August 3, 2009 • 18 mins
Nancy Drew is a classic heroine from literature who has inspired generations of girls and women. Molly and Cristen take a closer look at literature's beloved female detective -- including her surprising origins -- in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From House Towards dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Kristen, I have a
(00:20):
mystery for you to solve. You get ready, here your clues?
What do Laura Bush, Diane Sawyer, Oprah's then friend Gail Yes,
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Hillary Roden Clinton have in common?
They're all women and and successful. Yes, but do you
(00:41):
know what, I bet a lot of them would say
their success is due to well, maybe not directly, that
might be a stretch. What's up reading Nancy Drew as
a child? These were all Nancy Drew fans, they are,
And Nancy Cher has really been uh in the headlines
a lot lately because during her confirmation hearings, Sonia sold
to Mayor has mentioned a fun us for Nancy Drew
and that's led to a lot of stories about you know,
(01:03):
what does the influence of Nancy Drew mean on these women? Right?
And I think I saw a recent article in the
Times about how Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O'Connor
were also big Nancy Drew fans. Yeah, so something about
being a judge and like needing the clues I come
from Nancy. But you know, I really identified with hearing
that these women liked Nancy Drew because I love Nancy Drew.
(01:26):
Fun fact about me. My cubicle is decorated in postcards
that are of the old Nancy Drew book covers. It's
a it's a lovely decorations, decorative touch. It's to remind
me to always dress fabulously, no matter what mysteries I
might be solving. We are always solving mysteries how stuff works,
so you should be dressed appropriately. Did you read the books, Christians?
(01:48):
I did read the books. Um My mom actually gave
me the when I was maybe I don't know, thirteen
or fourteen. She gave me the reprinted originals. I think
she was actually more excited about buying them and having
them in the house than I was. Because her name
is also Nancy. It was a very popular name thanks
to Nancy Drew. Yes, that's probably dating her a little bit, sorry, mom,
(02:09):
But yeah, she was a big Nancy Drew fan. And
then my older sisters read Nancy Drew, and then finally,
once I was eleven twelve, I was finally allowed to
start the Nancy Drew series. My mom was very particular
about when she wanted me to start reading Nancy Drew
so I could fully appreciate all of the careful nuances
(02:30):
of Nancy Drew's psyche. So it was a rite of passage.
It was definitely a rite of passage. You know, I had,
um my mom had both those yellow bound original books,
the old ones, but I also read sort of the
modern day um cool, and so Nancy Drew, whatever the
eighties version Nancy Drew was, I remember they were. You know,
Nancy always looked kind of saucier on the cover. But
(02:51):
I remember looking at those books and being like, wow,
Caroline Keane is really old because she's got these old
yellow books, she's got these new paperbacks like that lady
is old and probably tired and she has to be
a fast writer. But then, you know, I come to
find out there is no Carolyn Keane. Carolyn kan does
not exist. Um, which we are going to talk about today,
(03:13):
all the mysteries of Nancy Drew. But let's you know,
if if there are people out there who haven't read
the books. Let's talk a little bit about what they're about.
Who Nancy was Nancy Drew. She's kind of a stock
character if you think about it. She is uh from
a wealthy family. In the first series of books, she's sixteen,
and then she is eventually updated to be eighteen years old,
(03:34):
and she uh lives with her father, who I believe
as a lawyer, Carson Carson Drew. Nancy Drew's mother passed
away at three, and so she has Hannah Grew in
her German housekeeper kind of serves trusty fills and kind
of the more maternal role. She's got a boyfriend, Nickerson. Nickerson,
(03:55):
who is about, let's see, about as exciting as paint
drawing on a wall. He's very patient, though, you know,
if you're a young girl I'm scared about dating. I
think Ned can be very reassuring that the most that
will ever be expected of you as a peck on
the cheek before you run off to solve, you know,
save your friends from certain death. Yeah, but don't rely
(04:17):
on people like Ned to save you. Goodness, Yeah, usually
Nancy had to end up saving Ned. She's got two friends,
Best and George Best always a little concerned about her weight,
pleasantly plump, pleasantly plump, her plump chump, so she's often
referred to. And then there is her quote unquote tomboy friend, George,
(04:37):
also a girl um. But Nancy herself is just, you know,
every single good quality you can think in a person,
she has it. She's both athletic but dainty, so she's
not as tomboyish as George. She's very smart, you know.
