 28). Edward Stratemeyer had never wanted his daughters occupied with book writing or editing, because “his idea of a woman writing was to earn a living” (Rehak 70), and this was rather needless for the well-to-do Stratemeyers.

Mildred Wirt, who, after some time, had stopped writing for the syndicate, because she had not accepted a lower salary, continued to write the Nancy Drew books

10 The “Production” of the Nancy Drew Books: From the Past to the Present and other series for Harriet and Edna in 1934 with the starting novel called The Clue of the Brocken Locket (Lapin, par. 30, 32). In the meantime, a best-selling novelist and war historian called Walter Karig wrote three Nancy books, Nancy‟s Mysterious Letter, The Password to Larkspur Lane, and The Sign of the Twisted Candles (Lapin, par. 30). Even though the books he wrote were sold as well as Mildred‟s, Harriet and Edna were dissatisfied with Karig‟s work, because they had to rewrite his manuscripts much more than the ones Mildred composed (Rehak 166).

With the new managers of the syndicate also the management changed. Accord- ing to Mildred Wirt, the outlines by Harriet and Edna were much longer and more detailed than Edward‟s, and even the chapters‟ beginnings and ends were clearly planned. As a result, the new bosses had much more influence on characters and plots. The ghostwriters, like Mildred, however, wished to have more freedom in their writings (Keeline 27).

During the 1930s, Nancy Drew also appeared on radio shows and in the movie theatres, but even though film lovers during the Great Depression stated that “going to the movies was a great thrill” (Lindenmeyer 170), the audience did not like the detective on the screen, because she was different than in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories. Accord- ing to Rehak, Nancy “was something of a vixen, perhaps too womanly for her loyal Image 3: Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, circa 19304 fans, or too boy-crazy. She was too old for

the kids and too young for adults, and, in truth, the films themselves were simply not very good” (195). But the Nancy Drew books remained a complete success. Approxi- mately two-and-a-half-million copies had been sold after ten years of the girl sleuth‟s birth in 1930 (Rehak 196).

4 Taken from: Plunkett-Powell Karen, The Nancy Drew Scrapbook: 60 Years of America‟s Favorite Tee- nage Sleuth, p. 36

The “Production” of the Nancy Drew Books: From the Past to the Present 11

During the Second World War, many children‟s authors included war-time matters in their books, and so the syndicate felt pressure to change some subjects and their characters‟ behavior. They should do more walking or ride their bicycles instead of driving a car, because gasoline was scarce during wartime. In a letter, Harriet told Mil- dred the following:

We find it best to leave the war out of stories like the Nancys, but some of the readers wonder about this. Will you please, without mentioning the war, an- nounce that Ned Nickerson is not appearing because he is in Europe. Also, note here and there that Nancy is taking an airplane lesson, and infer that this has something to do with the war effort, without mentioning the war […]. (qtd. in Rehak 200-01)

Readers, mainly girls, also became dissatisfied with the relationship between Nancy Drew and Ned Nickerson, the girl sleuth‟s steady boyfriend. They wanted to see more romance between the couple than in the novels of the years before, and so they wrote letters to “Carolyn Keene” telling her about their wishes (Rehak 205).

The syndicate immediately took matters into their own hands and asked Mildred to include more romance in the Nancy Drew stories. Mildred tried hard to fulfil her bosses‟ desires and even asked her own children for help. She was convinced that her children had a more modern approach to the issue of romance than she had. Still, Har- riet became dissatisfied with Mildred‟s work, and in a letter in 1947 she expressed her dislike as she wrote:

What I have missed, and trust that you will make every effort to put into this story, is characterization; not only of the new characters, but of the old ones as well. … Throughout the story will you use adjectives, adverbs and short phrases to make Nancy keen but diplomatic; George boyish, blunt, and astute; Bess feminine, fearful, but willing to go along. […] A number of fans have been asking what became of Nancy‟s little dog Togo … so you might bring him in now and then when Nancy is at home, and even introduce a scene where she talks over the mystery with him. (qtd. in Johnson 35)

Since Mildred could no longer tolerate the discrepancies between Harriet‟s and her own style of writing, she wrote her last Nancy Drew book, The Clue of the Velvet

12 The “Production” of the Nancy Drew Books: From the Past to the Present

Mask in 1953 and quit her job at the syndicate (Rehak 235). Many years later, Mildred described the conflict as she stated:

I think the whole thing here, there was a beginning conflict in what is Nancy. Mrs. Adams was an entirely different person; she was more cultured and more refined. I was probably a rough and tumble newspaper person who had to earn a living, and I was out in the world. That was my type of Nancy. Nancy was making her way in life and trying to compete and have fun along the way. We just had two different kinds of Nancys. (qtd. in Johnson 37)

After Mildred had left the syndicate, Harriet started to write most of the Nancy Drew books herself, allowing for more influence on the plot and characters. Manuscripts that she had not written herself tended to be edited a lot by a great number of people who Harriet employed (Johnson 37).

Even though in the 1950s many series books lost their popularity due to the greater interest in radio and television programs, Nancy Drew held her status until the mid 1960s. Many parents, however, had started to complain about the racial stereotypes and prejudices in the books and threatened the syndicate to stop buying further Nancy Drew books (Rehak 242-43).

James P. Jones, a professor at the Florida State University, discusses the African American stereotypes in the case of Nancy Drew in an article as he writes:

Children‟s literature was not immune from the racial stereotype. While Negro Americans sat in Congress, sang at Carnegie Hall, wrote fine novels, and engaged in a daily struggle for freedom, readers of Nancy Drew‟s adventures knew them only as porters and cooks who said “‟Lawdy‟” and “‟yas suh.‟” (Jones 121)

Jones goes on by saying that “young readers were not treated to a systematic racist attack, but the roles assigned Negroes by Carolyn Keene surely served to reinforce an unfair, distorted and harmful stereotype” (Jones 125).

Grosset & Dunlap and the Stratemeyer Syndicate responded to the complaints and launched a revision program for the original Nancy Drew books. Racial stereotypes were eliminated, inappropriate actions changed, the language modernized, and the

The “Production” of the Nancy Drew Books: From the Past to the Present 13 books shortened from twenty-five to twenty chapters (Rehak 246-48). Nancy herself was also modified in the revised versions discussed in greater detail in chapter two. During the revision work of the original Nancy books between the late 1950s and 1970s, which was highly controlled by Harriet Adams Stratemeyer (Rehak 249-50), new Nancy Drew Mystery Stories were also published and sold very well. They included the same modernizations as the revised Nancy Drew stories.

Grosset & Dunlap had been publishing the Stratemeyer Syndicate‟s Nancy Drew series for over forty years now but had never increased the royalties after several nego- tiations with Harriet and her assistants. Finally, the Stratemeyer Syndicate found a new partner in Simon & Schuster, a larger publishing company that soon started to publish Nancy Drew books in paperback format (Johnson, Zuckerman and Bierbaum 49-50).

After Harriet Adams Stratemeyer died in 1982 (her sister Edna, who had not been interested in the Stratemeyer Syndicate for many years, died in 1979), her children and partners took over the syndicate for a short time period. In 1984 Simon & Schuster bought the company (Johnson 39).

With new management, the writing methods and the series changed again. Be- tween the 1980s and 1990s spin-offs like the Nancy Drew Notebooks for five to eight- year-old readers, the Nancy Drew On Campus series, or the Nancy Drew Files aimed at a slightly older audience appeared on the market. The Nancy Drew Mystery Stories came to an end in 2003 and were replaced by the Nancy Drew Girl Detective series in 2004 with the first book called Without a Trace (Rehak 300, 309, 311). These stories are reminiscent of the Nancy books that Mildred Wirt Benson and Harriet Adams Stratemeyer wrote. Rehak mentions that “written in the first person […] the new Nancy Drew Girl Detective series nonetheless harkens back to the old Nancy, the Nancy of Harriet and Mildred. […] After the wild college years and the boy-crazy moments, Nancy‟s got her feet back on the ground again” (Rehak 313). How this was reflected in the content of the books we will discuss in chapter two. Even though one does not know who the “real” Carolyn Keenes are that followed Harriet and Mildred, according to Anne Greenberg, the editor of the Nancy books, one “should stick to the Stratemeyer tradition of not discussing who actually wrote the books” (Greenberg and Keene 80). But we know that the writing process has changed with times, because in the mid 1990s a Carolyn Keene talked about it:

14 The “Production” of the Nancy Drew Books: From the Past to the Present

The first stage is the précis, which is a one-page summary of characters, sus- pects, red herrings, crimes, and the plot. The tough part here is packing a complex plot into one comprehensible page. Next a detailed chapter-by-chapter outline is submitted. This usually comes back with numerous queries, all of which need to be addressed before going into the first draft. Once the outline is approved, the writer is generally given six weeks to complete the first draft. The first draft is then returned with suggestions for revision by both the publisher and packager, and then the final draft is written. (Keene, Writing the New Nan- cy Drews 77)

The writing process of the mass-produced fiction seems to be much longer than the one practiced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, since an author‟s text is worked on more closely by the publishing company Simon & Schuster and the book packager Mega Books of New York than in the years before. Both companies put so much effort in their work to preserve the books‟ quality. When a writer hands in a précis, the two companies discuss whether the mystery is worth writing about and make necessary changes. Then the writer has to compose an outline for each chapter to show how he or she wants to structure the text. After Simon & Schuster and Mega Books review it, the writer can work on his first draft. Then the text is edited again and finally sent to the author to fin- ish the manuscript (Greenberg 70-2). According to Greenberg, “it‟s a very careful process. We take a lot of trouble because it‟s important to maintain quality when publishing a series. Readers are very quick to notice when a familiar series no longer delivers a satisfying reading experience, and once they lose interest it‟s almost impossible to win them back” (72). To ensure that the mystery appeals to the readers, the story fits into the series, the plot is not too similar to others already on the market, the cliffhangers at the end of each chapter work, and that the characters have the same characteristics as in the books before, the process has to be a lengthy one. Readers would immediately recognize if mistakes happened during the writing process.

Nancy Drew, the girl detective, who was “born” in 1930, still invades the book- shelves of many of today‟s readers, even though the series books have had many opponents right from their start. When the series novels, the successors of the dime novels, became popular among children, librarians, teachers, and educators started cam- paigns against them to criticize the poor prose quality and the way the books were produced. They did not want kids to read low popular literature, which “steal the child‟s

The “Production” of the Nancy Drew Books: From the Past to the Present 15 time and leave nothing in return, […] cause mental laziness, induce a fatal sluggishness and intellectual torpor” (qtd. in Romalov, A Historical Overview 115).

The chief librarian for the Boy Scouts of America, Franklin K. Mathiews, for example, even went so far as to claim in his article “Blowing Out the Boy‟s Brains” that “the chief trouble with these books is their gross exaggeration, which works on a boy‟s mind in as deadly a fashion as liquor will attack a man‟s brain” (qtd. in Romalov, A Historical Overview 117). Others even declared Stratemeyer‟s books as “current can- cer” (Karell 38). According to Nancy Romalov, many librarians disapproved of the protagonists‟ behavior in the series books since they would act too adultlike and could not be regarded as “real children” (A Historical Overview 116). In the reader, this would arouse “feelings of discontent, causing children to dream, perchance to act upon the dreams, or worse, to behave disrespectfully towards adults” (A Historical Overview 116). Various librarians, parents, and educators shared the opinion that particularly girls should read “sentimental romances“, and “domestic and family stories“ (Romalov, His- torical Reader 91) to prepare themselves for their future lives as married housewives and mothers.

The Stratemeyer Syndicate‟s production methods intensified the critics‟ negative attitudes towards series books. Mathiews, for example, argued that the books were “not written but manufactured – that is, they were not art but commodity” (qtd. in Karell 38; qtd. in Romalov, A Historical Overview 117). Mass-produced fiction in the “modern fiction factory” (Siegel 168) was just an easy way to earn a lot of money. Reflecting about the librarians‟ and educators‟ pessimistic attitudes towards the value and production of series books, I have come to think about the two intellectuals Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, members of the Frankfurt School, who carried out a lot of infor- mative theoretical and empirical studies between the 1920s and the 1960s in Germany and in the United States where they lived in exile during the Second World War (Negus 71-2). One of their interests was the “culture industry” which they dealt with in their most well-known work Dialectic of Enlightenment (Negus 71).

With the term “culture industry”, they wanted to emphasize that cultural products were manufactured in the same way and in the same masses as other consumer goods on the market, that is to say that “the culture industry” assumed an “assembly- line character” that could be noticed in “the synthetic, planned method of turning out its

16 The “Production” of the Nancy Drew Books: From the Past to the Present products (factory-like not only in the studio but, more or less, in the compilation of cheap biographies, pseudo documentary novels, and hit songs)” (qtd. in Negus 70). The main aim of the culture industry was to maximize profit. Adorno and Horkheimer ve- hemently criticized this technique, because not only did the cultural products become standardized and hence lost their aesthetic values and originality, but also the masses were turned into passive and willing readers, listeners and viewers. They wrote:

As soon as the film begins, it is quite clear how it will end, and who will be rewarded, punished, or forgotten. In light music, once the trained ear has heard the first notes of the hit song, it can guess what is coming and feel flattered when it does come. The average length of the short story has to be rigidly ad- hered to. Even gags, effects, and jokes are calculated like the setting in which they are placed. They are the responsibility of special experts and their narrow range makes it easy for them to be apportioned in the office. (qtd. in Negus 74)

According to many critics, series books are not qualitative literature and lack in originality. Like Adorno and Horkheimer, they condemn the mode of production of mass- marked fiction and the way children get fascinated by formulaic plots:

Developed from a strict formula, filled with clichés, they move from climax to climax with little effort at description, characterization, motivations, or explanation. […] They do not open children and young adults to new interests or ideas. […] The reader needn‟t think about how characters will respond because they will certainly respond in the predictable way that readers have come to expect from others in the series. (Black 121)

Critics of the series books strongly criticize the “anti-literary way” (Karell 38) in which the novels are written. They condemn the “corporate collaboration” (Karell 36) of authors who work together on one series but support the traditional understanding of authorship: that one individual is the sole creator of a work. With his or her specific talents, the author creates a literary composition that is unique and authentic. Mass- produced fiction that is written by ghostwriters is not “bona fide” (Romalov, A Histori- cal Overview 117) literature.

Through the ages, many critics, like Matthiews and others, have attacked series books and tried to prevent children from reading this “trashy” literature based on the

The “Production” of the Nancy Drew Books: From the Past to the Present 17 reasons mentioned above, but readers “won” the argument over the books. Children loved books that provided entertainment and escape which did not focus on moral teaching. They decided what kind of literature they wanted to read, and even if libraries did not possess any series books, the kids got hold of them. As Karen Cyson during the Nancy Drew Conference held at the University of Iowa in 1993 recalled:

[…] I grew up in Roseville, Minnesota, and went to the Ramsey County Li- brary, and every time I went in I walked right up to the front desk and said, “Where are your Nancy Drew books?” And the librarian would look at me with disgust and say, “We don‟t have those here.” But I did it every time I walked in there. Meanwhile, in order to get them I had to exchange books with my cousins and with my best friend and with other girls in the neighbourhood so that we could all read all the stories […]. (qtd. in Sunstein 102)

The debate amongst librarians and educators might still go on whether to include series books in libraries or not, but what they have not succeeded in so far is to decrease the interest in the Nancy Drew books amongst children and young adults through the ages.

After having dealt with the “manufacturing” of the Nancy Drew books from the past to the present and what various people, among them scholars, librarians, educators and parents, have thought about the girl‟s series books, I want to discuss selected Nancy Drew novels by “Carolyn Keene” in terms of plot, characters and their relations to each other, and the social constructions of race, class and gender in their historical and cultural contexts demonstrating how these aspects have changed within more than seventy years.

Chapter 3 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008

3.1 Nancy Drew throughout the 1930s and 1940s

Before studying the main character of the early mystery stories, the popular amateur girl detective Nancy Drew, and her relation to other characters in the novels, and addressing the social issues of class, race and gender by referring to the books The Se- cret of the Old Clock (1930), The Mystery at Lilac Inn (1930), Nancy‟s Mysterious Letter (1932), The Haunted Bridge (1937), and The Clue in the Jewel Box (1943), a discussion of a typical plot of the original Nancy Drew Mystery Stories is necessary to show what it is all about and how it is structured. The very first of the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, The Secret of the Old Clock, is best suited for this.

In The Secret of the Old Clock, the reader immediately encounters Nancy Drew who starts off exclaiming that the Tophams, a noveau-riche, arrogant, and snobbish family of River Heights, consisting of Richard and Cora Topham, and their two girls Isabel and Ada, do not deserve Josiah Crowley‟s inheritance, even though they are mentioned as the sole heirs in his will. Nancy is convinced that a will exists in which the true benefactors are mentioned - her first mystery is born.

Nancy‟s father Carson Drew, a famous criminal lawyer and former district attorney, supports Nancy to find the latest will, because he also does not want the snobbish and arrogant Tophams to receive Mr. Crowley‟s possessions. Nancy‟s father promises his daughter to help by contacting his old friend Mr. Rolsted, an attorney and specialist in drawing up wills and legal documents. He might have drawn up the will for Josiah

19 20 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008

Crowley. Nancy is allowed to lunch with Mr. Rolsted and her father. She learns that there is a chance old Mr. Crowley drew up a second will before his death, even though Mr. Rolsted has never seen it before. Nancy, however, is convinced that a second document is hidden somewhere.

While on the way back home from doing an errand for her father, Nancy is caught in a heavy storm and finds shelter in a barn, where she gets to know Allie and Grace Horner, who should be the first two heiress of Josiah Crowley‟s possessions if Nancy finds the second will. The sisters have recently lost their parents, live isolated in a run-down house, and struggle to survive by selling chicken eggs and making dresses. To assist the Horner sisters, the girl detective promises to do everything possible to find the second will if it really exists.

The Horner sisters inform Nancy about other possible heirs of Josiah Crow- ley‟s possessions, among them Abigail

Image 4: Dust jacket of The Secret Rowen, a poor old lady who lives alone and 5 of the Old Clock by Russell Tandy can afford neither medicine nor food. Nancy visits Abigail with the intention to find out more about the possible second will. Depressed about her health and financial situation, the old lady has already lost the will to live, but caring Nancy bolsters her up. Soon Abigail starts to talk about Josiah Crowley, who she nursed when he was ill some time ago and tells Nancy that he actually promised to mention her in his will. From Abi- gail‟s stories about a notebook and her close looks at her mantel clock on the wall, Nancy infers that the will might be placed in the mantel clock Josiah Crowley once possessed. Now his clock is in the possessions of the Tophams.

Later Nancy meets her “chum” Helen Corning who is a recurrent character in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories. Unlike the cousins Bess Marvin and George Fayne, the two best friends of Nancy introduced on the first page of The Secret at Shadow Ranch

5 Taken from: http://www.lib.umd.edu/RARE/SpecialCollection/nancy/evolution.html

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 21

(1931) (Plunkett-Powell 92), Nancy does not familiarize Helen with her mysteries and insists on following clues on her own. Helen has to sell tickets for the charity dance before she can leave River Heights and move to a girls‟ camp at Moon Lake. Nancy takes advantage of the situation and promises her friend to sell the tickets for her, because the tickets provide the only opportunity for entering the Tophams‟ residence in River Heights and finding the mantel clock. During Nancy‟s visit at the Tophams‟ residence, she learns that the old Crowley clock is located in their summer bungalow at Moon Lake.

