Reflections on Nancy Drew

Dear Aunt Debbie,

We're back home from a lovely lakeside vacation, during which we finished reading The Secret of the Old Clock.  Eleanor's excitement and complete inability to sit still as we read to her continued through the last chapter of the book, which I found to be an interesting mix of empowering, old-school, and just a little odd.

You mentioned logical reasoning and working things through as one of Nancy's best attributes.  I was struck perhaps even more by her cool competence in a variety of difficult situations.  When she sees a girl fall from a bridge into shallow water, she runs to the rescue and carries her home.  She drives a car (her own) extremely well, including driving her father around to a few appointments.  She knows how to drive a boat, and when the motor stalls (through no fault of her own), she works on it for more than an hour before giving up.  When help doesn't arrive after a few hours of waiting, she tries again:

To occupy her mind, Nancy concentrated once more on the motor.  Determinedly she bent over the engine.  It was not until the sun sank low in the sky that she sat up and drew a long breath.

"There!" she declared.  "I've done everything.  If it doesn't start now, it never will."

To her relief and astonishment, it responded with a steady roar as if nothing had ever gone wrong!

When confronted with rude girls of her own age or with possibly violent thieves, Nancy is internally morally outraged, but keeps her cool.  When locked in a closet, she tries to pick the lock from inside with a bobby pin, then tears down a wooden rod and uses it as a lever to break open the door at the hinges, citing Archimedes as she does so.  She knows how to bandage an elderly woman's leg properly, cook her a nourishing lunch, and move straight on to following thieves at close range and breaking into their truck.  When describing all of these episodes later, she's humble and undramatic.  Some nice role modeling here.

There are of course the requisite descriptions of every outfit she puts on throughout the book (lots of "smart little suits"), which made me think each time of the initial descriptions of the twins at the beginning of each Sweet Valley High book.  And Nancy is quite purely good in so many ways that one wishes at moments for a little more shading of character.  Still, there's a toughness to appreciate.  Eleanor has already asked me to find her book two.

Love, Annie

Following the clues to the Nancy Drews

Dear Aunt Debbie,

It's interesting to hear what's stuck with you from the Gregor books, and to think about them as homage to Alice in Wonderland as well as A Wrinkle in Time -- of course, the fall down the laundry room grate is like that old rabbit hole.  But no, Gregor and Boots remain their same human size, and it is the animals who are truly enormous -- six-foot tall cockroaches, giant vicious rats.  At the beginning of the second book, Gregor takes Boots to go sledding in Central Park, and she's kidnapped by giant cockroaches there (one of the other entryways to Underland is under a large stone slab in the park).  Gregor figures out what's happened when he sees a dog going crazy barking at what looks like a stick, but turns out to be an enormous articulated cockroach leg that snapped off during the kidnapping.  (To clarify: the roaches kidnap Boots for her own safety, so the rats won't get her first.  They're still good guys.)  Oh yes, I'll be reading all five of these.

We're gearing up for our own vacation, and I've been stockpiling books to read with Eleanor during the week we'll be away with my in-laws in a cabin by a lake in Wisconsin.  The second Borrowers book is waiting for us, and we're already halfway through Ramona the Pest.  The book Eleanor was most excited to pick up from the library, however, was The Secret of the Old Clock, a.k.a. the first volume of the Nancy Drew mysteries, by Carolyn Keene.

Eleanor's interest in Nancy Drew was sparked by our recent reading of The Worry Week, which was a total joy.  Jeff began it with Eleanor, but it was her first week of vacation, so my mom and I were commuting with her around the city, and we all took a turn reading.  What a good book!  I knew I'd read it, but didn't realize until we started again just how many times I must have reread -- so many places throughout the book where I knew lines by heart, after more than 20 years....

It's a book full of references.  Alice, the oldest sister, quotes Romeo and Juliet throughout, so I had to explain the plot of that story.  Allegra, the narrator and middle sister, refers several times to her "pile of Nancy Drews," and Alice at one point twists her ankle and stays in the bath and on the couch reading "all the Nancy Drews."  Eleanor picked up on it: "What's a Nancy Drews?" and I dredged up what I could remember of the many, many Nancy Drew books I sped through in 2nd grade.  I have an image of the shelf they all sat on in my elementary school library: a bottom shelf, filled gloriously from one side to the other with the worn permabound covers, their yellow spines fraying a little at top and bottom, each front cover bearing an image of Nancy finding something amazing or sinister, usually surrounded by darkness.  I remember Nancy was motherless, and lived with her wealthy father and a motherly housekeeper.  She drove a blue roadster, dated the totally forgettable Ned Nickerson, and was best friends with plump, girly Bess and short-haired, tomboyish (ahem, butch) George.  I don't remember a single complete plot.  Elements, yes: a broken locket, lots of running to gazebos at night, close calls.  I have no idea what to expect when Eleanor and I crack this one open.

But apparently I'm in good company in having been a huge fan.  Three years ago, when Sonia Sotomayor was being confirmed as a justice of the Supreme Court, someone dug up the fact that all three (at that point, pre-Kagan) female Supreme Court justices cited Nancy Drew as a major influence.  The New York Times published two articles digging into Nancy Drew's appeal: one focused on the justices, and one expanding the pool of fans to include all kinds of high-powered women.  She's been a lot of things to a lot of girls and women over the years.  I'll report back on her impact in this house.

Love, Annie