She She's just like one thing on the street and
all of a sudden she knows like how to selve
(04:58):
the mystery. She's very observant. She has observant yes, And
so I think that this is why people sort of
hold her up as this kind of model of girl power.
She doesn't need ned to solve the cases. She just
you know, is very reliant on herself to get things done, right, Molly,
That aspect of her character being just very uh self
(05:20):
determined and independent, and I think it's one of the
main appeals of Nancy Drew. Sandra sing Low, a writer
in The Atlantic UM, put it very well when she
said that the real allure of Nancy Drew is that,
almost uniquely among classic or modern heroines, she can follow
and is allowed to follow a train of thought and
considering that Nancy. The first Nancy Drew book came out
(05:41):
in nineteen thirty. It was a pretty modern idea of
a young woman. It really was Nancy is filling this
whole in nineteen thirty that, um, you know, girls just
didn't have that kind of heroin to look up to. You.
We were reading about a character that was around at
the time of Nancy Drew, and she's described as being,
you know, a great person because she knows how to
do laundry because she watched her housekeeper all the time.
(06:03):
I think her name was Honey Bunch. Honey Bunch, which
I like, how to take care of a home. Whereas
Nancy knew how to fix her car and you know,
but she still knew how to tap dance and Morse code.
So she's very well balanced. An accessor rose. Yes, I
remember reading them being like, Nancy Drew is always so
smartly dressed. But was she too smartly dressed? Was she
too perfect? Some people are critical of Nancy Drew because,
(06:25):
you know, does this person even exist? And as time
of time has gone on, the new Nancy Drew has
been more like, oh, I can't hop this fence because
I'm wearing a skirt right, Uh, like you said. Some
people have have criticized this idea of Nancy Drew as
a feminist icon because they say, well, she's just a
wealthy girl living off of her father's money, who has
(06:46):
a housekeeper to take care of all of her chores,
and she just trots off and you know, State just
guides her through mysteries and it's completely unrealistic. And it
might not be realistic, but let's go back into time
to nine thirty and see just how Nancy came into
being who wore the people behind this Carolyn Keen woman. Yes,
(07:07):
the interesting thing about Nancy Drew is that she was
actually conceived by a man. That sounds odd to say,
but she was the brainchild of this huge publisher who
tapped into the children's kind of pulp fiction uh industry. Yeah.
His name was Edgar Stratemeyer and he was born in
(07:28):
eighteen sixty two, and as he was growing up, he
liked to write stories, and eventually he realized that if
he just kept pumping out stories, that's how he could
make money. And he realized that he had a lot
of friends who could pump out stories just as fast
as he could. So he gathered all of them together
kind of formed like this um literary syndicate, this gang
of ghostwriters, and he would give them all three page
(07:49):
outline and you know, between fifty and two and fifty
dollars and say write me a book in a month.
And he just kept pumping them out and the kids
ate it up. He was responsible for the Hardy Boys,
the bobsy Twins, um Tom Swift books, like just these
books that you know our parents grew up with, right,
and these were a new kind of children's book for
(08:11):
the time because a lot of times what kids would
be reading would be, uh just moral lessons, more like
Sunday school type lessons. And that's why they were slightly
controversial for some people, because it was straying from uh
that that more moralistic tone. Yeah, they some librarians wouldn't
want to stock a book that the um Strata Meyer
Syndicate written because it just was gonna rot these kids imaginations.
(08:35):
And then you know, Stratemi was nothing if not a
good salesman. When the Boy Scouts were formed, he immediately
pumped out this series about Boy Scouts having all these adventures,
and the boy Scouts got mad at him because then
like the real boy Scouts didn't want to just like
do the boring boy Scout things. I want to have adventure. Um.