Since Helen Corning spends her holidays at Moon Lake, Nancy joins her with the intention to find the clock in the Tophams‟ summer cottage. She does not induct Helen and the other girls into her intentions, and so goes to the house alone in her blue roadster. There Nancy sees that robbers have stolen most of the Tophams‟ furniture and hides in a cupboard when the robbers reappear. Unfortunately, Nancy‟s sneeze draws the robbers‟ attention to the girl, and they lock her in a closet to starve. Nancy, at first desperate and hopeless trying to break the door until her fingers are bruised and bleed- ing, works at opening the cupboard until Jeff Tucker, the Tophams‟ African-American caretaker, finds and rescues her.

After informing the police of the crime, Nancy and the officers go separate ways to increase their possibility of finding the robbers. Nancy takes the more probable road and discovers the robbers at a roadhouse and their truck hidden in a barn. The girl sleuth sneaks into the truck and gets the mantel clock before the robbers return from their drinking orgy. Curious, Nancy opens the mantel clock and sees a notebook with the words “The Property of Josiah Crowley” (167) in it. After Nancy and the officers hunt down the robbers Nancy returns home and shows her father the notebook. They now know the location of Josiah Crowley‟s last will. A judge orders the opening of a safety deposit box containing the will.

In the end, Nancy and her dad present the new will to the Tophams and Josiah‟s relatives and friends. While the Tophams have lost everything, the deserving relatives and friends receive their promised inheritance. With the money, Allie and Grace Horner enlarge their chicken farm and renovate their house, and Abigail can finally afford medicine and a trained nurse for permanent attendance. Nancy does not accept any

22 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 money as a reward for her work but Josiah Crowley‟s mantel clock in memory of her first solved case as an amateur detective.

This plot is only one example of the numerous storylines of the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories that are all quite similar throughout the 1930s and 1940s when Mildred Wirt Benson wrote most of the novels. The girl detective Nancy Drew supports the “good” people and tries everything to bring the “evil” ones to justice. In most of the early volumes of the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, Nancy restores wealth to the deserving poor and punishes the avaricious “nouveau-riche” (Siegel 176). Further down, when we will look at Nancy‟s character, we will discuss the girl‟s sense of justice in more detail.

The plots are rather predictable and formulaic, and, except from the scene in which Nancy is confronted with the robbers and is locked in the closet, the actions in The Secret of the Old Clock are not very thrilling. But we should certainly not forget that the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories are aimed at nine- to twelve-year-old readers who have different reading experiences than adults have.

What is also striking about the Nancy Drew plots is that they, like Bobbie Ann Mason states, “[…] are based on coincidence” (57). In The Secret of the Old Clock, Nancy meets the Horner girls accidentally while trying to find shelter in a shed during a thunderstorm. Before having met the girls, Nancy has had some doubts concerning the existence of a second will, but then the Horner girls tell her about Josiah Crowley and the possible second document:

The three girls chattered over the tea cups and watched the rain beat against the windows. Presently, as Nancy noticed an unusual picture on the wall, she commented on its beauty. “Uncle Josiah gave it to us, “ Allie told her. “If he were only alive now, things would be different.” At the mention of the name, Nancy started. Could it be that Allie referred to Josiah Crowley? It was very unlikely, she decided, yet only the week before her father had told her that there were two girls living on the River Road who should have figured in the will. The relationship would be worth investigating, Nancy told herself. “Then your uncle is dead?” she inquired sympathetically. “Josiah Crowley wasn‟t really our uncle,” Grace replied. “But we loved him as much as though he were (sic) a relative.” (39)

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 23

The girls immediately become friends, and, through the girls‟ relationship, Nancy finds more evidence about the will. It is Grace and Allie Horner who provide Nancy with useful information, and in the end, it is the girls who will profit from Nancy‟s sleuthing.

A further good example to show that the plots are based on coincidence is when Nancy tries to think about a way to set foot in the Tophams‟ residence to see whether the mantel clock with a possible clue to the will is there or not. When Helen Corning visits Nancy to sell tickets for the charity dance in River Heights and is worried, because before being allowed to move to Moon Lake for the summer camp, she still has to sell six tickets in her neighborhood, Nancy has a glorious idea:

“I have an idea, Helen! I‟ll sell all of your tickets for you! How will that suit you?” […] “That‟s once when I killed two birds with one stone! These tickets will serve as my passport to the impregnable Topham fortress!” (94)

The girls help each other to fulfil their wishes. Helen can now undoubtedly attend the summer camp, and Nancy can follow her clues to find the second will. It is again Nancy‟s friend who helps the girl detective in her investigations, even if it is coinciden- tal.

One coincidence follows the next. When Nancy tries to sell the tickets to the To- phams, she discovers a mantel clock above the fireplace but doubts that it is Crowley‟s. To attain some possibly useful information, Nancy asks for the time. During the conversation, the girl detective finds out that the old Crowley clock is stored in the Tophams‟ summer house on Moon Lake. And how Nancy can easily get to Moon Lake is the next coincidence. Helen Corning has just told her that there is a summer camp for girls at the lake, and Carson Drew tells his daughter that she needs a vacation. Her “vacation spot” will certainly be Moon Lake, even though she will use her “holidays” to move along in her detective work.

24 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008

It goes without saying that in all the volumes throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Nancy Drew has different mysteries to solve, but the plots are all based on coincidence and built up similarly. The only thing that differs is that Nancy Drew sometimes must solve two mysteries at once, which turn out to be intertwined as the story progresses.

In Nancy‟s Mysterious Letter, for example, Nancy tries to relocate the postman‟s mail pouch that has been stolen in front of Nancy‟s house and find Nancy Smith Drew, the missing heiress of an estate in England. Both mysteries turn out to be intertwined towards the end of the story, because Edgar Dixon, the postman‟s stepbrother who has stolen the mail, wants to marry Nancy Smith Drew. The girl sleuth solves both mysteries, and in the end, evil Mr. Edgar Dixon gets punished.

Many critics of Golden Age7 detective fiction, like Patricia Craig and Mary Cadogan, devaluate the plots of the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories:

Every one of the rules laid down for adult detective fiction during the period known as the Golden Age is infringed in the Nancy Drew Image 5: Dust jacket of Nancy’s Mysterious Letter by Russel Tandy6 stories. There is no mystery about the identity of the criminals; plots and subplots are welded together by a series of preposterous coincidences; the triumphant conclusions are not presented as a result of logic or even of plausible chance. (Craig and Cadogan 155)

The critic Bobbie Ann Mason describes the plots as “sonnets – endless variations on an inflexible form” (56) and the endings as “a crescendo of swift events”: catastrophe just as Nancy is about to break the case, rescue by the police/friends/family, an easy round-

6 Taken from: http://www.series-books.com/nancydrew/dustjackets.html 7 The “Golden Age” of Detective Fiction covers the years between the two World Wars (1920-1939). Golden Age detective fiction writers were composing in England, including among others, Agatha Christie (1890-1976), Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), Margery Allingham (1904-1966) and Ngaio Marsh (1899-1982), known as “the Queens of Crime”. Certainly did he authors write beyond the Gol- den Age of detective fiction, and several later writers adopted Golden Age rules, including a number of today‟s writers who compose detective stories (Keitel 14; Williams).

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 25 up of the crooks […], the immediate and crestfallen confession, discovery of the treas- ure or secret, and celebration and praise of the girl sleuth” (57).

Even though the Nancy Drew novels of the 1930s and 1940s are criticized for their formulaic and predictable plots, which are mainly based on coincidence, children have loved the adventures of the early girl sleuth Nancy Drew since her birth in 1930. Catherine Sheldrick Ross, for example, states that mystery stories, like the Nancy Drew volumes, “may seem formulaic to jaded adults, but not to the apprentice reader who is reading for the first time about lost gold mines and fresh footprints”. She goes on saying that “the problem for all of us is that it‟s hard to recover the first experience of en- thrallment, of being caught up in the world of the story, of not being in your bedroom reading but being right there with the hero or the heroine” (202). Children read the Nancy Drew plots differently than adults do. Whereas adults may complain about the recurrent familiar plot structures, the familiar characters, the introduction of the mystery and danger already on the first page of the book, and the happy endings, kids love “the not heavy fiction” (Ross 220) with “the right balance between safety and danger, between comforting sameness and novelty” (Ross 223). They strongly identify with the recurrent familiar characters who appear in similar settings in every novel. Nancy Drew, the famous girl sleuth who was born in 1930, is such a recurrent character solving her cases most often in the fictional Midwestern town called River Heights.

Now the questions arise: Who exactly is Nancy Drew throughout the 1930s and 1940s? Where does she come from? What does she look like? What kind of family does Nancy have? How does she interact with other characters in the books? What do other people think about the girl heroine? What is it that makes her so famous? It goes without saying that not only the discussion of structure and contents of the novels is relevant but also the characterization of the famous girl sleuth Nancy Drew as the protagonist of the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories.

In the early Nancy Drew novels, we encounter a pretty sixteen-year-old Nancy with a curly golden bob who lives together with her father Carson Drew, a famous criminal lawyer, and their housekeeper Hannah Gruen in River Heights, a fictional town in the Midwest of the United States:

26 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008

Like a true daughter of the Middle West, Nancy Drew took great pride in the fertility of her State and saw beauty in a crop of waving green corn as well as in the rolling hills and the expanse of prairie land. (Old Clock 26)

We do not know exactly in which state River Heights is situated, but according to the references to cornfields, prairie- and farmland, many readers assume that when Mildred Wirt Benson wrote the stories, the author positioned River Heights in her home-state Iowa (Plunkett-Powell 85). The fact that the state is not mentioned anywhere in the texts also allows readers to make connections with their own towns and cities.

Nancy‟s mother died when the girl was only ten years old. She has already finished high-school and is much more interested in her work as an amateur detective than in fashion as other girls her age are:

In school Nancy had been very popular and she boasted many friends. […] While at school Nancy had made one particular chum, Helen Corning, of whom we shall hear later. (Old Clock 13)

“Now what?” her father asked, smiling as she burst in upon him. “Is it a new dress you want?” Nancy‟s cheeks were flushed and her eyes danced with excitement. “Don‟t try to tease me,“ she protested. “I‟ve stumbled onto something important, and I want information!” (Old Clock 62)

With the starting phrases of the book The Secret of the Old Clock, “It would be a shame if all that money went to the Tophams! They will fly higher than ever!” (1), Nancy introduces herself as a girl with a great sense of justice. According to her, the snobbish, already-rich family with Richard Topham, “an old skinflint, who made his money by gambling on the stock exchange” (3), Cora, his wife, “a vapid social climber” (3), and their two girls Isabel and Ada, “stuck-up creatures”(3) who went to school together with Nancy, does not deserve Josiah Crowley‟s money since they treated him very badly. They also urged him to make his will in their favor. But now people say that Josiah made a second will. Nancy wants to do everything possible to discover it.

Especially when Nancy becomes aware of Allie and Grace Horners‟ poverty, her sense of justice overwhelms her. In Nancy‟s eyes, the Tophams do not deserve Crow- ley‟s money but the girls. Moved by their poverty, Nancy offers them some money in return for their hospitality when caught up in the thunderstorm, but the proud girls re-

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 27 fuse to take any charity. So Nancy comes up with the bright idea to ask Grace to make a dress for her, which the girl accepts with dignity. The amateur detective wants to do everything possible to find Josiah Crowley‟s second will which should prove that the money does not belong to the arrogant Topham family. Nancy also wants “to see justice done” (56) when she meets Abigail Rowen, the old woman who looked after Josiah Crowley and is now in urgent need of a helping hand.

Even though it is not directly stated in the book that the Great Depression caused the characters‟ misfortune, the reader assumes it. “Carolyn Keene” indicates that the characters are not in charge of their poor and precarious situations like many people who lived during the Great Depression in the United States were irresponsible for their misfortunes. Still, they were affected strongly by the tremendous causes of the economic crisis.

The Great Depression in the United States, lasting for almost ten years, was brought about by a range of conditions, among them the stock market crash of October 29, 1929, for which many people like the Tophams who gambled on the stock exchange were responsible. Stockholders lost more than forty-billion dollars in only two months. Lots of banks went bankrupt, and people lost all their savings. Banks that did not crash stopped granting credit, which caused a loss of purchasing power in the economy. This again led to the end of production in many companies and thousands of people lost their jobs (Great Depression). Losing a regular income signified that numerous people lost their homes, had to starve, got seriously ill, and even died.

The harsh life of Abigail and the Horner sisters, presumably caused by the Great Depression, can only be improved if they receive part of Crowley‟s fortune. People like the Tophams are responsible for their misfortune, and now the arrogant family of River Heights even tries to receive all the money of dead Josiah Crowley.

Nancy‟s sense of justice is also demonstrated when she observes Ada Topham in a store sweeping a fragile bowl to the floor which breaks into pieces. Instead of saying sorry and confessing her fault, Ada blames the saleswoman for the mess who should pay the fifty dollars for the damage. Had Nancy not observed the scene and told the truth, the saleswoman would have been accused of damaging the expensive vase:

“Miss, I am afraid I must ask you to pay for the bowl,” a saleswoman interposed politely. Ada wheeled angrily and stared at the saleswoman insolently. “I‟ll not

28 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008

pay for it!” she snapped. “I didn‟t break it!” “But, Miss, I saw you knock it off the counter,” the saleswoman protested. […] “This impudent girl claims I broke a vase,” Ada stormed, addressing the floor manager. “I wasn‟t even near the counter at that time! However, I did see her knock it to the floor herself. Isn‟t that so, Isabel?” […]The saleswoman was too bewildered to take her own part and Nancy saw that the floor manager was in a dilemma. As she sensed that he was about to exonerate Ada from all blame, she stepped forward. “You must be mistaken, Miss Topham,” she said quietly. “I am certain the saleswoman did not break the bowl, for I saw the accident myself.”[…] Perhaps it isn‟t my business, but I can‟t permit you to accuse this girl of something she didn‟t do.” (53-4)

This scene convinces Nancy once more that the Tophams do not deserve a penny. She does not tolerate their cruel behavior towards honest and innocent people in society. Nancy also feels convinced in her decision to discredit the Tophams when she visits them at home to sell tickets for the charity dance. Mrs. Topham does not want to buy any tickets, and her daughters encourage their mother‟s decision. Mr. Topham, however, decides to buy all the charity tickets for a higher price and wants Nancy to donate the rest. But only because his donation should get the Tophams‟ name into the newspaper. Nancy hates his selfish attitude. Towards the end of the story, when Nancy and her dad find out that the Tophams are “cut off without a cent” (204), Nancy is the happiest person on earth. She is exited about the fact that the Horner girls, Abigail, and other relatives of Josiah Crowley receive the money they are in desperate need of:

After everyone had left the house, Mr. Drew turned to his daughter with a smile. “Well, we administered the coup de grâce to the Tophams all right.” “Yes, wasn‟t it funny to watch their faces when they learned they were cut off without a cent?” […] “The Tophams deserved to be cut off without a cent,” Nancy declared. “I‟m so glad everything came out right and that Allie and Grace received the bulk of the fortune.” (203-04)

And she is even more excited when she hears that the Tophams are bankrupt. They have been losing on the stock market, and the banks reduced their credit because they could not liquidate their debts with the Crowley fortune. Through unravelling the mystery of the old clock, Nancy could restore order to the poor and good people and punish the Tophams, the avaricious “nouveau-riche” (Siegel 176).

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 29

In Nancy‟s Mysterious Letter, Nancy again stands up for justice when she tries to relocate the stolen postman‟s mail pouch and find Nancy S. Drew, because a letter from England addressed at the missing heiress of the estate of a Jonathan Smith was wrongly sent to the girl sleuth. If the stolen mail is not found, postman Ira Dixon will be dismissed from his job and deprived of his pension, and if Nancy S. Drew is not located, the heiress will not receive her fortune.

Nancy‟s sense of justice overwhelms her when she finds out that Ira‟s half- brother stole the mail pouch. Edgar wanted to ruin Ira‟s good reputation, and he hoped that when promising Ira to find the mail pouch, he would get some of his brother‟s money. Ira, who inherited a little fortune from his aunt, first did not want to share the money with Edgar, because he threatened him from the moment he heard about the fortune. Furthermore, Ira does not even know for sure what his half-brother does for a living. He assumes that he is the secretary of a “big businessman” (56) because he is always very well dressed. Before claiming part of Ira‟s fortune, Edgar told him that his income was strongly reduced because “times are hard” (56). The “hard times” probably refer to the Great Depression, in which many people lost their jobs or were paid much less than before the economic crisis. It is also probable that the “big businessman” lost his money gambling on the stock market and could not pay his employees any longer.

Since Ira believes in the good in man, he first assumes that Edgar will really help him to find the mail pouch, and so he plans to give him part of the fortune. But fortunately it is Nancy who tells Ira the truth about his cruel half-brother on time. And Nancy also finds out that Edgar has invented a “Lonesome Hearts Friendship Club”, a “corre- spondence club”, for which people have to pay a monthly membership fee. But it has always been Edgar himself who responded to the members and not a real “lonesome heart”. Edgar defrauded a lot of people just for money. Fortunately, through Nancy‟s strong sense of justice, she has punished untrustworthy and cruel Edgar Dixon and re- stored order to the good ones.

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Nancy‟s sense of justice is probably the main reason why she is very much interested in mysteries to solve, because through unravelling a mystery, she can help those poor and “good” people who deserve her help and punish the dishonest and conniving members of society, like Edgar Dixon or the To- phams.

30 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008

As I have already pointed out in chapter one, Edward Stratemeyer was convinced that girls would love to read about a strong famous girl detective who solves mysteries without adult help, since many girls spent their free-time with reading boys‟ mystery stories, and many adults were engrossed in crime stories by famous American writers, like Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) and Raymond Chandler (1888-1959), or the English crime writer Agatha Christie (1890-1976) who invented the amateur detective Miss Marple. Miss Marple is an elderly “delightful and unpredictable spinster” (qtd. in Keitel 41) who acts as an amateur detective in the fictional village St. Mary Mead in England, and, like Nancy, has a “natural flair for justice” (qtd. in Keitel 45) that always leads to her “natural flair for crime” (qtd. in Keitel 45). While Miss Marple sleuths in St. Mary Mead, Nancy Drew stumbles across one mystery after the next in River Heights. Of course, Nancy is not as old as Miss Marple, is not famous for knitting or pulling weeds in her garden, nor does she clear up murders but robberies, blackmails or locates missing people or items, but they both share “a natural genius for investigation” (qtd. in Keitel 45) as female amateur detectives that makes them both so attractive to readers.

What is more is that Nancy Drew Mystery Stories written for children are certainly not hard-boiled detective stories like the ones written by Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett who present a world full of crime, corruption and murder mainly during the Great Depression (Keitel 16-7), but the girl sleuth is famous for her “rational detection method”, “clear thinking, remarkable competence, and steady nature” (Siegel 173), qualities for which many adult detectives were also famous. She is, as Mason points out, “the most popular girl detective in the world” (49) and, according to Marjorie N. Allen, ”Nancy Drew, American princess personified, has always been the most popular female sleuth in the series genre” (102).

Nancy‟s feminine intuition helps the girl detective to follow the right path when it comes to solving mysteries. She feels when something is wrong and has the inner desire to find out what it is:

“Oh, I‟m more than ever interested in the case, father. I can‟t tell you why, but I just seem to know that Josiah Crowley made a second will.” “Well, your intui- tions are frequently correct, Nancy.” (Old Clock 19)

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 31

In The Lady Investigates, the critics Patricia Craig and Mary Cadogan, however, criticize Nancy‟s use of intuition, because they believe that apart from the girl sleuth no Golden Age detective uses her or his intuition to solve a mystery:

The girl can spot a wrongdoer at first sight. Her unreasonable assumptions are invariably correct. She sees connections where none could possibly exist. She‟s helped, too, by clues in the form of strange messages which drop out of the air, as if propelled into space by a whimsical deity. (155)

Carolyn G. Heilbrun defends Nancy‟s use of feminine intuition by saying that “Golden Age detectives used intuition, as does Nancy Drew, and they used, furthermore, the con- tingency that often makes that intuition possible” (13). But Nancy does not only use her intuition to solve mysteries, rather she “accesses her powers of ratiocination” (Siegel 173) and logical thinking. Her courage and self-confidence help her to make use of her admirable sleuthing methods.

