Helen Redfern's weekly column on the fictional females she loves...
Whilst watching the film The Swiss Family Robinson the other day, I was struck at how the woman, ‘mother’, was left out of doing the work and therefore, it seemed to me, left out of having any fun. She was just sitting on the beach watching her husband and three sons, day after day. Being female looked really boring.
I couldn’t help but mutter to my son about women and their portrayal on the TV. I know The Swiss Family Robinson is meant to be about a family about 200 years ago, but I still continued to mutter (though my four year old wasn’t that interested to be honest). Growing up I was drawn to strong heroines which was also reflected in my choice of toy. I didn’t want a pretend ironing board; no, I wanted a train set. Or a magnifying glass so I could look for clues and be an ‘amateur sleuth’ just like this week’s heroine, Nancy Drew.
Nancy Drew was written by one of my writing heroines, Carolyn Keene. Imagine my shock when I discovered only a few days ago, that Carolyn is a pseudonym for the syndicate behind the series. Where have I been?! It has even been mentioned on Trashionista, and I am now reading about books* that have been written on the Nancy Drew phenomenon which will cover far more than I can here. So I am writing this as an innocent fan of both Nancy Drew and Carolyn Keene (who was really, amongst other writers, Mildred Wirt Benson and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams).
But another shock was to hit me. Nancy Drew is over seventy five years old. She was created in 1930 and in those times was portrayed as independent, active, driving at high speeds and carrying a gun – the latter is not something I’m advocating you understand – just a demonstration of how different she was from the era she lived in. A feisty girl was something different but something the girls’ living in the 1930s wanted and was ready for. From the 1940s onwards she became less reckless, and had more respect for adults but still retained that independent and active spirit.
She is neither a tomboy nor into the glamorous side of being a girl. She has her friends George and Bess to fulfil those roles. She falls somewhere in between. She isn’t boastful about her achievements (and in seventy five years she has solved a lot of mysteries for an eighteen year old) “I blushed slightly … I can face down a hardened criminal or recalcitrant witness without batting an eye, but its always a little unnerving when regular people recognise me based on my reputation for amateur sleuthing.”
She has her faults, as her good friend Bess says “…I don’t know how you can be so sharp and organised about solving mysteries and so scatterbrained about everything else…” But this just helps to make a fully rounded, inspirational heroine.
Nancy Drew is brave, confident and daring (so called male traits) and also polite, kind, sensitive and caring (so called female traits). She doesn’t give up on her passions or hobbies for a date with her boyfriend (poor old Ned Nickerson), but is plucky and goes out into the dark, on her own, with her trusty flashlight. She doesn’t wish that she were a boy. She doesn’t sit around looking bored. Instead she shows just how great and exciting it can be to be a girl.
* Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak
Related: Helen's Heroines archives