So you know, this guy was a good businessman and
(08:57):
he really seemed to understand children well. And at the time,
a lot of the thinking was that girls would just
read boys books, they didn't need their own characters. Yeah,
they didn't think that they would sell very well, which
doesn't really make sense, and Nancy Drew proved them wrong. Yeah,
Nancy Drew outsold all of them. Yeah. I think one
of the last steps that I saw, maybe from a
(09:17):
couple of years ago, was that there have been over
two hundred million Nancy Drew books sold since nine. It's
kind of unreal. But you know, like I said, he's
a good businessman. He has the right idea. At the
right time, detective fictions getting kind of big, and so
he started thinking of this girl detective character right in
nineteen nine, a year before the first book came out.
(09:38):
He described his vision of Nancy Drew as quote, an
up to date American girl at her best right, clever, resourceful,
and full of energy. Yes, that is Nancy and and
it worked. It did work. Um, originally he wasn't gonna
call her Nancy Drew. Yeah, they're all sorts of potential names,
such as Stella Strang and I think Nan Nune was
(10:02):
one of them. Diana Dare, Diana Dare, which which is good,
that's a that's a good one. I don't know if
I would have read his main books with Diana day
old cheesier. And but one of them was also Nan Drew,
which the publishers eventually lengthened to Nancy. But Stratemeyer did
not actually write the books. As I said, He's got
this big, you know, barn of ghostwriters. And he sends
the plot summary for Nancy Drew over to a writer
(10:25):
named Mildred Worked. Yes, and she's pretty impressive. She had
been like the first woman at her school to get
a master's degree University of Iowa. She was a pilot,
you know, she almost you know, is the spunky heroine.
She infused all of that into Nancy Drew. Even though
she really created the model of Nancy Drew that so
many girls have come to know and love, she didn't
(10:47):
really get to enjoy the fruits of her labor that much.
Because these things have sold like gangbusters. But she made
I think a hundred and twenty five dollars per book,
and she didn't have any kind of copyrights or any
thing to that, so she didn't get the profits that
were coming from all these books that that she wrote.
And she said one year she wrote thirteen full length
(11:09):
books while holding down another job. But she really wasn't
you know, she didn't become famous until much later. She
couldn't you know. There was a case later on to discover,
you know, who had actually written the books. But you know,
these books are selling like gangbusters, and everyone thinks it's
this girl named Carolyn Keene memhile you know, Mildred Worth's
making a five dollars a book and you think you're
(11:29):
underappreciated at your job. Talk about work. But then an
interesting conflict arose soon after the first Nancy Drew book
came out because Stratemeyer passed away and his daughter's took
over the business, and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams really took over
control of the company and overseeing um the production of
(11:51):
the Nancy Drew books. She would go in and start
to make edits and Mildred Word and her did not
get along that well. Their visions of Nancy drew we're
pretty different. I mean, you can't you can't fault Harriet
for some of the changes she made, because a lot
of those early books that Milder work did, right, had
these very racist to us today kind of stereotype, a
lot of you know, making the villains ethnic in some way,
(12:15):
and and just you know, for political correctness, you probably
don't want those carrying on. But she also kind of
softened Nancy. She wanted Nancy be the sweet and light
character who everyone loved. Right. Mildred were would complain that
when Harriet Stratemeyer was going through an editing, uh the copy,
she would add in little adverbs here and there to uh,
(12:38):
to try and soften her like Nancy said that laughingly
or Nancy softly side as she rode on horseback through
the green pasture. Yeah, I have an example from Salon
an article written by Amy Benfer, And here's the original sentence.
Nancy wrote along, glancing occasionally at the neatly planted fields
(12:58):
on either side. Nice suspective, straight to the point. Harriet's
version pretty. She commented to herself, Oh, why can't all
people be nice like the scenery and not make trouble.
I mean, that's it's pretty fruit fruit for a girl detective.
She should be living off the trouble, right. And there
was also in Salon there was an interview with Mildred
(13:22):
word and Uh and she complained that, um, like her
conception of Nancy Drew was suposed to be a girl
who was really ahead of her time and kind of
this new idea of a female heroine. But but then
Stratemeyer went back and made her into just more of
a house type, you know, the she Nancy Dre would
(13:43):
probably grow up, marry her sad sack ned Nickerson boyfriend,
and moved to the suburbs and resent ned Nickerson for
the rest of her life while she was ironing every day.