When Nancy clashes with the robber gang in the Tophams‟ summer bungalow at Moon Lake, she first finds herself in a hopeless situation when the leader locates her hidden in the bedroom closet. Nancy does not become emotional but confronts the thief by saying, “I didn‟t hear much, but I saw plenty!”[…] “You‟re nothing but a common thief, and if I get the chance I‟ll turn you and your gang over to the police!” (131). But when the criminals lock Nancy in the closet and leave the house with their truck, Nancy becomes worried. Not for long, though, because she reasons that desperation would only worsen the situation. Instead of crying and screaming, she tries to think about a way to free herself from the closet:

At last she sank down on the floor to rest and tried to force herself to reason calmly. “I‟m only wasting my strength this way. I must try to think logically. If I don‟t, I‟m lost.” […] “This will never do,” she told herself sternly. “Surely, there is a way to get out of here. I must keep my head and try to think of something.” (Old Clock 135)

Albeit Nancy is successful in punishing the culprits and solving the mystery by “combining common sense with observation and intuition” (Parry 147), her dad sometimes worries about his daughter‟s intentions and actions, because detective work is not

32 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 only fun but also dangerous. Mr. Drew warns Nancy about possible risks, but at the same time he is proud of her convictions and courage:

“Detective work isn‟t always the safest occupation in which to engage. I happen to know that Richard Topham is an unpleasant man when crossed. If you actually succeed in learning anything about which may help the Horner girls, you are certain to have the Tophams in your wool.” “I‟m not afraid of them, father.” “Good!” Mr. Drew exclaimed. “I was hoping you would say that. I‟m glad you have the courage of your convictions, but I didn‟t want you to march off into the battle without a knowledge (sic) of what, undoubtedly, you will be up against.” (Old Clock 64)

Nancy is Carson Drew‟s only daughter who he wants to protect. But he also knows that Nancy is clever and responsible enough to take care of herself, and so he does not hold her off the case. One reason for Nancy‟s independence is certainly the absence of her mother. Nancy was only ten when her mother died. This made Nancy grow-up very fast and become a responsible and rational person.

When Nancy returns home from Moon Lake and tells about her experience with the robbers, her father is very proud of his daughter:

“You‟re a regular detective, Nancy.” […] “No, I‟m proud of what you‟ve done, Nancy. I couldn‟t have done better myself – perhaps not so well. You took a real risk when you encountered those robbers, but so long as you are back home safe and sound, it doesn‟t matter.” (180-81)

In Nancy‟s Mysterious Letter, Carson Drew also shows great pride in Nancy. When the mail pouch gets stolen in front of the Drews‟ house, the lawyer first believes that someone has committed the crime to embarrass him, but Nancy reasons that there would be one thousand better ways to attack her father‟s reputation. Mr. Drew is convinced by his daughter‟s argument and praises her saying, “You‟ll be a lawyer some day and find yourself a Congresswoman, if you don‟t watch out” (36). He thinks a great deal of his daughter and approves of everything Nancy does or says.

Not only is Nancy‟s father proud of his daughter, but also the authorities show great pride in the clever girl sleuth. Before Nancy solves the puzzle, the police are rather skeptical of the girl‟s qualities. When Nancy drives with the caretaker Jeff Tucker to the

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 33 next police station to report the robbery at the Tophams‟ summer bungalow, the marshal asks Nancy to lead the way to the robbers. Nancy jumps into her blue roadster, and the policemen follow her in their police car. When they come to a fork in the road, they do not know where to proceed. Nancy proposes to drive to Garwin, a large city, whereas the police should take the other road to cover more ground. At the beginning, the marshal is amused and doubtful of Nancy‟s intentions and accepts her suggestions only hesitantly, but in the end, when Nancy leads the police officers to the robbers to arrest them, the marshal is really proud of Nancy‟s work:

“Not many girls would have used their brains the way you did,” [...] “Unless I‟m mistaken, these robbers are old hands at the game. They have been plying their trade around Moon Lake for a number of seasons. The residents will be mighty grateful for what you‟ve done. And that Mrs. Topham you spoke of – she ought to give you a liberal reward for saving her household goods.” (Old Clock 172-73)

Some policemen and detectives, however, disavow that a female is cleverer than the male authority is when it comes to solving mysteries. In Nancy‟s Mysterious Letter, for example, the detectives, who should solve the mystery of the stolen mail pouch, do not appreciate that Nancy Drew is involved in the case:

They had been twitted more than once by civilian acquaintances because of Nancy‟s solution of problems which had baffled the police, and now that they were face to face with the young woman, her youth and composure nettled them more than a little. (24)

Mr. Cutter, the postmaster and hence Mr. Dixon‟s boss, blames Nancy for the stolen pouch and even goes so far as to articulate the following:

“A woman‟s place is in the home, say I, and that goes for young ones who ought to be studying the business end of a broom or a darning needle instead of getting into trouble all the time. […] I still hold you responsible for the theft, young lady, even if you are Carson Drew‟s daughter. Now, when I was young, girls didn‟t go around inviting men below their station in life to come into their homes. That‟s the reason why we have so much lawlessness these days. The

34 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008

young people aren‟t brought up right. They have no discipline at all. They think they know more than their elders, they do.” (78)

Men around Nancy Drew simply cannot cope with the fact that she, only sixteen and, on top of everything, female, is smarter than they are and solves mysteries as an amateur detective that the authorities are unable to sort out. As Mason points out correctly, “She (Nancy) threatens their masculinity” (66). Men were afraid that if girls and women became too independent and successful, they would soon lose their roles as patriarchs in society. They regretted bygone times in which the only domain of a woman or girl was the home.

People also admire and envy Nancy when they see the skilled female driver steering her own car, a blue roadster in The Secret of the Old Clock, and a sporty maroon one in Nancy‟s Mysterious Letter:

More than one head was turned, in envy or admiration, to watch the pretty girl manipulate her snappy maroon car with the dash and confidence of a veteran driver. Traffic did not worry Nancy. (Mysterious Letter 102)

Not only being a skilled driver but also a great car mechanic, Nancy Drew is capable of fixing her car without any male help. One day, when the female sleuth is on her way to Moon Lake, the girl realizes that one of her car‟s tires is flat. Gifted as she is, she changes the tire without any assistance and does not worry when she gets dirty, a character trait rather atypical of women in the early twentieth century.

“A puncture!” Nancy murmured in disgust. “If that isn‟t just my luck! Oh, well, I suppose I must fix it myself, because there won‟t be another car along for an hour on this road.” It was not the first time Nancy Drew had changed a tire, but she never relished the task. Rummaging under the seat, she pulled out the tools and quickly jacked up the rear axle. She loosened the lugs which held the tire in place, and tugged at it. Again and again she pulled, but the huge balloon tire could not be budged. Then, as she gave one mighty tug, it came off and Nancy Drew fell backwards into a sitting posture on the road. “Well, it‟s off anyway,” she told herself with satisfaction, as she brushed the dirt from her clothing. (Old Clock 107)

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 35

Other girls would probably not have even realized the puncture, or in case they had, they would have waited for a man to come and change the tire for them. Nancy, however, is different. Even if it is a filthy and “unfeminine” activity, she does not hesitate in fixing her car on her own.

Nancy is known to be a very skilled driver so that even Mr. Nickerson, Ned8 Nickerson‟s father, wants her to drive his car, a heavy sedan, which Nancy really ad- mires:

“A young woman as capable and self-reliant as yourself must be a wonderful driver, “ Mr. Nick- erson said, pausing at the car door. “You know the road to Stafford. Wouldn‟t you like to drive?” “I have never driven a car of this make,” Nancy said. “But if you will risk the car – ?” “I have less worry with you at the wheel than if I were driving,” Mr. Nickerson urged. (Mysterious Letter 160)

The roadster, the possibility to drive wherever and whenever she wants to drive, and her mechanical skills mark Nancy‟s autonomy and

Image 6: Nancy in her car9 independence.

Many people around her who are convinced that a girl‟s place is in the home, however, disapprove of the female sleuth‟s adventures in her car and see no reasons for girls venturing beyond the front door. Mrs. Sheets in Nancy‟s Mysterious Letter, a woman whose letter has been among the stolen mail pouch, is one of her foes:

“I know you are Nancy Drew,” mimicked the stranger. “I‟ve seen you go flib- berty-jibbet in your auto many a time. When I was a girl, girls stayed at home and learned to cook and sew and mind their own business, not to go gallivantin‟ around in swell autos and waited on hand and foot. I declare that I don‟t know what the world is coming to.” (63)

8 Ned Nickerson is Nancy‟s boyfriend who she gets to know in the seventh volume of the series, The Clue in the Diary (Parry 149). We will meet him again and again in further volumes. 9 Taken from: The Secret of the Old Clock 30

36 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008

Nancy, of course, is not the first young woman that maneuvers an automobile. Already in the Progressive Era, the modern woman was not any longer merely passenger but also driver of a car. Her new style of clothing, shorter dresses that no longer touched the ground, or even suits with knickers, and bobbed hair made driving more comfortable. The automobile offered the New Woman and New Girl possibilities for pursuing personal pleasure and excitement, or social and political programs like campaigning for women‟s rights (Scharff 135). As Romalov points out in her essay “Mobile and Mod- ern Heroines”, “Women drivers gave evidence of a new perception of modern women as mobile, active and public” (79).

Society, especially men, were not really happy about women invading a male sphere. According to Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company and inventor of the assembly line for the Ford Model T, and many other Americans, “‟driver‟ meant male; the modifier „woman‟ meant interloper” (Scharff 166). They could not stand women getting dirty behind the steering wheel and regarded them as emotionally insta- ble, physically weak and too little intellectual to drive a car (Scharff 30).

But that women and girls were able to drive cars is proven to us by various characters of the numerous automobile series of the early twentieth century, and especially by Nancy Drew, the modern sixteen-year-old girl who entered the scene in 1930. Her excellent driving skills are one of the reasons why many women and feminist authors, like Carolyn G. Heilbrun, identify with “Nancy Drew as the model for early second- wave feminists10” (Heilbrun 18). Heilbrun explains that “most important is that blue roadster. She cannot only back it up out of tight places, she can get into it and go any time she wants. She has freedom and the means to exercise it. That blue roadster was certainly for me, in my childhood, the mark of independence and autonomy; the means to get up and go” (18).

The only time when Nancy does not drive her own car is in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories during the Second World War, because gasoline was scarce during wartime (Rehak 199-00). In The Clue in the Jewel Box (1943), Nancy tries to relocate Madam Alexandra‟s long-lost grandson Michael, who is unaware of being a prince. Solving the mystery about the missing grandson, who Nancy only has a picture from

10 The second-wave of feminism started in the 1960s and lasted throughout the 1970s in the United States when women tried to free themselves from their traditional roles as mothers and housewives (Second Wave Feminism).

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 37 when he was four years old, the girl sleuth and her friends do not use Nancy‟s trendy car like in other books but ride their bicycles or drive with taxi, ferryboat, and motor- boat:

The next afternoon, accompanied by her chums Bess and George, she pedaled (sic) on her bicycle to Water Street in the business section. […] The girls thanked Mrs. Kent for the information, and then discussed what they should do. Neither Bess nor George was willing to make the long trip by bicycle. “Let‟s go by ferryboat tomorrow,” the former suggested, and this plan was agreed up to. (32-3)

The Stratemeyer Syndicate did not explicitly refer to the Second World War in their series books, because the editors and authors were sure that the books would also be read after the war. So they just made certain minor references to it, among them the avoidance of cars in the novels.

The cousins Bess Marvin and George Fayne are Nancy‟s closest friends, who, apart from some minor changes they undergo over the years, accompany Nancy into the twenty-first century. In comparison to feminine, plump Bess Fayne, who loves eating delicious food, dresses prettily, and shows interest in the opposite sex despite being timid and fearful, George Fayne, who does not take pleasure in dating, is the tomboy of the three:

George, her cheeks rosy and her eyes sparkling from the keen November air, strode into the hallway and doffed her boyish ulster. Hat and muffler came off next, and George ran her fingers through her cropped hair until it crackled with electricity. She was proud of her masculine name, and dressed the part. Woe to the person who called her Georgette or even Georgie, let alone Georgiana or any other feminization of her real name! (Mysterious Letter 95)

Already George‟s masculine name indicates that she has a rather masculine character. The three friends complement each other very well: Bess, the feminine one of the three, George the tomboy, and Nancy who does look like a girl and has a steady boyfriend but possesses a lot of “masculine” character traits. She loves to solve mysteries, drives around in her car whenever she wishes to do so, does repair work, and even hunts down criminals.

38 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008

Nancy‟s steady boyfriend is Ned Nickerson who attends Emerson College and plays on its football team. Whereas Ned dreams of a romantic relationship with Nancy, the girl just uses him and his muscles to support her in solving mysteries. The college boy would do anything for Nancy, which he expresses in Nancy‟s Mysterious Letter:

“Anything you do is all right with me,” Ned smiled. “If you want me to dress in feathers and war paint and play the Scotch bag-pipes up and down Main Street, I‟ll do it without asking you why!” “Oh, Ned you‟re such a good sport,” Nancy laughed, convulsed at the picture of the football hero in mixed masquerade. “No, all I want you to do is to take me to the professor‟s house. He can tell me where the English Nancy is staying. She must still be in town.” (172)

In The Haunted Bridge, Nancy assists her father in tracking international jewel thieves and, together with her friends George and Bess, spends her vacation at a summer resort at Deer Mountain Hotel. Like in other stories, Nancy becomes concerned with two related mysteries. Ned and his two college friends Bud Mason and Bill Cowan come to visit the girls, but instead of enjoying their vacation together, the boys get involved in Nancy‟s detective work:

“Are you willing to help me?” Nancy asked eagerly. “Of course. I thought you didn‟t need my assistance.” “Oh Ned, it was just that I couldn‟t explain everything, and I‟m afraid I can‟t even now.” “That doesn‟t matter. Nancy. You tell me what to do and I‟ll obey orders with no questions asked.” “It may mean ruining your evening, Ned. Are you willing to substitute sleuthing for dancing?” “We can dance when we get back to River Heights.” “That‟s the way I feel about it,” Nancy agreed in satisfaction.” (170-71)

Ned always gives in, even if he would really love to spend some time alone with his girlfriend. Like Mason points out, “Nancy has Ned under her thumb” (63), a young woman who is not as interested in romantic actions like her handsome boyfriend Ned Nickerson. Whereas he dreams of romantic moments with Nancy, the young woman is always occupied with solving mysteries as an amateur sleuth. If they spent more time together, she would not have the time to pursue her interests. In a way, she seems to be a pretty selfish person, who is always concerned with her personal pleasures, i.e. her detective work. Their somewhat one-sided relationship also demonstrates that the self- confident young woman does not think a man on her side would be necessary to protect

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 39 and care for her. She loves her independence too much to “belong” to a man. Nancy‟s attitude towards men is rather atypical of the time period in which Nancy was born.

In a way, Nancy‟s character traits as a whole and her surroundings make the girl a remarkable young woman of the 1930s and 1940s. Not many girls and young women were as independent and free as Nancy, who solves mysteries as an amateur girl detective, drives her own car and has a father who approves of everything his daughter does and says. In real life, the situation of women and girls during the Great Depression and the Second World War were different from Nancy‟s, even though the roles of women in society had already changed for the better.

The years before the Great Depression, strictly speaking from the 1890s to the 1920s, known as the Progressive Era, were famous for the breakdown of Victorianism and the emergence of the New Woman. The image and appearance of the New Woman, and with her the New Girl, underwent strong transformations. Whereas the lives of Vic- torian women revolved around their homes where they cared for their husband and children and did not take part in the public sphere, the New Woman was “college educated, frequently unmarried, and self-supporting” (Evans 147) and was oriented towards pleasure, autonomy and consumption. Women together with men enjoyed themselves in theatres, movie halls, amusement parks, and on dance floors. The appearance of the weak, fragile, and intellectually incapable Victorian woman and girl dressed in lavish Victorian dresses with petticoats, frills and corsets soon changed to a more athletic style, known as the Gibson girl, who wore a shirtwaist and long skirt, which enabled her to play tennis, golf or ride her bicycle (Evans 147, 160-61).

New women came from all walks of life. Among them were “glamorous per- formers, female athletes, „working girls11‟ employed in city factories and rural textile mills, middle-class daughters entering higher education and professions formerly closed to women, and reformers involved in women‟s clubs, settlement houses, trade unions and suffrage” (Clash of Cultures: The New Woman). By 1913, the Gibson girl was replaced by the “thin, flat-chested, and boyish-looking” (Clash of Cultures: Image and Lifestyle) flapper who was not interested in politics like her parents or grandparents were but wanted to have fun. Sara M. Evans describes the flapper as following:

11 The term working girls referred to “young women, usually single, engaged in wage labor” (Clash of Cultures: Work, Education and Reform).

40 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008

Young, hedonistic, sexual, the flapper soon became a symbol of the age with her bobbed hair, powdered nose, roughed cheeks, and shorter skirts. Lively and energetic, she wanted experience for its own sake. She sought out popular amusements in cabarets, dance halls, and movie theaters that no respectable, middle class woman would have frequented a generation before. She danced, smoked, and flaunted her sexuality to the horror of her elders. (175)

Zelda Fitzgerald, the wife of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, was a symbol of the modern females in the 1920s, known as the jazz age. According to her “a woman gets more happiness out of being gay, light- hearted, unconventional, mistress of her own fate, than out of a career that calls for hard work, intellectual pessimism and loneliness” (qtd. in Evans 175-76). She wanted her daughter “to be a flapper, because flappers are brave, gay and beautiful” (qtd. in Evans 176).

Albeit the fun-loving young gen- Image 7: A smoking flapper12 eration, who became highly involved in athletics and drove around in their automobiles displaying their new forms of freedom, they knew that in the end their economic and social stability would rely on their marriage (Evans 178).

Independence and the new attitudes of the 1920s, however, became a delusion after the stock market crash in 1929, the following Great Depression, and the Second World War. Even though during the Great Depression and World War II many women and female adolescents began to work outside their homes caused by economic needs, “the emergencies confirmed a shared conviction that in the best of times as in the worst of times woman‟s place was in the home” (Woloch 300).

After the Second World War, men returned home from war and took up jobs that women had carried out during wartime. Traditionally raised women enjoyed taking up

12 Taken from: http://www.polyvore.com/20_flapper_girl_photo_artwork/thing?id=2867016

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 41 their old lifestyles again, which meant doing housework and caring for their families. Young women, however, who graduated at the age of seventeen or eighteen, were angry about the changes. During the war they were economically independent. Now they had to stay at home again and seek out marriage and children (Woloch 331-35).

For Nancy Drew, even though a young woman of sixteen and living during the Great Depression and the Second World War, independence and autonomy are a daily occurrence. She is not the traditional young woman who stays at home and waits to get married in the near future, nor does she smoke, drink, or dress like a flapper, but she enjoys her freedom and autonomy as an amateur girl detective. She is gifted in playing sports, drives around in her sporty car, is capable of repairing things, and, after having solved the mystery which other detectives and policemen have been unable to figure out, Nancy is the female hero for people surrounding her. All these traits are regarded as masculine in a time period when “80 percent of Americans expressed the belief that their (women‟s) only proper place was the home” (Evans 202).

