A Woman You Should Know — Nancy Drew
“. . . an attractive girl of eighteen, was driving home along a country road in her new, dark-blue convertible.” And so begins The Secret of the Old Clock. As a young girl I devoured the series. My daughter has just begun them. I think it is Nancy Drew that awakened in me a desire to become a writer. Nancy Drew is superhero, admittedly a benign superhero. She has all the qualities; she’s smart, attractive, fights crime, and like most superheroes, comes from a privilege background, yet she uses her advantages to fight the good fight.
Nancy Drew was a different kind of girl when she first appeared in print in 1930. Independent, devoted to her father, boyfriend Ned is a minor character (truthfully I don’t much remember him) and has two best friends Bess and George. Bess is the girly girl and scaredy cat, George is the tomboy. But it was Nancy, the adored girl next door who also happened to be an amateur gumshoe that kept girls around the world turning the pages. This girl detective was a problem-solver not a helpless character waiting for a man or an authority to rescue her. Nancy Drew kicked ass and we applauded.
Nancy Drew was someone I could aspire to while knowing I would never be her. I’m not nearly as kind, headstrong, confident or fearless as she is. She is adventurous and that I liked, always ready to put the top down on her roadster and zip to places unknown. She had courage of her convictions which is her most outstanding trait. From her character I drew inspiration. For generations she influenced such diverse women as Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Hilary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey and Diane Sawyer. No dummies in that bunch. No matter what happened to Nancy, no matter how many villains locked her in closets, cellars or the trunks of cars, she prevailed. She used her brains to outsmart everyone. She was put together and dressed spiffy. For many girls discovering Nancy Drew it was a pivotal moment in their lives.
Nancy came on the scene in 1930. Created by a publisher, and prolific writer, by the name of Edward Stratemeyer. He had found success with his Hardy Boys series and wanted a female counterpart. Mr. Stratemeyer was not interested in promoting his authors and had little use for women authors. He wanted maximum content at the lowest possible cost. He hired Mildred Wirt Benson who under Stratemeyer’s brief outlined breathed spunk and intelligence into what could have become a cardboard cutout. Benson made her feisty but a respectful resident of the fictional River Heights. Nancy was also 16 in the original books, on the cusp of leaving her girlhood behind.
Mildred, or Millie, was 24 at the time, just 5 feet and a slim 110 pounds she was a tower of a woman. Before she fully learned to walk she “had no other thought except that I wanted to write.” (New Castle News January 5, 2002) She would go on to write 23 of the 30 original books, all with the pseudonym of Carolyn Keene. She wrote for a fee (roughly $100 a book, sometimes as much as $500, generally $250), never participating in the success or royalties of her heroine. Mildred clearly patterned Nancy after herself, though often she denied it. Benson was very much an adventurer herself. Turning in her work to Stratemeyer Benson would recall being “crushed” by his criticism of her character, of Nancy’s character. Complaining Nancy was “too vivacious.” To both their surprises that book, and the two that quickly followed were huge financial successes.
Stratemeyer died shortly after the debut of the series which became a phenomenon. His two daughters, Harriet and Edna would oversee the series. An early advertisement read “Thrill at the adventures of loveable Nancy Drew” for just 50 cents a book. By 1933 there was a Nancy Drew Detective Club. In 1938 there debuted several Nancy Drew movies. Over the years Nancy’s character changed slightly and Benson stopped writing them, about 1953, disappointed in Stratemeyer’s daughters vision. “Nancy was making her way in life and trying to compete and have fun along the way.” That isn’t what his daughters saw. (Rediscovering Nancy Drew by Carolyn Stewart Dyer) Still Nancy continued to get into scrapes and solve crime, things only boy characters did in juvenile fiction.
Nancy and Mildred believed in freedom and that there was nothing that a male could do that a girl could not. Benson was the first person, not just first female, to earn a master’s degree in journalism in 1927. She wrote for the University of Iowa’s paper, The Daily Iowan. She must have had her own supportive father a la attorney Carson Drew, Nancy’s dad. Her father was actually a doctor. She would marry two newspaper men. She wrote a weekly column for the Toledo Blade, where her second husband George was an editor. She was hired during World War II and lived under the shadow that at any minute her job would end because she had been told “after (the war) ended there would be layoffs and I would be the first one to go.” (Gastonia Gaston Gazette May 30, 2002). Midwestern in values, she was born in 1905 in Iowa and lived in Ohio she had a thirst for travel. She flew planes, drove jeeps through the jungles of Central America, and sailed in a dugout canoe. A lifelong swimmer (well into her 90s) and a golfer at a time when girls did not pursue such things. So entranced with freedom at age 59 she learned to fly, receiving her commercial pilot’s license and got a thrill doing loops in the air.
“Nancy was something of a departure from the juvenile fiction of the day,” Benson explained in 1982. The way Benson created the characters (she was given the name Nancy Drew by Stratemeyer) with “more freedom, more life. She was an ideal that all girls wanted to become — smart, athletic, independent and able to do things on her own.” It would be Nancy’s spirit of taking command of adversity, her ability to escape “scrapes without any help” that made her a superhero to millions of girls around the world. (Greenville Daily Advocate May 3, 1982)
The Nancy Drew series were by no means perfect, there were little, if any people of color, Nancy is white, affluent and blonde. Still the books manage to convey a sense of can-do, they spoke to girls who were expected to grow up and be mere mothers and wives. But Nancy was different. We can’t fault the books for what they didn’t have, but embrace them for what they did do. It is largely believed Benson set out to write Nancy “without domestic burdens and let her battle mostly on her own against the mean, selfish, criminal people.” And this remember was1930. (Rediscovering Nancy Drew) Nancy taught us to be a little kinder and more courageous, infinitely more independent and capable than we might otherwise have been. Like Benson herself Nancy Drew was gusty, politely defiant, and upbeat.
Post Nancy, using her own name Mildred wrote a popular series of books Penny Parker starring a female journalist. Without Benson at the helm of the Nancy Drew books, the character under the watch of Stratemeyer’s daughter Harriet became “more feminine, less independent.” So Benson bucked up her new creation Penny.
Nancy used her smarts to get herself out of scrapes and catch the bad guys. She left a legacy of a whip smart woman whose books have sold over 200 million copies, books that are passed down to the next generation eagerly looking for a woman who does the right thing with courage and conviction.
Mildred, like Nancy was unusual for her day. She golfed until late in life and made trips to the gym. Known for her legendary work ethic, she only ever took a handful of days off in the 58 years she wrote for The Blade. Despite failing eyesight and dampened hearing she continued to work because it “was a way of life” she said. “It’s like getting up and having breakfast.” She admitted writing was hard, but she had been doing it since she was 14. She died in 2002 at age 96 still churning out a monthly column On the Go With Millie Benson, the author of over 130 books. Like Nancy she never let anything stop. And I know one writer who found inspiration from both creator and create.
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