That's true, although I will say that in that same interview,
you know, Mildred were made it clear that, you know,
she didn't think of Nancy as a feminist the way
other scholars were trying to pin this label on her.
(14:04):
Nancy would have never stood to be labeled like that.
Um and that you know, it might not have been
a bad thing if Nancy had got had settled down,
she said, you know, the lesson I want girls from
take to Nancy is to be free, but not to
take too much license with your freedom. Be responsible. It's
not a bad message for young girls, so of course
not so. Um Both Eldred and Harriet now passed away,
(14:26):
but the books keep on coming along with movies television series.
There are constant updates. Harriet was certainly not the last
one to update. Nancy Drew. Currently, Nancy Drew has a
cell phone and drives a hybrid, and she's a lot
more slang, and she has a lot more doubts. You know,
there have been um a lot of articles about the
psychology of Nancy Drew and whether she's relatable, and so
(14:47):
now Nancy Drew is narrated in the first person, and
she's like, oh, I just don't know about myself. About Ned,
she's very more angsty, and I would say she's she's
probably a lot more true to life of an average
sixteen to eighteen year old girl. I do. I remember reading, uh,
the Nancy Drew books when I was younger, and she
was just always so calm and self determined and just
(15:11):
always seemed to know that everything was going to work out.
And when I was fourteen, and reading Nancy Drew couldn't
be farther from the truth in my you know, in
my head, right, you know, we were reading one passage
about how Nancy was had a crush on some rock star,
allowing herself a rare moment of humanity and when the
guy didn't like her back instead of you know, falling
(15:32):
on the bed and crying, you wanted to cry, but
she just filed her nails and wrote a letter instead,
or a letter to Hannah grew in her German housekeeper,
good old Hannah. But I mean, you know that's sort
of the paradox that people struggle with. Now, do you
want kind of that ideal woman to look up to,
you know, so that when you do face your own
heartbreak and kind of be like, you know what, it's
(15:52):
not worth cry. I'm just gonna file my nails. Or
do you want someone more relatable, someone angsty? Well, well,
like considering that that list of women, very successful women
that you ticked off at the beginning of the episode,
such as the three Supreme Court justices or well one nominee,
one nominee and to Supreme Court justices Hillary Clinton, Diane Sawyer,
Gayle King, etcetera. Seems like that that original Nancy Drew,
(16:18):
although slightly unrealistic, you know, worked as a role model
for them. I know, it's it's hard to argue with
her success, and you know, I look up to her
every day as a model of well dressed intelligence and
the wonderful cubicle decor She has wonderful cubicle decor um.
But you know, without even knowing that we were talking
(16:38):
about Nancy Drew today, we got a listener reading list,
you know, we love to do our listener reading lists
from Crystal, who is taking classes on elementary school libraries
and so she's reading a lot of graphic novels. But
she mentioned that the Nancy Drew series is being made
into a graphic novel, uh, to sort of bring more
readers in. You know, when we were doing our Chicklip podcast,
(16:59):
we talked about how something like a graphic novel could
really hook young readers and get them readings. So let's
take a look at what Crystal is reading. She says,
you know, because she's taking his class, he's dreading graphic novels.
She's reading The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett, The Fairytale
Detectives by Michael Buckley, Coraline by Neil Gaiman, and Captain
(17:20):
America by Ed Rup Baker. Sounds like a fun list.
It does sound like a fun list. I wish I
could take classes on stalking children's libraries. I'd bring my
postcards along to show them, little flash cards that might
be a little creepy, Molly probably. But on another note,
if you would like to stalk us, don't be weird
(17:40):
about it. Just send us an email at a at
mom stuff at how stuffworks dot com. If you have
any ideas or memories about Nancy Drew books, any favorite
or least favorite um Nancy Drew Books, feel free to
send him along or any other questions or comments. And
of course you can always check out what Molly and
I are digging into during the week on our blog
(18:02):
called how to Stuff. And you can find all of
this and much more information at how stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics because
it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
(18:23):
com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two
thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From House Towards dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Kristen, I have a
(00:20):
mystery for you to solve. You get ready, here your clues?