One reason for her masculine traits is presumably the absence of her mother who died when Nancy was only ten years old. Her father, Carson Drew, is Nancy‟s role model whom she looks up to. But also Carson strongly respects Nancy and always approves of his daughter‟s intentions and shows lots of affection for her. Nancy is “the lady of the house, the mother of her own identity, and the apple of her father‟s eye” (Nash, Girlhood in America 467). Heilbrun, for example, describes the effects of Nancy‟s mother‟s absence as following:

Nancy Drew has no mother, no female mentor from the patriarchy to tell her to cool it, be nice, let the boys win, don‟t say what you mean. Mothers have long been and were, in Nancy‟s days and before, those who prepare their daughters to take their proper place in patriarchy, which is why in so many novels with interesting women heroes, whether by Charlotte Bronte or Mildred Benson, the female heroes are motherless. The lack of a mother bestows possibility on a young girl. (18)

Although Nancy does not live in a “traditional” family with a mother at home who ful- fils the domestic duties and cares for the children, we do not have the impression that she misses the female parent. The permanent presence of Nancy‟s father who she can count on whenever she needs him makes up for the loss. Unlike many fathers during

42 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 that time period who hardly met their children, he does not have to work from morning far into the night to earn a living. Even during the Second World War, albeit not directly referred to in the books, Nancy is not fatherless like many children or teenagers were. David Blankenhorn, for instance, points out that “during the war years, approximately 3 million to 4 million families with children experienced fatherlessness” (60), and Wil- liam M. Tuttle Jr. states that “during the Second World War, about 183,000 home-front children lost their fathers” (44). Nancy herself, however, does not have to face “a culture of fatherlessness” (Blankenhorn 60), and is loved and admired by her father who “she is in many ways the son he never had” (Parry 149).

Nancy Drew‟s aptitude of solving mysteries as an amateur sleuth, her yearning for adventure, her great driving and mechanical skills, her superiority over policemen and adult detectives, her interest in physical activity, and her relationship to her father Carson Drew and her boyfriend Ned Nickerson demonstrate that Nancy rejects social principles of that time period. She shows us that not only men but also young women could be independent, strong-willed, intelligent, and successful. Since Nancy is such a strong character in the mystery stories of the 1930s and 1940s, Sally E. Parry identifies Nancy as a “good feminist hero” (150).

Young girls during the time were strongly attracted to the character. They wanted to be Nancy Drew, the confident, brave, independent, and adventurous girl with a caring and tolerant father and loving friends. Nancy was a role model for young girls who lived in a time when women and girls were not as autonomous and independent as Nancy. And when reading about Nancy, they were positive that one day they would be as assertive, smart, and free as the girl detective.

But we have to consider that Nancy Drew is not merely the modern girl and feminist hero of the 1930s and 1940s but also embodies the traditional Victorian girl with her pretty face, her blue eyes, her curly golden bob, and her range of clothes for all social purposes. Nancy‟s pure and angelic prettiness delights her father, which is expressed in the following passage:

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 43

Now, as he gave her his respectful attention, he was not particularly concerned with the Richard Topham family but rather with the rich glow of the lamp upon Nancy‟s curly bob. Not all the sort of head which one expected to indulge in serious thoughts, he told himself. (Old Clock 1-2)

The images of the early Nancy Drew novels represent Nancy both as the New Girl and the Victorian young woman. On the dust jacket of The Secret of the Old Clock, for example, Nancy is dressed in a three-quarter-length skirt, stilettos and a flapper-like cap, running along self-confidently with the clock under her arm. In an interior illustration, however, we see angelic and vulnerable Victorian Nancy who is frightened by a tall and robust stranger in front of her. The girl‟s self-confidence seems to vanish in this moment of danger when she grips her throat and grasps the door behind her for help. And when Nancy, while waiting for her rescue, wants to convince African-American caretaker Jeff Tucker that she is not a robber, she “let go her longest and loudest feminine scream” (Old Clock 138). Expressing herself loudly and in a high-pitched voice, she assures him she is a young woman. Convinced that the caretaker would not be afraid of a female in- truder, Nancy uses her femininity in order to be rescued. On the one hand, Nancy is the “unfeminine”, modern, independent, brave, and adventurous girl who hunts down criminals without male support, but on the other hand “Carolyn Keene” presents the sweet girl with a pretty face, blue eyes and a curly golden bob as the traditional and vulnerable young woman Image 8: Worried Nancy13 who uses her femininity in dangerous situations.

Not only do Nancy‟s outward appearance and her occasionally “typical” female behavior indicate the yearning for the Victo- rian past in the Nancy Drew books, but also the sometimes feminine and aristocratic objects we read about, like the carved brass chest filled with jewellery in The Haunted Bridge or the will hidden in the old mantel clock in The Secret of the Old Clock. In the

13 Taken from: The Secret of the Old Clock 131

44 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 novel The Clue in the Jewel Box, numerous marvelous feminine objects are involved that refer to a more conservative past:

For several minutes Nancy had been noticing the unusual furnishing of the room. On the walls hung several tapestries which seemed too elegant for an or- dinary house. There were beautiful pieces of furniture covered with hand- embroidered silks. On a table and a desk stood rare objects of glass and porcelain. “This is almost like a museum,” thought Nancy. One piece completely captured the girl‟s interest. It was a pink enamel Easter egg which stood on a tiny gold pedestal. Its rounded cover was encrusted with delicate gold work. (5-6)

As Nancy, Bess, and George waited expectantly, Mrs. Alexandra raised the lid of the enamel Easter egg, Inside, rising from a nest of velvet, was a tiny tree set with emeralds. Upon a jeweled branch was perched a delicately fashioned nightingale. (30)

The nightingale says “Clue in Jewel Box” (55) which is another stunning object. Mason states that the objects involved in the mysteries, like the will hidden in the old mantel clock, the jewel box, or the pink Easter egg, are a “miniaturized version of the mansion” (59). And she further points out that “the allure of these objects and settings derives from the books‟ essential conservatism” (60). But also Mrs. Alexandra‟s elaborate and exquisite furniture and her objects of glass and porcelain in her home refer to the Victo- rian past. In Victorian homes, people placed lots of value on decoration and furnishing. The interiors were rich, elaborate, and exquisite and mirrored the people‟s wealth.

What also refers to the Victorian past are the tea parties in The Clue in the Jewel Box, which were very common in the Victorian age:

With the arrival of tea, Nancy and her chums tried not to stare at the handsome silver service which the faithful servant placed before her mistress with great ceremony. Never had they seen such exquisite work. On one of the teapot was engraved a pheasant, while on the other was a monogram, combined with a golden royal crown. […] As the girls sipped their tea and ate delicious, frosted cakes, their hostess spoke rather sadly of present day life in their native land, so changed from the past. (27-8)

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 45

The tradition of drinking tea in the afternoon was born by Anna Russell, Duchess of Bedford (1783-1857), a friend and lady-in-waiting of Queen Victoria. She felt a “sink- ing feeling” in the afternoon and so she told her servants to serve tea and cakes. Lots of people imitated her behavior and so the ritual of afternoon tea parties was born (The Victorian Era).

Comparing Nancy with Mrs. Alexandra, who fled from England many years ago, two different types of women meet: Nancy, the sixteen-year-old girl, who, apart from some “Victorian” character traits as mentioned above, is a very modern young woman of the 1930s and 1940s. Mrs. Alexandra, however, seems to miss the “good old days” when the home was the only domain of a woman. Here she is seated in the home serving tea to the guests, traditionally a woman‟s role. Nancy, on the other hand, is outside of the home working on her case and chasing criminals.

After having discussed Nancy‟s character and her relation to other individuals in the books, and the prevailing “gender codes” (Nash, Girlhood in America 466) of the 1930s and 1940s on the previous pages, we will draw our attention to the social constructions of class and race in the early Nancy Drew novels.

As the daughter of the well-known lawyer Carson Drew, Nancy belongs to the white upper-middle class, a “social group between the upper and the middle class made up of well-paid professionals, managers, and their families” (Upper middle class). She possesses everything a sixteen-year-old young woman dreams of: a sporty car, dresses for all occasions, delicate food to eat, a caring father who approves of everything his daughter does or says, enough money to drive and stay wherever she wants, a handsome boyfriend who she has under her thumb, friends with whom she can spend time, and a housekeeper who accomplishes all the work Nancy tells her to do. Nancy does not need to do any domestic work, but instead dedicates her time to solving mysteries. As Melinda L. de Jesús points out in her essay “Fiction and Assimilation: Nancy Drew, Cultural Imperialism, and the Filipina/American Experience”, “she (Nancy) epitomizes WASP privilege and its wealthy suburban lifestyle” (236). Even during the Great De- pression when many families had to sell their cars and children were starving to death and could not go to school because they did not have any clothing to wear, Nancy Drew drives around in her car wearing her fancy dresses and eats tasty dishes prepared by Hannah Gruen, the Drew‟s servant. The time of great hardship “that threatened even the

46 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 most stable families and devastated those that were more fragile” (Lindenmeyer 25) does not leave a single mark on Nancy and her family. And they even remain untouched by the harsh Second World War.

Nancy‟s exciting, adventurous, and worriless life caused numerous young readers, who most often lived in unhappy circumstances during a time of economic depression and war, to devour the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories. While reading about Nancy, young girls could escape the harsh realities that surrounded them in their real lives.

Class lines are clearly defined in the early Nancy Drew novels. Bobbie Ann Ma- son states that “all the virtues of refinement, taste, intelligence, and beauty belong to Nancy‟s class, while everyone else is vulgar, greedy, ill-tempered, insolent” (69). The Tophams, for example, who belong to the upper class, Nancy regards as “snobbish” and “arrogant” (Old Clock 3), whereas lower-class people like various foreigners and minority groups use “bad grammar” and “wear wicked facial expressions” (Mason 69).

Nancy cannot stand greedy and arrogant people, like the Tophams in The Secret of the Old Clock, because they belong to those people who are responsible for the misfortune of various people around them. We know that Mr. Topham “made his money by gambling on the stock exchange” (Old Clock 3) and was, therefore, also in charge of the economic crisis that followed the stock market crash in 1929. Of course, not all stock exchange speculators were responsible for the crash, but the Tophams‟ negative presen- tation throughout the book strengthens our assumption. The fact that the Tophams are dishonest and conniving alludes to those people who obtained money climbing on the backs of others without any care for who they hurt along the way. They urged Josiah Crowley to make his will in their favor, and after he had agreed, they treated the poor old man most badly.

The Tophams remained rich, like some wealthy people during the time period, while so many others were without jobs, food and even homes. It is only logical that people from the upper class were not viewed positively at that time. To showcase their wealth and to “feel” like the “most outstanding” and “acknowledged” people of River Heights, the Tophams live in a huge residence on Highland Boulevard:

The house was a large, pretentious affair of nondescript type. It was set back from the street and seemed to look down rather aloofly upon the surrounding

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 47

homes. Even a casual glance at the lawn revealed that it had been „landscaped‟ with a vengeance. In a effort to „do it in proper style,‟ Mrs. Topham had crowded the yard with sundials, benches, bird houses, and statues. “Such lack of taste!” Nancy thought, as she walked up the path to the house. (95)

Also the inside of the house portrays the Tophams as status seekers. They try to deco- rate and furnish the house almost like aristocrats, but they are not successful in their ambitions, which Nancy immediately realizes:

As she was finally ushered into the living room, she could not help but smile at the elaborate formality, for in spite of Mrs. Topham„s lofty ambitions, the woman had never achieved the commanding position in society that she strove for. The room in which Nancy found herself was even more bizarre than she had an- ticipated. Expensive oriental rugs clashed with window draperies of a different hue. The walls were heavy with paintings which were entirely out of place in such a small room, and period furniture had been added indiscriminately. (96)

Only towards the end of the book we get to know that the Tophams actually use credit, because they “have been losing steadily on the stock market” (205). And since they will not get Josiah Crowley‟s fortune, the banks have reduced their credit. Appar- ently, Nancy detests such arrogant, snobbish, greedy, dishonest and conniving members of society who become rich climbing on the backs of others.

Now we could argue that Nancy as part of the upper-middle class herself is rich and belongs to those “snobbish” and “arrogant” people. But in contrast to the Tophams, she uses her “heroic qualities”, as Anne Lundin defines her “independence, self- confidence, intelligence, and physical courage” (123-24), to seek for justice. She solves mysteries to help those people who have become victims of a crime.

Considering how Nancy confronts various foreigners or people of minority groups we can rather regard her as the “snobbish, icy, Daddy‟s girl”, as de Jesús describes her. In Nancy‟s Mysterious Letter, for example, the girl sleuth tries to find out who could have stolen Mr. Dixon‟s mail pouch. When she knocks at a neighbor‟s door, and a “brawny woman redolent of yellow soap and with bubbles from the washtub‟s suds fresh on her arms” (12) who obviously does not comprehend Nancy‟s words, an-

48 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 swers the bell, the girl sleuth tries desperately to make the woman understand her tions:

“Is anyone at home?” Nancy demanded. “The mailman‟s pouch has been stolen. Did you see anybody sneaking around here?” The woman grimaced and shrugged her shoulders. “Not speak English, me,” she smiled. “You speak maybe Polish?” “No, no, no!” Nancy cried. “Please try to understand. Mailman- letters-somebody steal them.” “Dere iss letter,” the laundress said, pointing to Nancy‟s hands. […] “No, not this letter. Lots of letters. In a bag! Bad man steal!” […] “You come back odder time,” she said with finality. “You go home, yes?” (12)

Before introducing herself, Nancy starts asking questions about the stolen mail pouch. She does not bother to tell the “brawny woman” who she is. We have the impression that Nancy, even though only sixteen, feels much superior to the woman in front of her. When the woman asks Nancy if she by chance speaks Polish, Nancy does not respond with a nice “no”, but cries the word even three times, a sign for her anger that the woman does not speak English. We will find more examples how Nancy deals with foreigners and members of minority groups when we will discuss the race issue further down. And we will also see how “Carolyn Keene” portrays racial minorities and foreigners in the Nancy Drew novels.

Nancy, however, does not treat all foreigners disrespectfully, especially not those who are part of the upper class, like Mrs. Alexandra in The Clue in the Jewel Box. When Nancy meets the ill, elderly lady for the first time, and the woman asks her to take her home, Nancy hesitates first, because the woman does not speak like a white American woman. But finally Nancy puts her prejudices aside:

“Please take me to my home,” she whispered. “I feel so ill.” Nancy hesitated, not because she was unwilling to help, but because for an instant she wondered if she might become the victim of a hoax. Although the stranger used perfect English, she spoke with a slight accent. […] Nancy nodded as she assisted the elderly lady to her feet. The smile with which she was rewarded immediately erased any doubt in the girls‟ mind that this person intended to bring any harm to her. (3)

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 49

As soon as Nancy finds out that Mrs. Alexandra speaks with an accent, because she is an ex-queen from England, the girl detective shows lots of respect for the woman. Even though she is a member of the upper class, like the Tophams are, Mrs. Alexandra is more sympathetic. She is not portrayed as an arrogant woman who became rich de- frauding other people. Instead, she is a trustworthy and kind woman who needs help in finding her long-lost grandson.

What attracts even more attention than the established class lines in the early Nancy Drew novels are the negative racial stereotypes of people of color that appear regularly. They belong to the working-class or even lower-class people of society. As pointed out by James P. Jones, “in the first seventeen Nancy Drew mysteries seventeen Negroes are identified. Most are faceless menials of no significance to the development of the stories. Only four of the seventeen affect the action and only four are given names” (121).

One shared trait of the African Americans in the first volumes of the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories is their broken and ungrammatical language. Jones argues that “double negatives, slang, and slurred or dropped endings” (122) prevail. When Jeff Tucker rescues Nancy from the cupboard, he says, “You po‟h chile! Suppose you had o‟ stahved to death in dah, or da house had burned down, or you was scared into fits, or –“ (141). And when Nancy explains that robbers have stolen the furniture, Jeff answers in dismay:

“At‟s right! At‟s right! Blame me! I ain‟t s‟posed to be no standin‟ ahmy – I‟s just a plain culled man with a wife and seven chillum a-dependin‟ one me. No mom! I ain‟t havin‟ no truck wit‟ dem machine-gun boys!” (140)

This use of diction signifies that African Americans are not well-educated people, who, as a result, have to take up low-paid unskilled jobs.

In Nancy‟s Mysterious Letter, an African American porter at the bank says, “Scuze me, sah, but de bank am closin‟” (78), and when Nancy asks the African Ameri- can maid for the heiress Miss Drew, the woman answers in a broken language, “Yas mum […] Miss Drew, she done gone out. Ah‟ll ask Mis Broderick when she expect her back” (182-83).

50 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008

But not only do African Americans in the Nancy Drew books use a broken language, they are also portrayed as liars, drinkers, criminals, and irresponsible workers. When Nancy asks Jeff Tucker why he did not guard the cottage when it was his job to do so, he answers:

“I was just all fed up bein‟ a caih-taker and takin‟ caih o‟ all dis truck from mornin‟ till night. It ain‟t such an excitin‟ life, Miss, and while I‟s done sowed all mah wild oats, I still sows a little rye now and den.” “Yes Jeff,” Nancy replies, “I can smell that on your breath right now.” (141)

Following Nancy‟s statement, Jeff Tucker explains what has happened to him: Jeff was lured to enter an attractive car of a white man who offered him something to drink. In the end, he awakened in a hotel room deprived of his keys. Evidently the white man fooled him. But not only Jeff‟s smell is the proof of his excessive drinking behavior, there is also “a certain alcoholic glitter in his eyes and his somewhat unsteady stance” (139) which Nancy realizes immediately when she first sees him. I am convinced Nancy would not have noticed this as quickly in the eyes and stance of a white middle-class protestant male. Here, instead, the girl detective is confronted with an African Ameri- can, who society had many prejudices against in the 1930s and 1940s. Nancy is angry about Jeff Tucker‟s unfaithful behavior towards the Tophams and wants to know what he thinks they will do with him. When he says that they probably will discharge him, Nancy replies, “It would be only what you deserve, Jeff. You were unfaithful to your trust” (143). Nancy, even though much younger than the adult man, believes she has the authority to scold him. Again, she would certainly not have responded in the same se- vere tone if it was a white person.

Jeff is also portrayed as someone unintelligent when he does not understand what Nancy wants to convey with her message:

“What you mean, Miss, trust? I don‟t trust nobody no mo‟ – especially no foot- loose white boys a-travelin‟ around in see-dans.” “You don‟t understand. I mean you didn‟t treat Mrs. Topham right in going off.” (143)

When he understands what his stupid behavior has caused, “a tear rolled out on Jeff‟s black, furrowed old cheek, and he wiped it away with his handkerchief” (143). This is

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 51 the only scene where he is identified as a sympathetic instead of a stupid, childlike, drinking, and irresponsible person.

On the way to the police station, we learn about Jeff Tucker‟s police record. Since Nancy drives her roadster very fast, Jeff reacts by saying the following words:

“Bettah slow down, Miss. […] De marshal of dis town is mighty persnickitty about how folks acts. He‟s run me in mo‟n once” […] Just fo‟ enjoyin‟ myself”.(147) Nancy responds, “Then I suppose you can tell me where the jail is.” “Deed I can, Miss. I suah can! Fact is, dis is my favourite jail.” (148)

From this conversation we find out Jeff Tucker has been arrested several times for excessive drinking. To defend his absence from the Tophams‟ house, Mr. Tucker lies to the police officer:

“First thing dey kidnaps me so I won‟t be around to raise no ruckus. Den dey gives me some kind of a sleepin‟ powdah and pahks me in a ho-tel. But I comes to and goes back, and dar I find dis gu‟l cooped up in a closet just as she told you. And dey wrecked Mis‟ Topham‟s house and stole all the furniture.” (148)

All these examples above demonstrate that African American people are regarded as second-class citizens who work in low-paid jobs, are irresponsible workers, liars, and drunkards who speak ungrammatical and broken English.

