River Heights, fancy frocks and a gleaming blue roadster — the very words conjure up images of days gone by, when Nancy Drew zipped around town catching crooks and thrilling young readers with her adventures.
More than 75 years later, Nancy’s still at it, solving fictitious crimes and winning fans from college campuses to the Senate floor. Now, one can buy Nancy Drew pajamas, video games and manga comic books, too. The titian-haired sleuth drives a hybrid and chats by cell phone in the newest mysteries — and she hit the silver screen last Friday in “Nancy Drew” the movie.
But Nancy Drew is more than a fictional character, says Drew expert Jennifer Worick, who wrote the pint-size “Nancy Drew’s Guide to Life.” She’s an icon whose appeal crosses generations and builds connections.
“Women feel connected to each other and the story,” says Worick. “I can talk to my mom about things because she read those books as well. It’s a common currency among women of certain ages. [Nancy Drew] kind of transcends trends, in the same way that ‘Little House on the Prairie’ does.”
Aspiring detectives
Artist Susan Leibovitz Steinman was just 8 when she caught her first glimpse of Nancy Drew, a girl who could do anything and go anywhere.
“I was completely addicted to them,” she says. “I got them out of the library, and I read every single one. I wished that I was Nancy Drew.”
Private eye Francie Koehler was 9, and smitten by the teen who flew planes, rode horses and solved crimes. “I lived her adventures vicariously,” she says. “I was her.”
The intrepid sleuth first captured hearts in 1930, when the Stratemeyer Syndicate’s ghostwriters penned Nancy’s first foray, “The Secret of the Old Clock.” But as recently as the 1980s, librarians and scholars still turned up their noses at the character’s pop appeal.
Now, she provides fodder for scholarly books, conferences and even college courses.
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St. Mary’s College professor Janice Doane, for example, taught an English lit course last year that traced the literary roots of modern-day female detectives from Nancy Drew back through the pre-Sherlock Holmes era.
“For a long time, detective fiction was considered beneath the dignity of any serious scholar,” Doane says. “The story goes that Carolyn Heilbrun, a.k.a. Amanda Cross, wrote her [Kate Fansler] detective fiction under a pseudonym until she got tenure at Columbia University, fearful that if the word got out that she wrote detective fiction, she wouldn’t be considered a serious scholar. All of that has changed over the last two decades.”
Scholars seem to have forgiven Nancy Drew for being popular and started delving into both her literary antecedents and her legacy.
Doane herself has been a Drew-ophile since childhood. “I think what everyone else found appealing about Nancy worked for me, too,” she says. “She is an independent, smart young person who had the perfect life — a caring, generous father who gave her a lot of freedom, a housekeeper who didn’t demand much of Nancy except that she show up for the ‘yummy’ meals that were cooked for her, good friends and lots of adventures.”
Late-night reading
Like everyone else, Doane stayed up late, reading by flashlight. “There was just enough scary adventure to keep one turning the pages far into the night when you were supposed to be asleep,” she says. “I am sure that on some level, Nancy’s reliance on her intelligence, her determination and fighting spirit were sources of inspiration for all of us.”
But what surprised Doane now was the reaction of her students, teens and young twentysomethings who loved Nancy Drew every bit as much as she had.
“I was sure that students would roll their eyes at Nancy Drew,” she says, “the dated language, the quaint characters, the hint of racism and condescension about poor people, the hokey villains.”
The students saw all that, of course, but they loved the detective’s combination of femininity, intelligence and spunk.
“Part of the continuing appeal for women is that Nancy doesn’t resort to cold, logical, detached thinking or aggressive violence,” says Doane. “Rather, she seems to vindicate intelligence that is often reliant upon intuition, and she has strong, admirable social skills.”
Those qualities have endeared the character to such high-profile politicos as U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and first lady Laura Bush, who hung a Nancy Drew ornament on the White House Christmas Tree one year.