What do Laura Bush, Diane Sawyer, Oprah's then friend Gail Yes,
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Hillary Roden Clinton have in common?
They're all women and and successful. Yes, but do you
(00:41):
know what, I bet a lot of them would say
their success is due to well, maybe not directly, that
might be a stretch. What's up reading Nancy Drew as
a child? These were all Nancy Drew fans, they are,
And Nancy Cher has really been uh in the headlines
a lot lately because during her confirmation hearings, Sonia sold
to Mayor has mentioned a fun us for Nancy Drew
and that's led to a lot of stories about you know,
(01:03):
what does the influence of Nancy Drew mean on these women? Right?
And I think I saw a recent article in the
Times about how Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O'Connor
were also big Nancy Drew fans. Yeah, so something about
being a judge and like needing the clues I come
from Nancy. But you know, I really identified with hearing
that these women liked Nancy Drew because I love Nancy Drew.
(01:26):
Fun fact about me. My cubicle is decorated in postcards
that are of the old Nancy Drew book covers. It's
a it's a lovely decorations, decorative touch. It's to remind
me to always dress fabulously, no matter what mysteries I
might be solving. We are always solving mysteries how stuff works,
so you should be dressed appropriately. Did you read the books, Christians?
(01:48):
I did read the books. Um My mom actually gave
me the when I was maybe I don't know, thirteen
or fourteen. She gave me the reprinted originals. I think
she was actually more excited about buying them and having
them in the house than I was. Because her name
is also Nancy. It was a very popular name thanks
to Nancy Drew. Yes, that's probably dating her a little bit, sorry, mom,
(02:09):
But yeah, she was a big Nancy Drew fan. And
then my older sisters read Nancy Drew, and then finally,
once I was eleven twelve, I was finally allowed to
start the Nancy Drew series. My mom was very particular
about when she wanted me to start reading Nancy Drew
so I could fully appreciate all of the careful nuances
(02:30):
of Nancy Drew's psyche. So it was a rite of passage.
It was definitely a rite of passage. You know, I had,
um my mom had both those yellow bound original books,
the old ones, but I also read sort of the
modern day um cool, and so Nancy Drew, whatever the
eighties version Nancy Drew was, I remember they were. You know,
Nancy always looked kind of saucier on the cover. But
(02:51):
I remember looking at those books and being like, wow,
Caroline Keane is really old because she's got these old
yellow books, she's got these new paperbacks like that lady
is old and probably tired and she has to be
a fast writer. But then, you know, I come to
find out there is no Carolyn Keane. Carolyn kan does
not exist. Um, which we are going to talk about today,
(03:13):
all the mysteries of Nancy Drew. But let's you know,
if if there are people out there who haven't read
the books. Let's talk a little bit about what they're about.
Who Nancy was Nancy Drew. She's kind of a stock
character if you think about it. She is uh from
a wealthy family. In the first series of books, she's sixteen,
and then she is eventually updated to be eighteen years old,
(03:34):
and she uh lives with her father, who I believe
as a lawyer, Carson Carson Drew. Nancy Drew's mother passed
away at three, and so she has Hannah Grew in
her German housekeeper kind of serves trusty fills and kind
of the more maternal role. She's got a boyfriend, Nickerson. Nickerson,
(03:55):
who is about, let's see, about as exciting as paint
drawing on a wall. He's very patient, though, you know,
if you're a young girl I'm scared about dating. I
think Ned can be very reassuring that the most that
will ever be expected of you as a peck on
the cheek before you run off to solve, you know,
save your friends from certain death. Yeah, but don't rely
(04:17):
on people like Ned to save you. Goodness, Yeah, usually
Nancy had to end up saving Ned. She's got two friends,
Best and George Best always a little concerned about her weight,
pleasantly plump, pleasantly plump, her plump chump, so she's often
referred to. And then there is her quote unquote tomboy friend, George,
(04:37):
also a girl um. But Nancy herself is just, you know,
every single good quality you can think in a person,
she has it. She's both athletic but dainty, so she's
not as tomboyish as George. She's very smart, you know.