We also feel the negative attitude towards African Americans and other non- “American-born middle and upper class [people] of European descent” (Nash, Ameri- can Sweethearts 53) in the book The Mystery at Lilac Inn when Nancy searches for a temporary housekeeper. The agency sends references of three applicants to Nancy, the first one being African American. As soon as Nancy opens the door and sees an African American woman in front of her, the girl confronts her with hostility, even though she does not have the slightest idea about the woman‟s character:

As she opened the door her heart sank within her. It was indeed the colored woman sent by the employment agency, but a more unlikely housekeeper Nan- cy had never seen. She was dirty and slovenly in appearance and had an unpleasant way of shuffling her feet when she walked. Inviting her into the

52 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008

house, Nancy asked a few questions which the woman answered in unsatisfac- tory manner. She was unable to produce references of any description. (16)

Even before Nancy knows that the African American woman is not able to show any positive references of former jobs, she assumes that she will not suit the job. Being Af- rican American seems reason enough for Nancy not to employ her. I am sure that even if the black woman was dressed prettily and did not “shuffle” her feet while she was walking, Nancy would have had the same prejudices against her, since she also rejects the next two women who apply for the position as a housekeeper in the Drews‟ home. They are Irish and Scottish, but Nancy is unsatisfied with them as well. She tells about her concerns during dinner:

This morning the agency sent me an Irish woman, but she was even worse than the one that came yesterday. She was the most unreasonable housekeeper I ever interviewed. […] After the Irish woman left I called another agency and they sent me a Scottish lassie. She looked promising, but I found she hadn‟t had a particle of experience and knew little about cooking. I‟m completely discou- raged. (17)

It seems that Nancy finds something to complain about each person who is not white and American-born. Even though the potential housekeepers are not drunkards, liars, or criminals, like members of other minority groups or immigrants in the Nancy Drew books (Jones 123), Nancy, the girl of the white upper-middle class, does not appreciate their “Otherness”.

Since so many African Americans are portrayed in a negative way and face racial discrimination in the early Nancy Drew novels, the questions arise: Why are people of color in the early Nancy Drew Mystery Stories portrayed as an inferior race and “reduced to […] racist representations” (De Jesus 237) by the author “Carolyn Keene”. And why do characters in the novels devalue and label people of color as different and “other”? The negative portrayal of African Americans in the Nancy Drew Mystery Sto- ries is certainly a consequence of their low status in society, which they had in America right from their arrival on a Dutch ship in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. Approximately twenty Blacks were brought to Virginia at that time to work on the tobacco plantations, because the English colony was famous for growing tobacco (Soderlund 50-1). As Jean

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 53

R. Soderlund states, “little is known of their status during the early decades” (51), but some of the early African Americans were surely exploited as slaves.

Although some Blacks in Virginia were allowed to marry and acquire land, they were treated differently by the English colonists than white servants. In contrast to white people, Blacks, for example, were called only by their first names or referred to as “negar” or “Negro”, had to pay taxes when they worked in the fields, and were deprived of using arms (Soderlund 51).

Since the British colonists‟ need of servants to work on their tobacco and sugar plantations increased, they continued their purchase of African Americans, among them men, women and children (Soderlund 97). The English regarded black people as the inferior race, since they differentiated strongly between white and black, “with white- ness suggesting purity and good, blackness imbued with filth and sin” (Soderlund 97). Thinking about the Atlantic slave trade practised by the Portuguese, Dutch and Spanish people, the English justified the enslavement of black people and imported them in huge numbers (Soderlund 97).

The journey from Africa to English North America, which could last from three weeks to more than three months, depending on the weather and sea situation, took place under very harsh conditions, exposing Blacks for hours to the hot sun without water and food. Many African Americans died during that devastating voyage, among them some suicides. People jumped overboard or went on hunger strikes. Those who arrived in America were examined for diseases and sold to slave holders who paid huge sums for strong, young black men (Soderlund 98-9)

After Maryland enacted laws to define the differences between white servants and black slaves, Virginia followed in the 1660s. By virtue of the law, “slavery lasted a person‟s entire lifetime, descended from mother to child, and was the normal status of blacks, but never whites” (Soderlund 100). Laws, so called Black codes, for instance, forbade interracial marriages, prohibited slave holders to free their slaves, did not allow Blacks to hold property, and forbade them to come together in groups, or testify against white people. Apart from all these laws they had to follow, slaves had to obey their masters. Like Soderlund states, “to be a slave meant that someone else possessed your body and could command your daily activities” (100). White people could even decide

54 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 if the children of slaves remained with their parents or were sold to other slave holders. Lots of families were destroyed by white masters (Soderlund 100).

What kind of labor slaves had to do varied from region to region. Most often black people had to work long hours under harsh conditions on tobacco, corn, cotton, sugar, or rice plantations. If they did not obey their masters or rebelled against their owners by “staging slowdowns, pretending illness, destroying crops and tools, commit- ting theft, arson, assault, and murder” (Soderlund 101), slaves were severely punished, sometimes whipped to death or killed with other objects. Many Blacks were even hanged.

Though early abolitionists believed that “all humans are equal in the eyes of God” (Soderlund 101) or “that all Men, as they are the Sons of Adam […] have equal Right unto Liberty, and all other outward Comforts of Life” (Soderlund 102), it took a very long time until slavery was abolished in America, starting with the Union, the United States of America, which forbade at least the slave trade in the eighteenth century.

But only the Civil War from 1861 to 1865 between the Northern States and the Confederate States of America, which consisted of eleven Southern States that had separated from the Union in 1861, and the enacting of the Thirteenth Amendment14 in 1865 brought about the abolition of slavery in the whole of America (Civil War).

After the official end of slavery - a time of hope for African Americans on a social, political and economic level - the opinion that Blacks were inferior to white people sustained. Various white southern people, who very much regretted the abolition of slavery, had an extremely negative opinion of the black race: “The Negro is a different being from the white man, and therefore, of necessity, was designed by the Almighty Creator to live a different life” (Joshi 262). Or, “The Negro is too grossly and hope- lessly ignorant to recognize the ruin his very presence entails among us” (Joshi 262).

Although African Americans believed in an improvement of their situation after liberation, new forms of oppression followed. In the Northern United States, discrimination and negative stereotyping of black people was very common between the

14 The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was enacted in 1865 to abolish slavery. It says, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their juris- diction” (United States Constitution: Amendment XIII).

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 55

Reconstruction Era15 of the United States and 1950. In many states marriages between white and black people were allowed and racial segregation usually was not imple- mented in public institutions. In the southern states, however, white supremacy was visible in its most cruel forms with the end of Reconstruction (Frederickson 102).

Like George M. Frederickson says, “white supremacy attained its fullest ideo- logical and institutional development in the Southern United States between the 1890s and the 1950s” (99). After the abolition of slavery, an “overtly racist regime” (Frederickson 101) was established in many American states with the introduction of the Jim Crow laws enforcing segregation. Jim Crow laws forbade social contact between members of different skin color and intermarriage between different races. Black people had to face racial segregation in all public places, which led to Image 9: White Supremacy in the US16 strong social, economic, political, and educational drawbacks. For instance, black children had to attend separate private and public schools, African Americans were forced to use different public restrooms than the white population, separate drinking fountains for the two races existed, and segre- gated seats in the busses were very common; African Americans generally had to sit in the back. Black men were even deprived of their earlier possessed voting rights by the newly introduced grandfather clauses. These clauses signified that only those people whose ancestors could already cast their votes before the Civil War were allowed to vote now (Frederickson 111; Pilgrim). These are only some examples of the many Jim Crow laws that were established in various states a short time after the abolition of slavery demonstrating that black people were seen as less valuable than Whites. In many places the Ku Klux Klan, “the most recognized, demonstrative, and organized of all

15 The Reconstruction Era is the period between 1865 and 1877 following the American Civil War, “during which the Southern states of the Confederacy were controlled by federal government and social legislation, including the granting of new rights to black people” (The Reconstruction). 16 Taken from: http://espn.go.com/i/eticket/20070806/photos/etick_atldiv12b.jpg

56 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008

American supremacist organizations” (Brown 433) fought violently for the oppression of former slaves, and the lynching of black men who were accused of raping white women was widespread (Frederickson 120).

Donnarae MacCann, who deals with the portrayal of the African American characters in the early Nancy Drew novels in her essay “The Myth of White Supremacy”, also addresses the social and political issues during that time period. In her work, she quotes various historians‟, scientists‟ and politicians‟ views about black people to demonstrate the image of African Americans in American society and to show that many people wanted to get rid of this “inferior race”. According to Congressman James Griggs, “the utter extermination of a race of people is inexplicably sad, yet if its existence endangers the welfare of mankind it is fitting that it should be swept away” (130). Extremists wanted to wipe out black people in America due to their ”inferiority” for reasons of race. Even religious heads like priest Buchner H. Payne devaluated black people by saying that “as Adam was the Son of God, and as Adam was light [white] and in Him is no darkness [black] at all, how could God then be the Father of the negro, as like produces like. And if God could not be the Father of the blacks, because he was white, how could our Savior […] carry such a damned color into heaven where all were white? (131). Novelist William Faulkner, for example, remarked in 1931 that “Negroes would be better off under the conditions of slavery than they are today. Negroes would be better off because they would have someone to look after them” (131). He wanted to emphasize that black people were not able to live an emancipated life. People from all walks of life regarded African Americans as much inferior to the white population.

Considering the image of black people in society, it does not astonish that in the Nancy Drew books of the 1930s and 1940s, written by white people, African American characters are portrayed as irresponsible workers, drunkards, liars, and criminals who speak bad English. They are regarded as inferior to the white population. And that the author “Carolyn Keene” calls African Americans colored women, colored porters, colored caretakers, Negro or Negress and the African American caretaker Jeff Tucker speaks of himself as a “culled man” (Old Clock 140) or “black boy (Old Clock 143) neither surprises me.

But that Nancy, the modern, adventurous, independent, brave and capable young woman of the 1930s and 1940s, who is cleverer than most police officers and has a boy-

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 57 friend who does everything the girl detective asks of him, thinks that the ethnic and social group to which she belongs is superior to others is more striking. She develops unjustified racist attitudes towards the “Other” and comes up with hostile stereotyped ideas. When we consider Nancy‟s attitudes towards “Otherness” in terms of class and race, she is certainly not ahead of her times. Instead, she is conservative in her thoughts about people of another race and social class.

But we should not totally condemn Nancy for her prejudices against ethnic and racial minorities, because she was born into the upper-middle class at a time when lots of white people discriminated against African Americans, even if it was unjustified. John Arthur, for example, explains that racial discrimination is always unjustified. Ac- cording to him “racism is always a defect. The reason is that racism is always unwarranted. It is an attitude that is never justified. That fact – that it is an unjustified and, in that sense, inappropriate attitude – is what is wrong with racism” (18). People in Nancy‟s surroundings surely passed their thoughts and attitudes on Nancy and strongly influenced her. And if the girl had changed her attitude about “other” people, her father would probably have stopped to support her financially. And he might also have stopped to approve of everything Nancy does or says.

Considering Nancy‟s “trendiness” in terms of gender role and her conservative thoughts on class and race, I come to the same conclusion as Bobbie Ann Mason, namely that “Nancy gave us the conventional and the revolutionary in one compact image” (138).

3.2 The Girl Sleuth from the late 1950s to the 1980s

In the 1950s, when television became more and more famous in American households, lots of children and teenagers lost their interest in juvenile series books, though the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys fans kept reading their beloved volumes (Re- hak 242-43). Parents and educators, however, became more concerned with their children‟s reading habits due to the racial stereotypes and prejudices found in the series books of the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Since non-whites were presented as an inferior ethnic group, it was only logical that among white children readers‟ heads “a Negro stereotype was being perpetuated” (Jones 125). When the Civil Rights Movement

58 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 started to fight the public and private discrimination against African Americans complaints like, “we are trying to raise our children to appreciate Negroes for their contributions; not to fear them because of their color […] Temporarily we will not be buying any more of your series books (Rehak 246)”, were frequently addressed to the syndicate.

Due to the many complaints about racial stereotypes and the fact that the stories and characters were dated, Grosset & Dunlap, upon hesitant approval of Harriet Strate- meyer, decided to revise the original Nancy Drew books in the late 1950s. In fact, Harriet did most of the rewrites herself. If others did the job for her, Harriet watched their work closely.

But another main reason for the revision work was the change of printing methods. Until the 1950s, books were printed from copper printing plates, whose production was very expensive. They also got easily damaged. During the Second World War, copper was rare, and so lots of the plates had to be given away for war use. In the 1950s, photo-off-set printing got introduced, a new method that used plastic sheets and was much cheaper. Instead of just converting the “original” story to the new printing method, the Stratemeyer Syndicate decided to update the original Nancy Drew Mystery Stories. They changed the contents of the old stories and made them more action- packed. But they also shortened the books from twenty-five to twenty chapters to save manufacturing costs. To revise those “original” books that sold very well secured their sales numbers. Besides the rewrites, new Nancy Drew Mystery Stories were also published that included the same modernizations as the updated early mystery stories (Keeline 29).

In what way the revised books got updated and how “new” Nancy Drew Mys- tery Stories looked like between the 1950s and 1980s I will demonstrate by discussing The Secret of the Old Clock (1959), The Mystery of the Glowing Eye (1974) and The Thirteenth Pearl (1979). The Thirteenth Pearl is the last Nancy Drew book published by Grosset & Dunlap before the publishing company Simon & Schuster started to assume their job.

In comparison to the original volume, the revised Secret of the Old Clock does not start with the expression of Nancy‟s anger about the snobbish and arrogant Topham family of River Heights but with Nancy saving the life of Judy, the adopted daughter of

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 59 the Turner sisters. Judy is almost overrun by a moving van of thieves who have stolen the Turner sisters‟ silverware and other possessions. In the course of the story, the robbers steal the Tophams‟ summer-house furniture. The Turner sisters, the great-aunts of little Judy, are worried because they do not have enough money to pay for a good education for the girl. They tell Nancy about their deceased cousin Josiah Crowley who promised to the leave them money in his will. Instead, it seems that all the money goes to the Tophams.

The Tophams are still rich, arrogant and snobbish, but in the revised version it is not mentioned that Mr. Topham made all his money by gambling on the stock market. It is a different time period, and, therefore, such a description would be dated.

Nancy finds out from her father that Josiah‟s relatives have already lodged a claim saying that another will must have been made for their benefit. Mr. Drew also tells Nancy about the Hoover sisters (in the original version their surname is Horner), who Nancy visits to find out more about the Crowley will. After visiting Allison and Grace, Carson Drew wants the sisters to come to his office and gain more information about the case in which he and his daughter are very much interested.

Allison, besides taking care of the barn and raising chickens, has always liked taking voice lessons, but voice training was simply too expensive. Before solving the mystery, Nancy introduces Allison to a famous voice teacher retired to River Heights, who sees Allison as a future operatic star and will accept her as a student as soon as she can pay for his lessons.

Nancy tries to find out more about other people mentioned in the will. She visits Fred and William Mathews, first cousins of Crowley‟s wanting to travel with the money Josiah promised to pass on to them. Abby Rowen is again the old, poor widow who looked after Josiah when he was ill and during a conversation with Nancy, calls attention to the mantel clock and the notebook.

60 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008

With Helen Corning‟s tickets for a charity ball to sell, Nancy forces her way into the Tophams‟ residence and finally goes on a trip to Moon Lake to visit the family‟s summer bungalow, where she hopes to find Crowley‟s mantel clock. From what Nancy sees at the Tophams‟ summer residence, she first believes that movers have taken out most of the furniture. Only then she remembers the van she has just seen on her way to the residence and compares it with the dark-gray van she saw at the Turner sisters‟ home. Now she knows that not moving men but thieves must have been there.

Nancy immediately wants to call the police but cannot find a phone. When she decides to drive to the nearest State Police headquarters, one of the thieves returns. Like in the original volume, Nancy hides in a cupboard but the man who hears her sneezing locks her in.

Luckily, the girl detective is rescued by Jeff Tucker, the Tophams‟ caretaker, who this time is white rather than African Ameri- can. Together, they drive to State Police headquarters and report the robbery. Like in the original series, Nancy tries to lead the way to the robbers until they come to a fork where they need to split up. On her own, the girl sleuth discovers the van in a barn and re- moves the mantle clock. While Nancy extracts the notebook, the thieves leave with their van. But they are soon stopped by the

Image 10: Nancy seeing the mov- police. ing van17 Like in the original version, in the end, Nancy and her dad present the will to the Crowley relatives and the Hoover sisters. The Mathiew brothers will go on a journey, the Turner sisters will pay for Judy‟s education, Abby Rowen can get medical attention, and Allison can finally afford her voice lessons. Apart from Mr. Topham, who receives 5000 dollars, the rest of the Topham family is left without a penny. Ada and her sister will have to start working immediately, and all

17 Taken from: The Secret of the Old Clock 3

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 61 family members need to move to a smaller home. The “Top”hams become the “Low”hams.

The revised Secret of the Old Clock is more action-packed than the original one to make the story more attractive to young readers. Harriet Stratemeyer left out certain descriptions and shortened various scenes, but at the same time added new events. While Nancy‟s meeting with the caretaker Jeff Tucker is very much shortened, Judy‟s introduction, her almost accident with the thieves who have robbed the Turner sisters‟ house, or Allison‟s wish to attend voice lessons and her audition at the famous voice teacher Signor Mascagni are completely new actions. The Thirteenth Pearl is even more action-packed than the revised Secret of the Old Clock to appeal to young readers. Nancy, together with her dad, tries to trace a valuable stolen pearl necklace of a Mrs. Tanya Rossmeyer, a rich lady owning a lot of luxurious jewelry, which she keeps in Mr. Moto‟s jewelry store in River Heights. One day, her necklace is stolen from Mr. Moto‟s safe. Not only do the thieves steal Mrs. Rossmeyer‟s jewelry, but some days later they even kidnap Mr. Moto. The lawyer and his daughter decide to travel to Tokyo to find out more about possible dishonest employees of the company World Wide Gems, “which deals in old and rare jewelry” (9). Some of its employees might be the jewel thieves of Mr. Moto‟s jewel store and at the same time his kidnappers.

People soon try to intimidate the Drew‟s family by sending warning notes to Nancy over and over again. If the girl detective did not stop working on the case, she would die or suffer in pain. Back home in River Heights Nancy almost gets attacked by a vicious dog that jumps inside the Drew‟s house and towards the end of the story, the girl sleuth together with Ned Nickerson even gets trapped in a dark corridor.

Grosset & Dunlap and the Stratemeyer Syndicate published more thrilling and action-packed plots, because they hoped to prevent children from preferring to watch television, “the number-one entertainment for kids” (Rehak 242) to reading Nancy Drew novels.

Not only the plots of the post-1959 Nancy Drew Mystery Stories changed, but also the characters and their relations to each other altered. Nancy Drew, now eighteen instead of sixteen like in former Nancy Drew novels, lives together with her father Car- son Drew, a famous criminal lawyer, and their housekeeper Hannah Gruen in River Heights, which in the early volumes is probably a town in Iowa, but now, according to

62 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008

Karen Plunket-Powell, has changed to an “unmistakable eastern ambience” (86). She compares it to New Jersey and situates it either in Ohio or Indiana. Both, in the revi- sions and in the “new” mystery stories, Nancy‟s mother died when the girl was only three years old, and unlike in the early volumes, in which the girl drives a sporty roadster, Nancy now drives a dark blue convertible that she received from her father as a birthday gift. Her age increased to eighteen due to the new driving laws of that time (Rehak 248). Nancy again acts as an amateur detective to engage “in the misfortunes of others that she sees to ameliorate” (Lundin 126).

