Nancy Drew, Feminist Icon

A couple of weeks ago I saw the original Nancy Drew movie, Nancy Drew – Detective, on a television channel I didn’t know existed (I had been without cable for a few months – amazing how much reading and sleeping one gets done when not watching television, but it seems a few stations have shifted on the cable dial and a couple more have reinvented themselves).

It seems I had a lot to learn about Nancy Drew, despite having read the entire series as a child. I was puzzled by the clothes when watching the movie – it was hard to place the time period, although I knew it had to be post-Depression, because the skirts were just below knee length. I guessed incorrectly, from the hats and clothing styles, that it was immediately post WWII. It was actually filmed in 1938, and trying to determine when it had been filmed sent me down a whole path of not only research but reflection about Nancy Drew.

What struck me about the movie, in which Bonita Granville played the title character, Frankie Thomas played Ted (or ‘Ned”) Nickerson, Nancy’s boyfriend, and a guy called Frank Orth played police chief Captain Tweedy, was what a wonderful and early feminist role model Nancy Drew was. Considering my Nancy Drew reading was severely rationed (I was only allowed to read two a week), I was amazed. It is, perhaps, significant that while the Nancy Drew character is 18 in the series, it's read by girls much younger than that - I think I had already read the entire series by the time I was 10, and moved on to adult literature.

But here, in the 1938 movie, you have a very clear female leader who is smart, attractive, independent, and willing not only to take charge, but completely unwilling to be bossed around or dismissed by men who don’t hesitate to tell her that she should ‘run along, little girl.’ Probably even more important than the female role model Nancy represents, are the supportive male role models of her father, lawyer Carson Drew, and her boyfriend, Ted Nickerson. While they may grumble about being pressed into service by Nancy, they lend their brawn and brains when required.

For those of you who don’t know (or have forgotten), the Nancy Drew character lives with her father and their housekeeper. Her mother died when she was young (Nancy’s age at the time of her mother’s death has changed, but she and her dad have been on their own since she was at least 10). Whether her feminism flourished due to the freedom of being motherless or whether the bond between Nancy and her father, lawyer Carson Drew, is stronger after her mother’s death isn’t something the series deals with. In other words, it’s not clear whether Nancy is the way she is because her primary caregiver and role model is a male professional or not – and it’s also not clear whether it’s the freedom from domestic responsibility that has allowed Nancy to follow her dream unhindered. Clearly, though, the conditions for feminism to flourish are present: freedom from financial worry, freedom from domestic obligations, and freedom from societal disapprobation. It was delightful, as a woman who grew up in the late 50s and early 60s, to see a young woman not only not afraid to take charge, but positively dying to – and to see her get results.

Nancy and her father are unable to persuade police chief Tweedy to even look for the elderly woman who has vanished and is being held against her will. She keeps her cool even when being patronized in a way that would make anyone’s blood boil by the police, and mounts her own investigation, dragging the unwilling Ted Nickerson along on a trip to the nursing home where Mrs. Eldredge is being held against her will, while undue influence is brought to bear on her so she won’t leave her estate in the form of a scholarship to Nancy’s school. Not only is Ted Nancy’s sidekick, in order to gain entry to the nursing home, he has to get into drag as a nurse so they can talk to Mrs. Eldredge and eventually rescue her. The authorities are more than happy to take the villain’s word for it that Mrs. Eldredge is in St. Louis. But Nancy, with her father’s and Ted’s support, isn’t willing to take things at face value, and saves the day. Thus proving that behind every successful woman there are at least two good men who know their places.

As part of my research for this entry, I reread the first Nancy Drew, The Secret of the Old Clock. The series, written by more than one author for The Stratemeyer Syndicate, was substantially revised in the 50s and 60s. The same clear spirit of self sufficiency is present in the revised novels though. At one point in The Secret of the Old Clock, Nancy gets a flat tire. “Though Nancy was able to change a tire, she never relished the task. Quickly she took out a spare tire from the rear compartment, found the jack and lug wrench, and went to work.” Competence oozes from her every pore. Sadly, the 21^st Century Nancy Drew is a bit of a throwback. A series of graphic novels published by Simon & Schuster as Nancy Drew, Girl Detective, by Stefan Petrucha and Sho Murase, features anime-ish illustrations and reflects far more adolescent preoccupations with boys and dates. In The Demon of River Heights, a thin and not terribly memorable plot features a Nancy Drew who frequently gets so wrapped up in a case that she forgets important things, like getting gas. In its exhortation to read the new series, the publishers claim the new Nancy is ‘smarter, cooler, quicker, hipper, surer, braver, faster, newer.’ She may be wearing hip huggers, but the ‘girl detective’ of the 21^st Century isn’t really an improvement on the original. The original was just fine, actually.