She She's just like one thing on the street and
all of a sudden she knows like how to selve
(04:58):
the mystery. She's very observant. She has observant yes, And
so I think that this is why people sort of
hold her up as this kind of model of girl power.
She doesn't need ned to solve the cases. She just
you know, is very reliant on herself to get things done, right, Molly,
That aspect of her character being just very uh self
(05:20):
determined and independent, and I think it's one of the
main appeals of Nancy Drew. Sandra sing Low, a writer
in The Atlantic UM, put it very well when she
said that the real allure of Nancy Drew is that,
almost uniquely among classic or modern heroines, she can follow
and is allowed to follow a train of thought and
considering that Nancy. The first Nancy Drew book came out
(05:41):
in nineteen thirty. It was a pretty modern idea of
a young woman. It really was Nancy is filling this
whole in nineteen thirty that, um, you know, girls just
didn't have that kind of heroin to look up to. You.
We were reading about a character that was around at
the time of Nancy Drew, and she's described as being,
you know, a great person because she knows how to
do laundry because she watched her housekeeper all the time.
(06:03):
I think her name was Honey Bunch. Honey Bunch, which
I like, how to take care of a home. Whereas
Nancy knew how to fix her car and you know,
but she still knew how to tap dance and Morse code.
So she's very well balanced. An accessor rose. Yes, I
remember reading them being like, Nancy Drew is always so
smartly dressed. But was she too smartly dressed? Was she
too perfect? Some people are critical of Nancy Drew because,
(06:25):
you know, does this person even exist? And as time
of time has gone on, the new Nancy Drew has
been more like, oh, I can't hop this fence because
I'm wearing a skirt right, Uh, like you said. Some
people have have criticized this idea of Nancy Drew as
a feminist icon because they say, well, she's just a
wealthy girl living off of her father's money, who has
(06:46):
a housekeeper to take care of all of her chores,
and she just trots off and you know, State just
guides her through mysteries and it's completely unrealistic. And it
might not be realistic, but let's go back into time
to nine thirty and see just how Nancy came into
being who wore the people behind this Carolyn Keen woman. Yes,
(07:07):
the interesting thing about Nancy Drew is that she was
actually conceived by a man. That sounds odd to say,
but she was the brainchild of this huge publisher who
tapped into the children's kind of pulp fiction uh industry. Yeah.
His name was Edgar Stratemeyer and he was born in
(07:28):
eighteen sixty two, and as he was growing up, he
liked to write stories, and eventually he realized that if
he just kept pumping out stories, that's how he could
make money. And he realized that he had a lot
of friends who could pump out stories just as fast
as he could. So he gathered all of them together
kind of formed like this um literary syndicate, this gang
of ghostwriters, and he would give them all three page
(07:49):
outline and you know, between fifty and two and fifty
dollars and say write me a book in a month.
And he just kept pumping them out and the kids
ate it up. He was responsible for the Hardy Boys,
the bobsy Twins, um Tom Swift books, like just these
books that you know our parents grew up with, right,
and these were a new kind of children's book for
(08:11):
the time because a lot of times what kids would
be reading would be, uh just moral lessons, more like
Sunday school type lessons. And that's why they were slightly
controversial for some people, because it was straying from uh
that that more moralistic tone. Yeah, they some librarians wouldn't
want to stock a book that the um Strata Meyer
Syndicate written because it just was gonna rot these kids imaginations.
(08:35):
And then you know, Stratemi was nothing if not a
good salesman. When the Boy Scouts were formed, he immediately
pumped out this series about Boy Scouts having all these adventures,
and the boy Scouts got mad at him because then
like the real boy Scouts didn't want to just like
do the boring boy Scout things. I want to have adventure. Um.