Nancy works closer together with her dad when it comes to solving mysteries than in the original Secret of the Old Clock. It is Carson Drew who tells his daughter that Josiah Crowley‟s relatives have already lodged a claim saying that another will must have been made for their benefit. And is also Mr. Drew who proposes Nancy visit the Hoover sisters. Aside from that, the lawyer also wants the Hoover sisters to visit him so that he can find out more about the possible second will. It seems that Nancy is much more dependent on her father‟s information than in the early Nancy Drew novels in which she hardly needs his help when she tries to solve a mystery.

After so many mysteries solved by his daughter, it goes without saying that Car- son Drew shows great trust and pride in the girl detective. Still, he is more worried and concerned about Nancy‟s work as a girl sleuth than in the years before. The evening after Nancy has told her dad about the encounter with the robbers in the Tophams‟ summer residence in The Secret of the Old Clock, “the lawyer kissed his daughter good night [and] added, “‟My dear, you were in serious danger when you encountered those thieves. I don‟t like you take such risks. I am very grateful indeed that you are back home safe.‟” (150). And in The Thirteenth Pearl, before Nancy and Ned go together to the farewell party to search for clues, Carson Drew hands them two master keys in case they get trapped: “‟Good idea.‟ Nancy smiled and put the key ring into her evening bag. „Dad thinks of everything to protect me.‟” (147). Adults take more care of younger people than in the early Nancy Drew novels. When Helen tells Nancy about her stay at the summer camp, we find out that it is her aunt‟s camp suggesting that the girls would be guarded carefully.

Nancy‟s father is not the only person who helps Nancy with her detective work. In the “new” and revised Nancy Drew stories, the authorities play an important role for

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 63

Nancy. Whereas in the earlier versions Nancy hardly relies on the police, and policemen disavow the girl‟s cleverness, she now often works together with authorities when it comes to solving mysteries.

In The Thirteenth Pearl, for example, Nancy, before travelling to Tokyo to find anything about dishonest employees of World Wide Gems, wants the police to identify a suspected woman on a photo: “‟Mr. Moto, would you mind if we take this photograph to the police? It might be a clue to the thief who took Mrs. Rossmeyer‟s necklace.‟” (18). Chief McGinnis, a police officer who appears in various Nancy Drew novels, gives Nancy some useful advice how to go on with her detective work:

“You should call on Professor Joji Mise,” Chief McGinnis told her. “He is Jap- anese and has lived in this country a long time teaching Japanese art. He‟s a most interesting person, and I‟m sure he can give you lots of information about pearls and the customs of his country. Tell the professor I suggested you get in touch with him.” (21)

We see that the girl‟s relationship with authority has changed considerably. They work closely together to solve the mystery. The Nancy of the past would have never taken a detective‟s advice, and the police would have never respected Nancy as a partner. To- wards the end of The Thirteenth Pearl, when Nancy together with Ned finds out who the jewel thieves are, they drive to police headquarters and report everything they know about the mysterious case. Nancy wants the officer on duty to immediately inform Chief McGinnis and her dad Carson Drew, who are deeply involved in solving the case.

It is obvious that in the period between the late 1950s and the 1980s, Nancy is much more dependent on people around her than in the early stories. Whereas in the older versions Nancy does not want her father to be too involved in her mystery cases nor does she assume the police as her partners, she now works very closely together with them.

What also shows us that Nancy has lost some of her independence and autonomy of the 1930s and 1940s is when it is not her who drives her dark blue convertible in the revised Secret of the Old Clock but the police officer. After the police caught the robbers, one policeman asks Nancy if he could drive with her to headquarters. But instead

64 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 of letting Nancy drive her car, the police officer asks her if he should steer the vehicle. Nancy does not refuse.

In 1989, Geoffrey Lapin stated correctly that revisionist “Nancy Drew […] underwent a dramatic change: the strong-willed teen was having her personality diluted, causing her to lose her characteristic independence” (par. 48). She has lost her independence, because she does not question the intelligence of authority any longer, nor does she solve mysteries without almost anyone‟s help like in the original stories. And in the revised Secret of the Old Clock she is even afraid of breaking the law. When she tries to catch the thieves who robbed the Turner sisters, Nancy is afraid of breaking the speed limit: “The blue convertible sped along the country road. Nancy smiled grimly. „I‟m afraid I‟m exceeding the speed limit,‟ she thought” (Old Clock 11). Furthermore, unlike in the original version in which she hides the mantel clock after she has found the notebook, she now immediately informs the police about the stolen property. Since Nancy does not want to tell the true story about Josiah Crowley‟s second will and the mantel clock, the girl detective needs to come up with a white lie:

“I have some stolen property here.” “What!” Quickly Nancy explained that she had taken the responsibility of trying to learn whether or not the van held the stolen furniture. “I recognized a few of the pieces, and possibly this clock which the Tophams had told me about. I took that out to examine it. Then I never had the chance to get it back without being caught. I‟m sure the Tophams will identify the old clock as their property.” Nancy‟s explanation seemed to satisfy the officer. “I‟ll take it to headquarters,” he said. (145)

What also makes Nancy appear less independent and weaker is the presence of Ned Nickerson, who, in the “new” Nancy Drew stories is not only her long-standing boyfriend but frequently acts as her protector. In The Thirteenth Pearl, for example, Nancy wants Ned to accompany her to a farewell party. The invitation, however, might be a trap to catch the girl sleuth and stop her investigations. With Ned at her side, Nancy feels much more secure and relaxed:

“And if Ned comes with me and we‟re careful, I‟m sure we can avoid falling into any trap. Ned, are you game to go?” “I wouldn‟t miss it for the world,” he replied. He flexed the muscles in his arms. “Bring on your crooks.” (140)

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 65

Since Ned plays college football, he has got a muscular body and is able to protect Nancy in dangerous situations. It seems that without the young man at her side, Nancy would not proceed in her sleuthing work. This time he plays a more important role in her life, not as her lover, but certainly as her “bodyguard”. Ned‟s protective instinct also surfaces in The Thirteenth Pearl, when they both are trapped in a corridor:

Nancy and Ned jumped up to see what it was. Ned took hold of Nancy‟s arm. “Don‟t open the door,” he warned. “You have been in so much trouble, and this might be more of it.” (141) […] “That‟s a good idea,” Ned agreed. “And please stay close to me. Together we‟ll be safer if any funny business is going on.” (Thirteenth Pearl 147)

While in the original Nancy Drew stories Nancy has Ned under her thumb and does not even introduce him in her detective work, he now assumes a more “masculine role” in their relationship. Whenever Nancy needs help, he supports her with all his might. As a consequence we have the feeling that Nancy is unable to protect herself in dangerous situations.

It is certainly true that late 1950‟s to 1980‟s Nancy depends much more on male support in her detective work than the Nancy Drew of the 1930s and 1940s, even though one would assume that during a time of second-wave feminism and the sixties and seventies counterculture, Nancy would be even less dependent on men than in her early years. After the post-war years, a time of “strictly separated gender roles” (Nash, American Sweethearts 170) in which girls were seen as “marriageable, innocent, hyper- feminine and non-threatening” (Nash, American Sweethearts 171), the 1960s and 1970s were seen as the years of breaking traditional values and behavior. Lots of feminist and political pressure groups were formed by well-educated middle-class women (Woloch 364-70), who, apart from rejecting the Vietnam War, fought strongly for gay, civil, and women‟s, rights (Evans 281). They wanted to stop sex discrimination in various fields of society. Women should be able to assume the same roles as men in occupation, education, politics and family. Since economic independence played an essential role among women, they wanted to pursue careers as men could, and they demanded equal pay for equal work. For all these radical changes in society, young lady Nancy does not become more independent and courageous than in her early sleuthing years. In the 1960s and 1970s, she does not only get help from her father as her role model, but also

66 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 policemen, her boyfriend Ned Nickerson and other pals, who we will hear about later, strongly support Nancy mentally as well as physically in her ambitions to solve puzzling mysteries. She is no longer the self-sufficient girl sleuth who hardly depends on anyone‟s help but accepts support gratefully.

Nancy does not only depend more on other people‟s help and advice, which makes her appear less independent and smart, but she is also more reluctant and re- served when it comes to expressing her sense of justice. Nancy meets the Topham sisters in a shop and observes how Ada steps on one dress on the floor. In fact, it was Ada‟s fault that the dress fell onto the ground. Nancy picks up the dress, but angry Ada Topham grabs it, which causes a long tear in the skirt:

“Oh!” Isabel cried out. “Now you‟ve done it! We‟d better get out of here, Ada! “And why?” her haughty sister thrilled. “It was Nancy Drew‟s fault! She‟s always making trouble.” “It was not my fault,” Nancy said. “Come on, Ada,” Isabel urged, “before that clerk gets back.” Reluctantly Ada followed Isabel out of the department. […] Nancy gazed after them. (Revised Old Clock 25)

The girls leave the shop and do not pay for the mess they have made. 1930‟s Nancy would never have let the Topham sisters go without making them pay for the dress. In- stead, Nancy buys the dress for half the price. We just have to remember the scene in the original Secret of the Old Clock, in which Nancy makes the Topham sisters pay for the vase they damaged. They did not have the chance to leave the department store without paying for the mess. The girl detective is certainly more reluctant and shy than the girl detective we have known previously.

The following questions now arise: Why has Nancy‟s character changed? Why has the girl sleuth not remained the independent, hardly ever frightened girl who talked back to authority and adults if treated disrespectfully? Why does she now make men drive her car, even though the girl sleuth has always been famous for sitting behind the wheel?

The change of authorship primarily caused Nancy‟s transformation. As already mentioned above, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams revised most of the original novels between the late 1950s and 1980s herself and continued to write new Nancy Drew

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 67

Mystery Stories. Harriet was not as progressive in her thoughts as Mildred Wirt Benson was and created a less independent, more reluctant, and more worried Nancy.

Even though brought up by conservative parents who wanted her daughter to become a traditional woman, Mildred started to read and write at an early age, became a famous writer and journalist, and took part in many sport activities usually practiced by men (Rehak 33-9). Later in life, she even took flying lessons and worked as a “commer- cial pilot, reporter, and aviation columnist for a Toledo newspaper” (Wirt Benson 59). Albeit Mildred never wanted to be referred to as a feminist, Rehak argues that the woman was “a feminist at heart” (269). Therefore, she wanted Nancy to become an in- spiring young woman for many teenagers during the 1930s and 1940s, which she proves with her own words, “Although I never consciously used her to launch a campaign for women‟s equality [she] always inspir[ed] courage, determination, and a driving desire for accomplishment” (qtd. in Nash, American Sweethearts 44). Mildred wanted to show that young women were independent, confident, and adventurous.

Though also involved in feminist issues, Harriet Adams Stratemeyer was more conservative than Mildred Wirt Benson, and she thought that many women would go too far in their ambitions and goals when fighting for gender equality (Nash, American Sweethearts 43). Whereas Mildred strongly believed that “girls should be able to do the same things that boys do” (qtd. in Nash, American Sweethearts 45), Harriet merely stated that “I do think women have a place in this world and […] mentally, they are equal to men” (qtd. in Nash, American Sweethearts 43). The writer‟s greater conserva- tiveness made her transform Nancy into a more modest and weaker character than Mildred‟s girl detective had been throughout the years before. Maybe this had to do with Harriet‟s upbringing and her father‟s attitude towards women. Edward Stratemeyer had always wanted his daughter to stay at home after she had finished Wellesley Col- lege so that he could take care of her until she got married. Even though Harriet received various job offers after graduation, she had to turn each of them down, because her father did not see any need for his well-off daughter to earn a living. The only possibility for Harriet was to work for her father, not in the office in Manhattan, but in her parent‟s home.

That Harriet believed that women and girls relied heavily on men is also well demonstrated in her novel The Mystery of the Glowing Eye. Zapp Crosson, one of

68 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008

Ned‟s colleagues in his engineering classes at Emerson college, kidnaps Ned with a helicopter and threatens him with a gun to find out everything about Ned‟s invention, “a new way for a scientist to produce laser light so that even a small source of energy will do great feats” (178). Zapp would need all the details of Ned‟s gadget to perfect his own - the glowing eye. Nancy, Bess and George and their boyfriends David and Burt try everything to find out the abductor‟s hideout and rescue Ned Nickerson.

Unlike in other Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, science fiction and technology are the basis of the Mystery of the Glowing Eye, which make Nancy very much dependent on men‟s help.

In a cabin, where the young people find some clues about Ned‟s kidnapper, the girl sleuth asks the boys if they could contact police headquarters via the found radio set, because she does not have any idea how it works:

Nancy turned to the boys. “Do you think we could possibly contact the police over the two- way radio set here? We could tell them our suspicions regarding this cabin, and the take- off of the copter.” (96)

Image 11: Nancy’s hand stuck to the Nancy does not ask her friends Bess and 18 wall George for advice, but instead she immediately asks David and Burt. Nancy assumes that her female friends would not know any better than her when it comes to technology. David immediately offers Nancy assistance in trying to contact headquarters.

When Nancy and her friends Bess and George visit Ned‟s parents to find possible clues in science papers that Ned wrote, the girl sleuth comes to the conclusion that all the drawings and figures are “very technical” and that she is “sure, though, that they are not for a computer” (75). But she does not find out what Ned‟s notes actually mean. Despite Nancy‟s interest in solving the mystery, she has to wait until her boyfriend‟s

18 Taken from: Mystery of the Glowing Eye

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 69 return to gather more information about his invention. She, and also her female friends, are completely lost when they are confronted with scientific issues.

Nancy is eager to find out more about the glowing eye, and so she steps into a closet in the Anderson Museum in Hager, where she has already seen the technical construction before. Unfortunately, her hand gets stuck to the wall she wants to examine. It is not the girl who finds an explanation for the incident but Ned‟s science professor Mr. Titus. Surprisingly, Nancy is unable to solve the puzzle:

The science professor said he believed that under the paper there was a metal plate on a screen attached to the wall itself. “Nancy must have been standing on some electric conduction material.” Again Glenn went to peer into the closet. He reported, “There is a rug on the floor.” Professor Titus nodded. “Most likely it‟s made of an electric conducting material. The hidden plate in the wall is no doubt positive and Nancy is negative. These unlike charges create a strong elec- trical force which pulled Nancy‟s hand to the wall and held it there. (127)

And later, after a light streaming out from the glowing eye paralyzes Nancy, her friends and Professor Titus, Nancy again asks the professor for a possible explanation:

“Have you any explanation for it?” Nancy asked him. “Not exactly,” he replied, “but it reminds me of something I read about medical students studying the brain waves of a person who had been put to sleep under hypnosis. It was dis- covered that his wave pattern could be imprinted upon another brain by using a laser beam of a certain wavelength. Of course the original brain waves had to be programmed in order to be modulated. This in turn produced a „paralyzing‟ sleep.” (150)

If Nancy did not have male support, she would not be able to solve the mystery. This makes her appear again less independent and clever than in her early sleuthing years. Michael G. Cornelius is completely right when he states in his article “They blinded her with science: Science Fiction and Technology in Nancy Drew” that “each time the girl sleuth is confronted by technology, a crisis of confidence results, and only the male with the solution to the technological mystery can restore order, a role that had previously always been Nancy‟s” (80). Although “by the end of the 1970s, women represented the majority of students in American colleges and universities” (Cornelius 89), and pre-

70 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 sumably also attended science classes, Harriet developed a rather incompetent Nancy in terms of scientific knowledge. Even though Nancy does not attend college, she could have attained scientific education in her high school years. Harriet certainly shared the opinion of those women who believed that “competition, success, competence, and intellectual achievements are basically inconsistent with femininity” (qtd. in Woloch 356). So she created a Nancy, who, especially when technology and science are involved in her baffling cases, deeply relies on men‟s knowledge.

Even though many critics are dissatisfied with Nancy‟s transformation from a “determined, tough minded sleuth” (Mason 137) to “a simulacrum and stereotype of the dependent female rather than the independent woman she has long represented” (Corne- lius 80), we should see the changes as an opportunity to give the super-sleuth more human traits of a young woman. With all the people supporting her in solving puzzling mysteries, Nancy seems less grown-up than in the early novels, in which she embodies the perfect, self-reliant and omniscient person who manages everything on her own, but more like an eighteen-year-old girl with strengths and weaknesses. It is most normal that young people need the help of their parents, other adults, or friends when they are in critical situations or do not know the answers to certain questions. Rather, it is very atypical of a sixteen-year-old person, like Nancy Drew in the original stories, to be more intelligent and stronger than most adults surrounding her. That Nancy works more closely together with her friends and her dad also underlines her social ability to work in a team.

What also makes Nancy more human are her new acquired feelings such as fear, loneliness, sadness, and jealousy. While in earlier volumes the girl detective is more worried than frightened when she finds herself or someone else in a dangerous situation, she now from time to time is scared and sad. Once Nancy finds out that Ned might be kept by an “unusual and dangerous killer type”(153) in the Mystery of the Glowing Eye, she is very much distressed:

“WHY, Nancy, you‟re white as a sheet!” Bess exclaimed. “What‟s the matter?” “I was just thinking about what Crosson could do to Ned!” George put an arm around her friend. “Please don‟t think the worst. I‟m sure we‟ll capture that vil- lain before he has a chance to do anything drastic.” […] “But he might maim him,” Nancy said with tears in her eyes. She buried her face in her hands and took a long deep breath. (154)

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 71

In earlier volumes Nancy hardly ever displays emotions of sadness, especially not in connection with her boyfriend Ned Nickerson. Early Nancy hardly ever shows any romantic feelings for Ned. That her female friends Bess and George help her with emotional issues, where in earlier volumes the girls only support her with crime solving, also makes Nancy and her pals more “human” teenagers.

Nancy‟s strong feelings for Ned Nickerson again surface in the end of the novel when she sees her steady boyfriend jumping out of the helicopter:

Suddenly Nancy caught her breath, then started to run toward the young man as fast as she could. “Ned! Ned! I can‟t believe it!” she cried out. Realizing who she was, Ned too began to run. A few moments later they were in each other‟s arms. (170)

Both, Nancy and Ned, do not have any inhibitions to show their feelings for each other. They do not kiss each other, but at least, we have more evidence that they are a couple than in the early Nancy Drew novels. Early Nancy probably thought that showing her emotions for Ned would threaten her career as a female detective and her power over him.

The 1960s and 1970s were famous for teenagers practicing “free love, rock and roll, and mind-altering experiences” (Plunkett-Powell 105), but Nancy and Ned continue to show their affection for each other merely by holding hands. It seems they would need all their energies to solve puzzling mysteries. This, however, changed after Simon & Schuster had bought up the Stratemeyer Syndicate in 1984 (Johnson 39), which will be addressed in more detail later.

Apart from her emotions towards her boyfriend Ned Nickerson, jealousy is another acquired human trait of Nancy Drew. When a twenty-four-year-old young woman, Marty King, a recent law school graduate working in Mr. Drew‟s office as a researcher, wants to take away Nancy‟s job as an amateur detective and win Nancy‟s father‟s heart, the girl sleuth is very much concerned. She worries that she, Nancy Drew, the clever amateur detective, will be substituted by King‟s abilities:

“What‟s worrying you, Nancy?” Bess asked. “On the phone you sounded if something horrible had happened.” “It‟s not that bad,” Nancy replied, forcing a smile. “I guess it‟s a case of just plain jealousy.” “You jealous?” George

72 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008

scoffed. “That‟s one trait you don‟t have. Well, out with it!” “It‟s about a young woman named Marty King who has recently come to work for Dad. She‟s a lawyer.” “Uh-uh!” Bess said with a little giggle. “You think she has a romantic interest in your dad, and/or vice versa.” Nancy was startled by the suggestion and hastened to assure her friends this was not the situation. “Marty King is trying to be an amateur detective---“. (3)

If Marty King becomes an amateur detective in River Heights, Nancy will have to deal with a rival. Until this moment, Nancy has been the only smart, admirable, and adventurous female detective in her surroundings. Now she is afraid of losing her good reputation in her home town.

