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These are the 1st, 3rd, and 43rd of the original Nancy Drew Mysteries. A few years back, two “best of” collections were released for Nancy Drew. My mother, I have recently discovered, still has the volumes she had when I was 7, and has been getting the ones she didn’t have. I plan to reread them until I run out of burn out. (They take a little under two hours each to read, which may result in some serious padding for 2010’s books. But I digress.) So far, they hold up pretty well, though I hasten to add that they’re holding up well for a 29-year-old who first read them between roughly the ages of 7 and 14, and then had her ideas of the character and series altered by those awful Nancy Drew Files books in the 90s. (All boyfriend and annoying angst and flash, too little running around mysterious houses. I will not be rereading them.) I can’t begin to speculate on how they’d read to an adult reading them for the first time today. The plots are somewhat average and my adult self can tell that there are different ghostwriters behind the books, but there’s also something absurdly addictive to them. I had to restrain myself from picking up the other “best of” book when I finished this one.
Reading Nancy Drew, it’s easier to see why the books remain so popular (and pretty consistently in print for 80 years, in some cases). Nancy is responsible-she’s always helping people, runs errands for her father, helps her housekeeper/surrogate mother with chores, etc.-but she has no responsibilities-she’s graduated high school, doesn’t go to college, and doesn’t have a job. She’s smart, clever and aggressive, and while she may get kidnapped, she can also get herself free. If she’s getting rescued, it’s usually only because she helped the rescuer in some way, and she has a knack for finding adventure anywhere. She also, significantly for a teenaged girl, has the respect and admiration of her father (who, in turn, has the respect of the local community) who sets few boundaries on her life, respects and is respected by (typically male) authority and, in the editions I’m reading, faces almost no overt sexism.
( cut for length )
The editions I’m reading are the “updated” editions from the late 80s and early 90s. They were rewritten, as I understand it, to reduce racist comments (given reference to one character in The Mystery of the 99 Steps, that may have saved me a lot of cringing), keep them updated for younger readers (nothing like stumbling across an electric razor in a story originally written and pretty much still set in 1930) and to make Nancy “softer” and more “feminine.” The last of which, naturally, makes me sigh. Hopefully, some of the books I read will be the originals, so I can properly compare.
For the most part, Nancy seems to be written to be the female counterpart to the scads and scads of young male heroes on adventures, though I have to (re)read more to really think on that. I’m also wondering if Nancy qualifies as a “good girl” or as a “bad girl.” By our contemporary standards, of course, she’s very much a “good girl,” but I suspect that wasn’t nearly as true in 1930.
And now, the covers! Because the covers have changed over the years, and I have Comments about them. Ok, mostly the covers for other books, but anyway…
( covers and commentary )
Reading Nancy Drew, it’s easier to see why the books remain so popular (and pretty consistently in print for 80 years, in some cases). Nancy is responsible-she’s always helping people, runs errands for her father, helps her housekeeper/surrogate mother with chores, etc.-but she has no responsibilities-she’s graduated high school, doesn’t go to college, and doesn’t have a job. She’s smart, clever and aggressive, and while she may get kidnapped, she can also get herself free. If she’s getting rescued, it’s usually only because she helped the rescuer in some way, and she has a knack for finding adventure anywhere. She also, significantly for a teenaged girl, has the respect and admiration of her father (who, in turn, has the respect of the local community) who sets few boundaries on her life, respects and is respected by (typically male) authority and, in the editions I’m reading, faces almost no overt sexism.
( cut for length )
The editions I’m reading are the “updated” editions from the late 80s and early 90s. They were rewritten, as I understand it, to reduce racist comments (given reference to one character in The Mystery of the 99 Steps, that may have saved me a lot of cringing), keep them updated for younger readers (nothing like stumbling across an electric razor in a story originally written and pretty much still set in 1930) and to make Nancy “softer” and more “feminine.” The last of which, naturally, makes me sigh. Hopefully, some of the books I read will be the originals, so I can properly compare.
For the most part, Nancy seems to be written to be the female counterpart to the scads and scads of young male heroes on adventures, though I have to (re)read more to really think on that. I’m also wondering if Nancy qualifies as a “good girl” or as a “bad girl.” By our contemporary standards, of course, she’s very much a “good girl,” but I suspect that wasn’t nearly as true in 1930.
And now, the covers! Because the covers have changed over the years, and I have Comments about them. Ok, mostly the covers for other books, but anyway…
( covers and commentary )