So you know, this guy was a good businessman and
(08:57):
he really seemed to understand children well. And at the time,
a lot of the thinking was that girls would just
read boys books, they didn't need their own characters. Yeah,
they didn't think that they would sell very well, which
doesn't really make sense, and Nancy Drew proved them wrong. Yeah,
Nancy Drew outsold all of them. Yeah. I think one
of the last steps that I saw, maybe from a
(09:17):
couple of years ago, was that there have been over
two hundred million Nancy Drew books sold since nine. It's
kind of unreal. But you know, like I said, he's
a good businessman. He has the right idea. At the
right time, detective fictions getting kind of big, and so
he started thinking of this girl detective character right in
nineteen nine, a year before the first book came out.
(09:38):
He described his vision of Nancy Drew as quote, an
up to date American girl at her best right, clever, resourceful,
and full of energy. Yes, that is Nancy and and
it worked. It did work. Um, originally he wasn't gonna
call her Nancy Drew. Yeah, they're all sorts of potential names,
such as Stella Strang and I think Nan Nune was
(10:02):
one of them. Diana Dare, Diana Dare, which which is good,
that's a that's a good one. I don't know if
I would have read his main books with Diana day
old cheesier. And but one of them was also Nan Drew,
which the publishers eventually lengthened to Nancy. But Stratemeyer did
not actually write the books. As I said, He's got
this big, you know, barn of ghostwriters. And he sends
the plot summary for Nancy Drew over to a writer
(10:25):
named Mildred Worked. Yes, and she's pretty impressive. She had
been like the first woman at her school to get
a master's degree University of Iowa. She was a pilot,
you know, she almost you know, is the spunky heroine.
She infused all of that into Nancy Drew. Even though
she really created the model of Nancy Drew that so
many girls have come to know and love, she didn't
(10:47):
really get to enjoy the fruits of her labor that much.
Because these things have sold like gangbusters. But she made
I think a hundred and twenty five dollars per book,
and she didn't have any kind of copyrights or any
thing to that, so she didn't get the profits that
were coming from all these books that that she wrote.
And she said one year she wrote thirteen full length
(11:09):
books while holding down another job. But she really wasn't
you know, she didn't become famous until much later. She
couldn't you know. There was a case later on to discover,
you know, who had actually written the books. But you know,
these books are selling like gangbusters, and everyone thinks it's
this girl named Carolyn Keene memhile you know, Mildred Worth's
making a five dollars a book and you think you're
(11:29):
underappreciated at your job. Talk about work. But then an
interesting conflict arose soon after the first Nancy Drew book
came out because Stratemeyer passed away and his daughter's took
over the business, and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams really took over
control of the company and overseeing um the production of
(11:51):
the Nancy Drew books. She would go in and start
to make edits and Mildred Word and her did not
get along that well. Their visions of Nancy drew we're
pretty different. I mean, you can't you can't fault Harriet
for some of the changes she made, because a lot
of those early books that Milder work did, right, had
these very racist to us today kind of stereotype, a
lot of you know, making the villains ethnic in some way,
(12:15):
and and just you know, for political correctness, you probably
don't want those carrying on. But she also kind of
softened Nancy. She wanted Nancy be the sweet and light
character who everyone loved. Right. Mildred were would complain that
when Harriet Stratemeyer was going through an editing, uh the copy,
she would add in little adverbs here and there to uh,
(12:38):
to try and soften her like Nancy said that laughingly
or Nancy softly side as she rode on horseback through
the green pasture. Yeah, I have an example from Salon
an article written by Amy Benfer, And here's the original sentence.
Nancy wrote along, glancing occasionally at the neatly planted fields
(12:58):
on either side. Nice suspective, straight to the point. Harriet's
version pretty. She commented to herself, Oh, why can't all
people be nice like the scenery and not make trouble.
I mean, that's it's pretty fruit fruit for a girl detective.
She should be living off the trouble, right. And there
was also in Salon there was an interview with Mildred
(13:22):
word and Uh and she complained that, um, like her
conception of Nancy Drew was suposed to be a girl
who was really ahead of her time and kind of
this new idea of a female heroine. But but then
Stratemeyer went back and made her into just more of
a house type, you know, the she Nancy Dre would
(13:43):
probably grow up, marry her sad sack ned Nickerson boyfriend,
and moved to the suburbs and resent ned Nickerson for
the rest of her life while she was ironing every day.