What also shows Nancy‟s worries in terms of the likely new female detective in River Heights is when one evening the girl wants her dad to give her some more information about the glowing eye and he refuses to do it right away:

“Dad, you never finished telling me about the glowing eye.” “No, but I will. It‟s too late now. We must all go to bed.” Nancy went to her room, but she kept thinking, “Did Dad mean it was too late because Marty is working on the case?” The young detective found it impossible to sleep. (20)

Being unable to sleep underlines Nancy‟s sorrows. In the early novels, the girl never thought about losing her position as amateur detective in society. But her concerns make her certainly a more human eighteen-year-old young woman.

Nancy is very relieved when she hears that her father dismissed Marty King:

[…] Nancy, I asked her to resign. Her legal work was excellent, but I began to realize that she was always arranging my business affairs so that she and I would have to eat luncheon or dinner together. Then I learned how jealous she was of you and your accomplishments.” Nancy was smiling to herself and de- lighted that Marty King had left her father‟s employ. (180)

When her father tells Nancy that the decisive reason for Marty‟s dismissal was her pro- posal to marry him, the girl sleuth is shocked, but shortly after, she calmly asks her dad that “if you ever want to find me a new mother, please promise me she won‟t be someone who tries to solve my mysteries” (181). This paragraph shows that Nancy was

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 73 afraid someone would take away her sleuthing job. But is also demonstrates that the girl does not wish to have a new mother at all. She is happy to be her dad‟s princess, who is always allowed to do as she pleases. If her dad was married, Nancy would probably lose her number one position in the family. Moreover, Nancy is pleased that there is no mother who tells her what to do and how to behave properly.

Besides Nancy‟s character, class and race issues have changed in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories from the late 1950s to the 1980s. “Class consciousness” (Nash, American Sweethearts 53) seems to be less marked than in the original versions. Nancy is still the daughter of the white upper-middle class who possesses her own car, nice dresses for all occasions, and the time and money to solve mysteries as an amateur detective. Her work does not need to be awarded monetarily, since she does not face any financial problems. But what has changed for the better is Nancy‟s relationship with lower-class people. Whereas the housekeeper Hannah Gruen is a mere servant who cooks and cleans for the Drews in the early novels, the “pleasant, slightly plump woman” (Revised Old Clock 13) is a much more mother-like figure now. Besides ac- complishing the domestic work, she is involved in family matters and Nancy‟s job as an amateur detective. Hannah has lived with the Drews and “acted as a mother to Nancy” (Thirteenth Pearl 3) since her mother‟s death when the girl was only three years old. Hannah and Nancy frequently exchange hugs or kisses and, unlike in the older versions, talk a lot about the girl sleuth‟s cases. So Hannah is also very worried when Nancy gets caught up in dangerous situations like in The Secret of the Old Clock (1959):

“Surprise, Hannah darling!” Nancy gave the housekeeper an affectionate hug and kiss. “I‟m simply starved. Haven‟t had a bite since lunchtime.” “Why, you poor dear!” the housekeeper exclaimed in concern. “What happened? I‟ll fix you something right away.” As the two prepared a chicken sandwich, some co- coa, and Hannah cut a large slice of cinnamon cake over which she poured hot applesauce, Nancy told of her adventures. The housekeeper‟s eyes widened. “Nancy, you might have been killed by those awful men. […]” (146)

Not only does Nancy sometimes help Hannah in the kitchen, but Mrs. Gruen and the Drews also eat together at the same table and discuss various matters. In the older volumes, we hardly find any dialogue between the housekeeper and the girl detective or

74 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008

Carson Drew, further proof that their relationships changed drastically for the better over the years.

Race is another social construction that is dealt with differently from the late 1950‟s to the 1980‟s volumes than in the early Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, because parents and educators complained about the stereotypes and prejudices found in many books. They opposed the negative portrayal of black people. In a time when the Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968) fought the public and private discrimination of black people in society, minorities should not be portrayed as an inferior ethnic group to white people in young readers‟ books. In the revised Secret of the Old Clock, the Tophams‟ caretaker Jeff Tucker is no longer an African American presented as a lying and drunken “culled man” (Old Clock 140) who does not take his work seriously and speaks bad English, but a white man with “bright blue eyes” (117) using a little slang when he hears Nancy in the closet:

“So, one o‟ you ornery robbers got yourself locked up, did you? came an indig- nant male voice. “That‟ll teach you to try puttin‟ one over an old Jeff Tucker. You won‟t be doin‟ any more pilferin‟. I got you surrounded.” (115)

Rather than give the African American caretaker more human traits, “Carolyn Keene” changed his character to white avoiding racial discrimination in the revised mystery stories.

Also how the thieves have made Jeff Tucker leave the residence and how Nancy reacts to the desperate caretaker is different from the original novel:

“I was plain hornswoggled by those critters, Miss Drew. They pulled up here in a movin‟ van, and told me I‟d better get after some trespassers they‟d seen nearby. So,” the elderly man went on with a sigh, “I believed „em. One of the men went with me down to the lake and locked me in a shed. I just got out.” He shook his head sadly. “And all this time they was robbin‟ the place. Guess I‟ll be fired.” […] Don‟t worry, Mr. Tucker. We‟ll report this robbery to the State Police immediately. […]” (117)

In the original version, a white man lures Jeff Tucker to enter an attractive car and offers him something to drink. After having drunk lots of alcohol, the caretaker awakes in a hotel room deprived of his keys. The white man outwitted him. Instead of drinking

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 75 together with the man, Jeff should have stayed at the Tophams‟ residence since it is his job to care for it. He is the one to blame for the mess in the early Secret of the Old Clock.

Now Jeff Tucker is portrayed as an honest white person who rescues the girl detective Nancy and guards the way to the next police station to report the robbery. In order to be honest he was made white. But instead of changing his character to white, the African American Jeff Tucker should have been given more human traits. He should be a sober person who speaks good English and takes his job seriously, like the “new”, “white” Jeff in the revised Secret of the Old Clock.

Not all African Americans were “whitened” in the revised Nancy Drew Mystery Stories after 1959. According to Njeri Fuller, an African American Nancy Drew reader dealing with her reading experiences of the revised Nancy Drew Mystery Stories in the article “Fixing Nancy Drew: African American Strategies for Reading”, many characters of minority groups are not only “whitened” such as the caretaker Jeff Tucker but omitted entirely (136). But also in non-revised but “new” Nancy Drew Mystery Stories we do not meet African Americans. In The Thirteenth Pearl, for example, we encounter a porter, but we do not learn anything about his racial identity, which, in early volumes, is almost always African American who speaks broken and ungrammatical English.

Instead of making ethnic minorities appear as “good” human members who do not drink, speak correct English, and are responsible members of society, they have been erased from the books. I agree with Ilana Nash who states that “the result of Adam‟s efforts was less a „cleaning up‟ than an ethnic cleansing (Nash, American Sweetheart 55).” And Njeri Fuller as an African American is right when she says that

[…] what bothers me most now is that I really can‟t see how making someone invisible can be considered a good thing. I believe that there have to be books where everyone is included, because a lot of children don‟t live where they can come in contact with someone of another race or religious belief. But in books you‟re able to meet all different kinds of people from wizards to dragons. So why not someone who‟s African American, or Asian American or Jewish? (138)

When parents and educators complained about the racial stereotypes and prejudices in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, the Stratemeyer Syndicate “whitened” or

76 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 simply removed African Americans from the books to secure sales figures. But adults wanted their children to develop healthy ideas about minority groups during a time when so many people fought for the equal treatment of African Americans and white people. Their “Otherness” should have been appreciated in literature, because people acquire a lot of attitudes towards their fellow humans when reading books.

Apart from the plots that have changed and become more action-packed, also the character Nancy Drew has undergone transformations since the late 1950s. Eighteen- year-old Nancy is still the girl detective who drives around in her sporty dark blue convertible, but she has become less independent and courageous and more worried than in earlier years. Tracking down criminals and solving mysteries seeking for justice, she now depends much more on her father, her friends, and the authorities. Her long- standing boyfriend Ned acts as her protector. “Reliant Nancy” appears less grown-up than during her early mystery cases but more like a young woman with strengths and weaknesses. Not only Nancy has undergone certain changes, but also class and race issues are dealt with differently than in the 1930s and 1940s.

3.3 The Teenage Heroine from the 1980s into the 21st Century

On March 27, 1982, Harriet Adams died, and the Stratemeyer Syndicate was divided among her three remaining children. They, however, showed little interest in the company and they sold the syndicate to Simon & Schuster in 1984. From now on Simon & Schuster was the only company responsible for publishing the original Nancy Drew Mystery Stories and all the spin-offs that would soon emerge on the book market (Re- hak 298-99).

The new owners of the syndicate realized that “the characters are showing signs of age and need updating. Nancy, for example, doesn‟t reflect the reality of the 1980s girlhood” (qtd. in Rehak 300). Already for many years, magazines for teenagers, among them Calling All Girls that was first published in 1941 and included short stories and suggestions about “fashion, manners, and beauty” (Schrum 110), or the famous Seven- teen which was launched in 1944 and had been addressing themes like “fashion, beauty, movies, music, dating, boys, friendships, parents, careers, and education” had been en-

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 77 tertaining the youth (Schrum 110). These issues greatly interested teenagers and had not been involved in the more conservative Nancy Drew Mystery Stories until the 1980s and 1990s.

In the eighties and nineties, Nancy Drew is still occupied with solving mysteries, but romance with Ned Nickerson and flirtations with boys other than her boyfriend seem to become as central as her sleuthing itself. And her interest in fashion and make- up is very outstanding in the Nancy Drew Files, a spin-off series that was started in 1986 with the title Secrets Can Kill. The Files are aimed at a slightly older audience, but Nancy‟s roots still lie in the original Nancy Drew novels.

To demonstrate the changes that have occurred in the Nancy Drew books from the 1980s up to now, we will discuss the following novels: The Phantom of Venice (1985), a Nancy Drew Mystery Story, Secrets Can Kill (1986), the first novel of the Nancy Drew Files, Without a Trace (2004) and Pageant Perfect Crime (2008), both be- longing to the Nancy Drew Girl Detective series.

In The Phantom of Venice (1985), Nancy travels to Venice to support her father Carson Drew in solving a mysterious kidnapping. Actually, Carson went to Venice because one of his clients, the Crystilia Glass Company, wanted to buy the Falcone glassworks in Murano, but the deal is delayed since Pietro Rinaldi, a “master glassblower” (48) of Falcone glassworks has been kidnapped by a gang who wants 100,000 dollars for his release. Nancy should help her father to find out what has happened to him.

The Nancy of the years before would only have thought about the mystery she would have to solve soon, but in The Phantom of Venice, Nancy‟s emotions for Ned make her restless and distracted already after the plane‟s launch, a newly attained characteristic of the girl detective:

Am I or am I not in love with Ned Nickerson? Recently the two had decided to date other people and cool their own romance, which had been simmering since high school days. Since then, Nancy had had one or two romantic encounters which struck sparks, but Ned remained always in the back of her mind as someone safe and rocklike and comforting – someone she could always count on and turn to, no matter how the shifting winds of fancy might blow. (10)

78 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008

In early novels, Nancy never questions her love for Ned. The reader is sure that Nancy will never leave or cheat on her long-standing boyfriend. In the stories from the 1980s onwards, however, Nancy has mixed feelings when she thinks about their relationship, which has cooled down. Yet she knows that she can always count on Ned who is on the spot whenever she needs him.

The mysterious kidnapping of the world-renowned glassblower is intertwined with another case Nancy wants to solve. On the plane, the girl detective gets to know Tara Egan who sets out for Venice to pick up her dad‟s last personal belongings. Tara‟s dad, an artist who has travelled all over the world and has lived in Venice, is presumed dead. It is believed that someone pushed him into a canal where he supposedly drowned. In the end, however, it turns out that Tara‟s dad, Rolf Egan, is not dead. He hid from a criminal Diamante gang who wanted to steal a “huge raw diamond worth half a million dollars” (154) that Rolf shares with two other men, one of them the glassblower Pietro Rinaldi kidnapped by the Diamante network.

Nancy solves the case courageously like she has solved so many mysteries before. What, however, is a rather new trait is her intensified interest in young men during her detecting work. When Nancy meets handsome Gianni Spinelli, the younger brother of Angela Spinelli, who is the girlfriend of Tara‟s father, the girl sleuth is overwhelmed by the young man‟s outward appearance:

With his dark good looks and sleek athletic build, a good many Venetian girls and female tourists were no doubt attracted to him. Nancy realized her own gaze was continually straying in his direction, and she could feel a tingling warmth spreading through her whenever she let her eyes linger. It‟s a good thing I won‟t be seeing too much of this fellow, she thought, or I could easily wind up being Female Victim Number nine hundred forty-seven! (27)

Early Nancy would have never thought about the opposite sex during her detective work. Now she does not even trust herself to withstand the “sweet” temptation in front of her. This new character trait makes her appear weaker but also more human. Many young women who find themselves in the transition to adulthood do not have their feelings under control and feel attracted to handsome men even when in a relationship.

Since Gianni ogles both, Tara and Nancy, the girl detective soon realizes that the handsome guy is a macho convinced he can get whatever girl he wishes to date. Even

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 79 though she knows that the boy is a “calculating playboy” (43), she wants to believe his words when the “hunk” with his “melting dark eyes” tells her the difference between her and Tara:

With you, it is quite different, cara. You are an exciting, lovely woman who knows she is a woman and is not be taken in by flattery or mere hand-kissing. To win your heart would be the proudest boast any man could hope to make!” (43)

Even though Nancy has just thought very negatively about Gianni, she loses her “common sense” (43) as soon as the handsome man pays her sweet compliments. He says that Nancy is much stronger than Tara, who “is like a homeless puppy, grateful to anyone who shows her the least bit of attention or affection” (42).

Later in the book, Gianni even kisses Nancy. The first moment she does not resist him, because of his “masculine scent” (99) and the “fragrance of his after-shave” (99) but soon “fury and sheer indignation took over. She broke free of his embrace and slapped him hard” (99). She is so angry about Gianni‟s approach that she uses violence to edge him away. This example of feminine strength both mentally and physically goes against the new portrayal of the “weak” Nancy. Using her physical power and her courage to push Gianni away makes her appear as a very strong-willed and self-confident character.

But there is another man for whom Nancy falls. His name is Don Madison, an American guy who works for Crystalia Glass but should learn glassblowing in Murano. At the beginning, it seems they do not get along well, but later they fall in love. At a masquerade party, Nancy believes she is dancing with Don, and so she does not resist when it comes to kissing him. In fact it is Gianni Spinelli who has switched costumes with Don Cameron. Don is upset when he sees the two young people kissing, because he loves Nancy, which he puts across towards the end of the story when he also tells her about his fiancée back in Ohio:

“Well, it‟s true. The main thing on my mind is that I … I‟m engaged to a girl back home! So what am I doing falling in love with you?!” […] I think I fell for you the first moment I saw you getting off the boat, Nancy, even before we ex- changed a word. You bowled me over completely! If I acted gruff and uptight,

80 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008

well, now you know why. I couldn‟t handle it, not when I already have a fiancée back in Ohio! Coral and I met in college, and we‟ve been going steady eve since. It was love at first sight that time, too, for both of us. Only now I‟ve started dreaming about you!” (146-47)

Nancy loves Don Cameron too, but she does not say so. Instead, while holding hands, she tells him everything about her long-standing boyfriend Ned Nickerson. She also mentions that the future will show what will finally become of her and Don‟s love to each other. Maybe they will end up as a couple in the future. Don and Nancy hold and kiss each other, and “it seemed to Nancy that she‟d never, ever before felt about anyone the way she felt about Don Madison at that moment” (148).

Besides Nancy‟s sleuthing, love, romance, and the girl‟s cheating on her boyfriend play major roles in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories published after Harriet Adam‟s death. Simon & Schuster knew that girl readers wanted to see more romance during Nancy‟s adventures as an amateur detective, and so they developed a rather boy- crazy Nancy who does not shy away from cheating on her boyfriend.

Simon & Schuster did not only continue to publish Nancy Drew Mystery Stories with a more emotional Nancy no longer merely interested in her detecting work, but also spin-offs like the Nancy Drew Files in 1986 which lasted until 1997 and the Nancy Image 12: Cover of Secrets Can Drew On Campus series from 1995 to 1998. Kill19 Although it is not the aim of this thesis to discuss various spin-offs in detail since most of the books are aimed at a younger or slightly older age group (in the Nancy Drew Notebooks for example, Nancy herself is only eight years old and attends third grade) (Nancy Drew Online), a discussion of the very first novel of the Nancy Drew Files, called Secrets Can Kill (1986), will follow. We will see how eighteen-year-old Nancy and her friends Bess and George became

19 Taken from: http://www.series-books.com/nancydrew/files.html

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 81

“up-to-date” in the late twentieth century, and “reflect the interests and concerns of today‟s teens” (qtd. in Rehak 300).

Nancy is very much into fashion and boys, and George, who, in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, does not show any interest in the opposite sex unlike her cousin Bess, also wants to find a boyfriend who she really loves:

Nancy studied herself in the mirror. She liked what she saw. The tight jeans looked great on her long, slim legs and the green sweater complemented her strawberry-blond hair. Her eyes flashed with the excitement of the new case. She was counting on solving the little mystery fairly easily. In fact, Nancy thought it would probably be fun! “Right now,” she said to her two friends, “the hardest part of this case is deciding what to wear.” (2-3)

Nancy is also interested in looking pretty in the early Nancy Drew novels, but now clothing is even more important than solving a case. Her work as an amateur detective fades into the background, and the rather superficial concerns like what clothing to wear come to the forefront. Her “masculine” character traits of the past have almost vanished, except from her physical courage to chase criminals and solve mysteries.

Nancy Drew, a girl detective that “already had a reputation in her home town of River Heights as one of the brightest, hottest young detectives around” (Secrets Can Kill 2), is still eighteen and lives with her father Carson Drew and their housekeeper Hannah Gruen in River Heights. Unlike in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, Hannah has lived with the Drews since Nancy was born and ever since has acted like a motherly figure for the girl sleuth. Nancy„s mother died when the girl was still a baby. Nancy again belongs to the upper-middle class. She drives a Mustang until someone destroys it. But there is no need to be sad, because she soon gets a new Mustang GT Convertible from her father, which she has drooled over for a long time. In the Nancy Drew Files, Nancy‟s boyfriend remains Ned Nickerson. She really loves him but also cheats on him when attracted to other young men as we have already seen in The Phantom of Venice:

Nancy and Ned had a very special relationship. They‟d known each other since they were kids, and when they‟d first realized they loved each other, they‟d thought it would last forever. But neither one was ready yet for a “forever” commitment, so occasionally they drifted apart, dating other people. Yet some- how, Nancy always found herself coming back to Ned. (Secrets Can Kill 4)

82 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008

Like in the latest Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, also in the Nancy Drew Files Nancy is not really sure if her relationship with Ned will last forever. There are many other young attractive men “on the market” who the girl detective falls for. Questions like, Do I really love him or is there probably someone else who suits better for me?, many teenagers ask themselves when growing up. Simon & Schuster took advantage of teenagers‟ concerns and incorporated their worries and problems into the Nancy Drew books.

The young man Nancy falls for in Secrets Can Kill is Daryl Gray, a high-school student driving a Porsche, who is involved in the mystery the girl detective needs to solve. But she will find this out only in the course of the story. As an undercover student at Bedford High, Nancy at first should clear up school vandalism and theft, but later the girl detective needs to find out the murderer of one of Bedford‟s students, the high school vandal Jake Webb, who is killed at the climax of the story. Much more interested in her new crush Daryl than in any mystery, Nancy, while sitting with him in her car, says that ”I never thought I‟d say this, […] but right now, the last thing on earth I want to do is solve a mystery” (48). And later in the story she even goes so far as to kiss him:

As if they‟d both thought of it at the same time, they moved their heads closer together until their lips were touching. Nancy slid her hands up Daryl‟s arms, felt his thick blond hair under her fingers, felt his lips press against hers. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears […]. “(93)

No handsome guy would ever have detracted Nancy from her sleuthing in the early Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, not even Ned Nickerson. Nancy finds Daryl “exciting” but she also feels guilty about her feelings for Daryl:

But with that fabulous feeling came another feeling – guilt. It wasn‟t Ned whose arms were holding her; it wasn‟t Ned whose lips she was feeling, nor Ned whose voice was murmuring her name. And hadn‟t she said just three days before that nobody could compete with Ned Nickerson? Well, maybe no one could in the long run. But at the moment – in the short run – Daryl Gray was doing a pretty good job of it. (54)

This quote shows a flightiness of girls‟ affections, a typical behavior of teenagers who are in search of their “true love”. Ned has been Nancy‟s partner for a very long time,

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 83 and now she feels attracted to another man. Daryl has caused Nancy to have butterflies in her stomach, a feeling that she probably does not have any longer when together with Ned.

Still, it is Ned Nickerson who Nancy really loves. Therefore, she also tells her boyfriend about Daryl Gray, who immediately forgives Nancy for cheating on him:

“I wasn‟t looking for it to happen, it just did.” “You don‟t have to explain,” Ned said. […] “But I want to!” Nancy squeezed his hand and tried to get him to look at her. “I feel terrible telling you, but it‟s better than keeping it from you. Be- cause I love you,” she said. “No other guy could be as perfect for me as you are.” “Then it‟s over?” Ned asked. “It‟s hardly got started,” Nancy said. “So there‟s nothing to talk about it, is there?” […] “I guess not,” she said. “But I wanted to tell you anyway.” “I understand. I‟m glad you did.” Ned pulled her close and kissed her gently. (151-52)

Ned‟s reaction towards his girlfriend who has cheated on him shows that he is the weaker partner in their relationship. A strong character would not have immediately forgiven Nancy Drew who obviously falls for other handsome young men quite frequently. The statement “Nancy has Ned under her thumb” (63), which Bobbie Ann Mason makes about the early Nancy Drew Mystery Stories in The Girl Sleuth: On the trail of Nancy Drew, Judy Bolton, and Cherry Ames, also holds true for the novels in which the relationship between Nancy and Ned comes to the forefront. It seems that Nancy can cheat on Ned whenever she wishes to do so. “Good old” Ned will forgive her anyway.

Apart from putting more emphasis on teenagers‟ issues like fashion, love, and romance, the “authors” of the newer Nancy Drew Mystery Stories and the Nancy Drew Files also introduced more violence and murder to the books. They knew that the readers were not any longer merely interested in searching for a lost will or a jewel box but wanted to read more thrilling mystery stories. And “more thrilling” signified bringing in violence.

In The Phantom of Venice, Nancy should find the person responsible for Rolf Egan‟s death - only in the end it turns out that he is still alive - and more than once, Nancy is almost pushed by someone into the water who wants to get rid of her: “Nancy

84 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 felt a chill of fear. Did someone want her dead? Or was she merely being warned?” (76).

In Secrets Can Kill, the brake cable of Nancy‟s car has been cut, and since she has driven over a rock that has broken the gas tank, her car, a Mustang, starts to burn. Luckily, Nancy and Daryl have gotten out of the car on time.

The murder of one of the Bedford High students is the climax of Secrets Can Kill. Someone pushed the high school vandal Jake Webb so hard that his fall caused his neck to break. In earlier Nancy Drew stories, the girl detective is never involved in murder cases. Since more violence, kidnapping, and even murder prevail in the stories, the novels about the girl detective are more thrilling than the early Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, in which Nancy mostly solves mysteries about lost wills, stolen heirlooms, haunted mansions, or people being robbed of their possessions and belongings.

Ghostwriters have written Nancy Drew Mystery Stories for over seventy years, the last one written in 2003 called Werewolf in a Winter Wonderland (2003). Even though both Carolyn Keenes were dead by the year 2004 – Mildred Wirt Benson died on May 29 in 2002 – Simon & Schuster did not stop publishing Nancy Drew novels. Far from it! In 2004 the company launched a new series named Nancy Drew Girl Detective, which is still published today. Gone are Nancy‟s boy- and fashion-crazy times and back is the girl detective who is deeply concerned with solving mysteries. Her “new” mysteries are not as dangerous to work out as those found in the Nancy Drew Files or the latest Nancy Drew Mystery Stories. Melanie Rehak is right when she says that “the new Nancy Drew Girl Detective series […] harkens back to the old Nancy, the Nancy of Harriet and Mildred. […] The sleuth has regained some of the spark she lost in the 1980s and „90s” (313). But the themes of some Nancy Drew Girl Detective novels are different from former Nancy Drew books written by Mildred or Harriet. In Pageant Per- fect Crime, for example, the mystery is centered on a beauty contest and plastic surgery, issues girls are interested in today.

In the very first book of the Nancy Drew Girl Detective series, Without a Trace, Nancy, with the help of her friends Bess and George and her boyfriend Ned Nickerson, wants to solve two mysteries: Who is running through gardens in River Heights and stomps zucchinis? And who has stolen the gorgeous and precious family heirloom, a Fabergé egg, from Simone Valinkofsky, a new French resident of River Heights?

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 85

Nancy‟s dad is the one who asks Nancy to engage in the zucchini mystery because he apparently has more “serious” cases to deal with. When Nancy informs her friends about the zucchinis getting stomped, Bess and George do not understand why Nancy, the famous girl detective, wants to solve such a trivial mystery: “‟You‟re kid- ding, right?‟ George commented in her usual blunt way. „Are you really so desperate for a mystery that you‟re going to investigate this?‟” (7). The tame zucchini case and the later mystery of the stolen Fabergé egg remind us of the stories written by Mildred Wirt Benson and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams in which Nancy frequently clears up humdrum cases.

What is also quite similar to the earlier stories is Nancy‟s and George‟s disinter- est in fashion and Bess‟s acting as their fashion stylist:

Bess is always trying to convince both George and me to take more interest in clothes and makeup- two subjects that interest her a lot and us not much at all. I like an occasional shopping spree as much as the next girl, and I enjoy wearing nice things on special occasions, but most of the time I just can‟t be bothered thinking too much about stuff like that. (34)

Unlike in the latest Nancy Drew Mystery Stories or the Nancy Drew Files in which fashion and young men have top priority, the girl detective is now much more interested in solving her mysteries than in her outward appearance or her boyfriend Ned Nicker- son. This is proved when she meets her date at the cinema. She arrives there too late and still has got “a short, thorny branch” (46) in her hair from her afternoon amateur sleuthing in the neighborhood‟s gardens:

“I‟m sorry! Ned, I‟m so sorry!” I explained breathlessly as I raced into the lob- by of the River Heights Cineplex. […] “I figured that whatever was keeping you was probably more interesting than the movie anyway… or your name isn‟t Nancy Drew.” (43-4) […] Ned grinned. “Either Bess convinced you to try some really weird new fashion statement, or you‟re so distracted by some exciting new mystery that you haven‟t bothered to glance in the mirror lately.” (46)

Searching for clues to solve a mystery seems to be the most important activity for Nancy Drew. The girl detective is so engrossed in her work that she almost forgets her date with Ned and does not pay much attention to her looks when she meets him. An-

86 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 other day Ned picks her up, but Nancy has spent too much time surfing the internet to find information about the Fabergé egg that there is hardly any time left to pay much attention to fashion and make-up. She grabs a skirt and blouse but forgets to put on suit- able shoes. It is again Ned who realizes that Nancy is still wearing her “fuzzy pink bedroom slippers” (71). Nancy‟s relationship with Ned that seems to be less important than her amateur investigations and her slight interest in looks takes us back to Mil- dred‟s single-minded and determined Nancy, who was also merely interested in chasing criminals and solving mysteries. Gone is the “Barbie doll detective” (qtd. in Rehak 306) who mainly cared about looks and her feelings for boys.

What also reminds us of Mildred‟s Nancy Drew Mystery Stories is Nancy‟s relationship with authority. Whereas in former Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, well-known Chief McGinnis has already become a friend of the girl amateur sleuth, in the Nancy Drew Girl Detective series he is not always happy about Nancy‟s abilities to solve a crime faster than the police do: “‟Yes, I heard you beat us to the crime scene,‟ the chief said dryly. He didn‟t add the word again, but I could tell he was thinking it. It was time for me to be extra tactful” (62). The police officer seems to be angry that a female amateur detective is interfering in their business, and, on top of it, has already proved several times to be smarter than the police. Nancy does not want to start an argument with the authorities, and so she explains her findings very politely. She does not want to put obstacles in her way, since she is sure of working together with the police in the future.

What is new about the Nancy Drew Girl Detective series is that Nancy drives an SUV, but this time it is not her who is the whiz kid when it comes to fixing cars or other objects but Bess Marvin. The girls also use modern technologies like cell phones, com- puters, and the internet during their sleuthing with the specialist George Fayne:

Later that evening, Bess and I were sprawled on my bed while George clicked away on her tiny laptop computer on my desk, drinking (real) lemonade and eating a plate of Hannah‟s amazing oatmeal-raisin cookies. […] George is amazing with anything electronic. (Pageant Perfect Crime 87)

George‟s occupation with electronics, a rather male interest, harkens back to the George of the early books who was the tomboy amongst her friend Nancy and her cousin Bess. Again she does not want to be called Georgia and her looks are reminiscent of a boy: an

A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 87

“angular”, (7) athletic body, short dark hair and she “prefers jeans to jewelry” (7). Bess, however, is again the “typical” girl of the three who is “pretty, blond, and curvy in all the right places, with dimples in both cheeks and a wardrobe full of flowery dresses and lots of delicate jewelry that sets off her perfect features” (7).

In the Nancy Drew Girl Detective series Nancy has not only friends around her who are proud of her work and are always there when she needs them but also a recurrent female rival called Deidre Shannon. Deidre, the daughter of another noted lawyer, is jealous of Nancy‟s sleuthing abilities. Furthermore, she has a crush on Ned whose heart she will never win. In Without a Trace she tells Nancy lies about Simone Valin- kofsky just to have a say in Nancy‟s case. In Pageant Perfect Crime (2008) Deidre appears as a pageant contestant, in which Nancy acts as an undercover pageant competi- tor in Miss Pretty Face River Heights to clear up a mystery. During the whole time of the contest, Deidre offers impudent remarks about Nancy‟s looks. Ned and Nancy, however, do not pay much attention to the arrogant girl, because she has a “long, un- broken record of useless and pretty gossip” (Without a Trace 58). Including a rival of Nancy makes the series more realistic. Teenagers can more easily identify with Nancy.

Another modernization of the Nancy Drew Girl Detective series is the introduction of cliffhanger endings. Not all the novels of the series end in cliffhangers, but Pageant Perfect Crime, for example, is book number one of the Perfect Mystery Tril- ogy. Nancy has unravelled one mystery, but her next case that is linked to the one she has just solved is born on the last ten pages of the first volume. This is a rather new marketing strategy to increase sales figures. The original novels applied a similar method by presenting us the title of the next mystery of the teenage sleuth.

But the most striking innovation of the Nancy Drew Girl Detective series is Nancy‟s role as the protagonist and narrator of the stories. What you might have already recognized while reading the above quoted passages of the Nancy Drew Girl Detective texts is that Nancy talks in first-person narrative past tense to us. Speaking to the readers more directly and allowing more narrative space for revealing details about the mysteries, the reader feels much more attached to Nancy Drew than in the third-person- narrations of the years before, in which the omniscient narrator does not take part in the stories as a character but knows everything about the ongoing events, and thoughts or

88 A Discussion of Selected Nancy Drew Novels from 1930 to 2008 feelings of the people in the books. Girls can now more easily identify with Nancy Drew speaking more openly to them.

Summing up the last “Nancy Drew-period”, from the 1980s into the 21st century, Nancy Drew has undergone some significant changes. In the 1980s and 1990s, Nancy is no longer merely occupied with her work as an amateur girl detective but shows great interest in fashion and make-up and the opposite sex. Even though having a boyfriend who she really loves, Nancy flirts, kisses and even falls in love with other young handsome men, something which the most famous girl detective would have never done in the years before. But Ned, her long-standing boyfriend, seems to be okay with Nancy cheating on him and forgives her.

Many readers were dissatisfied with Nancy‟s transformation and claimed “the teenage detective who was once a symbol of spunky female independence has slowly been replaced by an image of prolonged childhood, currently evolving toward a Barbie doll detective” (qtd. in Rehak 306). They did not like the boy- and fashion-crazy Nancy and remembered “the Nancy of moral certainty and neat, elegant actions” (Rehak 311). So they were more than satisfied when Simon & Schuster launched the new Nancy Drew Girl Detective series in 2004, which presents a more moderate Nancy speaking in first-person past tense to the readers and whose main interest is again the solving of puzzling mysteries together with her best friends Bess and George and her boyfriend Ned Nickerson.

Chapter 4 Conclusion

Nancy Drew, “the most popular girl detective in the world” (Mason 49), was invented by Edward Stratemeyer in 1930 and since then has been formed and reformed by a number of authors under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. Since her emergence, the adventurous female sleuth has been enthralling the minds of numerous children, teenagers and even adults. Even today readers take out the beloved books they read in their youth and reread some passages about Nancy Drew, the admiring girl, who possesses her own car and a neat wardrobe for all occasions, may solve mysteries whenever she wishes to do so, has got a boyfriend and pals who she can count on, and a father who approves of everything his daughter does or says. The Drews‟ housekeeper Hannah Gruen functions in a way as a substitution for Nancy‟s mother who died when Nancy was a mere child and in later volumes only a baby.

Nancy Drew novels have been written for almost eighty years now, and it goes without saying that the plots, the protagonist Nancy Drew, and her relations to other characters have undergone certain changes over the years. Also the social constructions of class, race, and gender have been dealt with differently in the Nancy Drew texts throughout the ages.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Nancy Drew stories were mainly written by Mildred Wirt Benson who created a pretty sixteen-year-old girl who lives together with her father Carson Drew and their housekeeper Hannah Gruen in River Heights, a fictional town in the Midwest of the United States. Nancy has a great sense of justice, which is probably the main reason for her interest in solving puzzling mysteries as an amateur girl detective. Even though born into the Great Depression and living during the Second World War, Nancy and her family remain untouched by the hardship. She drives around

89 90 Conclusion in her blue roadster, goes shopping whenever she wishes to, and devotes her time to solving baffling mysteries. Her father, who is very proud of his brave daughter, and her friends approve of everything Nancy does or says. Since Nancy is cleverer than the police and solves cases they are unable to figure out, the male authorities envy but at the same time admire Nancy‟s skills. Adventurous, determined, courageous, and independent Nancy, the “model for early second-wave feminists” (Heilbrun 18), defies the people around her who believe that a woman‟s place is in the home. Class lines are also clearly defined in the early Nancy Drew books and minority groups, like African Americans, are portrayed negatively. Hannah Gruen, the Drews‟ housekeeper, for example, is a mere servant and African Americans are represented as drunkards, liars, and ill-tempered people who are irresponsible workers and speak poor English.

This changed in the late 1950s, when parents, educators, and librarians started to complain about the negative portrayal of African Americans in the Nancy Drew novels. Instead of making ethnic minorities appear as “good” human members of society who do not drink, are responsible workers, and speak perfect English, they are “whitened” or completely erased from the books. Hannah Gruen, though, has become a more mother- like figure who Nancy also talks with about her baffling cases as an amateur girl detective. Nancy herself and her relations to other characters change too from the late 1950s to the 1980s. The girl is eighteen instead of sixteen and drives a dark blue convertible. She is still very much interested in her work as an amateur detective but has become less independent and courageous and more worried. Even though women in society have become less dependent on men, Nancy, in contrast, relies more on male figures around her than in the early years. Her relationship to authority has changed too. Whereas in the early novels, Nancy hardly relies on the police‟s help, she now works closely together with them. She also often needs the help of her father, her pals Bess Marvin and George Fayne and of her long-standing boyfriend Ned Nickerson, who, in a way, functions as Nancy‟s protector. The main reason for Nancy‟s transformation is certainly the change of authorship. From the late 1950s onwards, the novels were mainly been written by Harriet Stratemeyer who was a more conservative person than Mildred Wirt Benson, the former “author” of the Nancy Drew novels. All these new acquired traits make Nancy appear less grown-up than in the early novels, in which she is the perfect, independent, and courageous girl who manages everything on her own, but a teenager with strengths and weaknesses. Not only Nancy and her relationship to

Conclusion 91 other characters have changed through the ages, but also the plots have become more action-packed than in the 1930s and 1940s. Despite the more thrilling plots, the readers wanted to see more romance in the Nancy Drew stories, especially between Nancy and her boyfriend Ned Nickerson.

In the mid-eighties, Simon & Schuster bought the Stratemeyer Syndicate and turned the characters that were “showing signs of age and need[ed] updating” (qtd. in Rehak 300) into more up-to-date persons. In the eighties and nineties, Nancy Drew, for example, is no longer merely interested in solving puzzling mysteries, but romance with Ned Nickerson and boys other than her boyfriend become as central as her sleuthing itself. She pays much more attention to fashion and make-up. Also former tomboy George Fayne shows interest in the opposite sex, which she has never done before. Apart from the modification of characters, the plots of the Nancy Drew novels have changed. Violence, kidnapping, and murder are not a rarity in the texts of the eighties and nineties. With the end of the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories in 2003, a new series was launched, called Nancy Drew Girl Detective, in which Nancy, unlike in former mystery stories, talks to us in first-person past tense. And gone are Nancy‟s boy- and fashion-crazy times and back is the amateur girl detective who is strongly interested in solving her mysteries, even mysteries that are not as dangerous and baffling as the ones of the eighties and nineties.

It is amazing how social and historical issues of various time periods are reflected in girls‟ print culture like the Nancy Drew novels. Moreover, it is fascinating to see how the books‟ content and the characters‟ behavior and attitudes suit the time periods in which they are written. If, however, a character‟s conduct diverges from valid social norms, which is often the case with the girl sleuth Nancy Drew, we find valuable expla- nations for it. I am convinced that Nancy would not have changed to the weak and dependent character in the 1960s and 1970s if Mildred Wirt Benson had continued to write the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories. And even if Nancy seemed to be a too independent and autonomous girl for many people during the 1930s and 1940s when lots of them could not enjoy such an independent and easy-going life during the Great Depres- sion and World War II, her function was to act as a role model for young readers. With her physical courage, her bravery, her independence, and her intelligence, she subverted many social norms and, therefore, influenced lots of future second-wave feminists. Had

92 Conclusion girls not read about the strong-willed and self-confident girl detective, they would not have had the courage to fight strongly for women‟s rights in society.

Wondering about the future of Nancy Drew and her friends Bess Marvin and George Fayne, her long-standing boyfriend Ned Nickerson, and her loving and caring father Carson Drew, I am already excited about reading Nancy Drew novels in ten or twenty years‟ time. Questions I hopefully will find an answer to: Will Nancy still ma- neuver her own sporty car or will she already fly her own plane? Will she continue dating Ned Nickerson, or will they finally break up after Nancy will have cheated on him a hundred times? And will the girl detective chase criminals still by interrogating people personally, or will she solve her future mysteries only via Facebook?

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