That's true, although I will say that in that same interview,
you know, Mildred were made it clear that, you know,
she didn't think of Nancy as a feminist the way
other scholars were trying to pin this label on her.
(14:04):
Nancy would have never stood to be labeled like that.
Um and that you know, it might not have been
a bad thing if Nancy had got had settled down,
she said, you know, the lesson I want girls from
take to Nancy is to be free, but not to
take too much license with your freedom. Be responsible. It's
not a bad message for young girls, so of course
not so. Um Both Eldred and Harriet now passed away,
(14:26):
but the books keep on coming along with movies television series.
There are constant updates. Harriet was certainly not the last
one to update. Nancy Drew. Currently, Nancy Drew has a
cell phone and drives a hybrid, and she's a lot
more slang, and she has a lot more doubts. You know,
there have been um a lot of articles about the
psychology of Nancy Drew and whether she's relatable, and so
(14:47):
now Nancy Drew is narrated in the first person, and
she's like, oh, I just don't know about myself. About Ned,
she's very more angsty, and I would say she's she's
probably a lot more true to life of an average
sixteen to eighteen year old girl. I do. I remember reading, uh,
the Nancy Drew books when I was younger, and she
was just always so calm and self determined and just
(15:11):
always seemed to know that everything was going to work out.
And when I was fourteen, and reading Nancy Drew couldn't
be farther from the truth in my you know, in
my head, right, you know, we were reading one passage
about how Nancy was had a crush on some rock star,
allowing herself a rare moment of humanity and when the
guy didn't like her back instead of you know, falling
(15:32):
on the bed and crying, you wanted to cry, but
she just filed her nails and wrote a letter instead,
or a letter to Hannah grew in her German housekeeper,
good old Hannah. But I mean, you know that's sort
of the paradox that people struggle with. Now, do you
want kind of that ideal woman to look up to,
you know, so that when you do face your own
heartbreak and kind of be like, you know what, it's
(15:52):
not worth cry. I'm just gonna file my nails. Or
do you want someone more relatable, someone angsty? Well, well,
like considering that that list of women, very successful women
that you ticked off at the beginning of the episode,
such as the three Supreme Court justices or well one nominee,
one nominee and to Supreme Court justices Hillary Clinton, Diane Sawyer,
Gayle King, etcetera. Seems like that that original Nancy Drew,
(16:18):
although slightly unrealistic, you know, worked as a role model
for them. I know, it's it's hard to argue with
her success, and you know, I look up to her
every day as a model of well dressed intelligence and
the wonderful cubicle decor She has wonderful cubicle decor um.
But you know, without even knowing that we were talking
(16:38):
about Nancy Drew today, we got a listener reading list,
you know, we love to do our listener reading lists
from Crystal, who is taking classes on elementary school libraries
and so she's reading a lot of graphic novels. But
she mentioned that the Nancy Drew series is being made
into a graphic novel, uh, to sort of bring more
readers in. You know, when we were doing our Chicklip podcast,
(16:59):
we talked about how something like a graphic novel could
really hook young readers and get them readings. So let's
take a look at what Crystal is reading. She says,
you know, because she's taking his class, he's dreading graphic novels.
She's reading The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett, The Fairytale
Detectives by Michael Buckley, Coraline by Neil Gaiman, and Captain
(17:20):
America by Ed Rup Baker. Sounds like a fun list.
It does sound like a fun list. I wish I
could take classes on stalking children's libraries. I'd bring my
postcards along to show them, little flash cards that might
be a little creepy, Molly probably. But on another note,
if you would like to stalk us, don't be weird
(17:40):
about it. Just send us an email at a at
mom stuff at how stuffworks dot com. If you have
any ideas or memories about Nancy Drew books, any favorite
or least favorite um Nancy Drew Books, feel free to
send him along or any other questions or comments. And
of course you can always check out what Molly and
I are digging into during the week on our blog
(18:02):
called how to Stuff. And you can find all of
this and much more information at how stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics because
it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
(18:23):
com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two
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