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Mythmaking
Nancy had two mommies
BY CLEA SIMON
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Cute, brave, and perpetually 16 to 18 years old, Nancy Drew epitomizes a certain American ideal. Blonde but never bland, the "girl sleuth" led many of us into danger and out again without relying on masculine strength, and always with style. It’s no wonder that Nancy Drew has lasted 75 years as a childhood favorite. In her literary biography, Melanie Rehak chronicles a character who influenced at least two generations of women (and certainly women mystery authors) in a highly readable, exhaustive book designed to give the perky teen her due. The story unfolded by Rehak makes compelling reading, not least because like some Dickens waif, Nancy had a tumultuous upbringing. Although readers knew her as the creation of Caroline Keene, that WASPy-sounding author was as fictional as the young detective. In reality, Nancy came to life as a marketing ploy. Conceived by Edward Stratemeyer, the entrepreneurial son of German immigrants who had stumbled into a career writing, and then packaging, serial books for children, Nancy was pitched as a follow-up to such heroines as Dorothy Dale, "girl of today," one of the 140 girls’ series that were started between 1900 and 1920. As modernized homes freed families from chores, children were reading, and buying, more books. And though Stratemeyer noted that girls will read boys’ books and added that boys "are notoriously loath to be seen" reading girls’ books (sound familiar?), he saw no reason not to cater to this emerging market. He did so in 1929 by proposing a new series, possibly featuring a heroine named Stella Strong, to his publisher, Grosset & Dunlap. When G&D signed on, he forwarded his sketchy plot outlines to the 24-year-old Mildred Augustine, a recent University of Iowa grad who had sent him some stories. She agreed to write the first three books in four weeks each for $125 per book and no royalties. That payment would never go up, and it would dip to a low of $85 per book during the Depression. But Mildred Augustine (soon Wirt) would go on to write the majority of the 30 Nancy Drew mysteries to come before 1953, when she left the Stratemeyer Syndicate for good. The reason for that split — and the dramatic tension behind Girl Sleuth — lay in the conflicts between Wirt and Stratemeyer’s daughter Harriet. When Edward died, on May 10, 1930, 12 days after Nancy’s debut in The Secret of the Old Clock, his widow and his two daughters, who had been raised to be ladies (that is, not to work), sought to sell the enterprise. But the Depression limited offers, and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams took up the reins. At first reluctant, she grew increasingly involved as Nancy’s popularity blossomed. Writing plot sketches and editing grew to rewriting, and ultimately she took over not only authorship of the series but also its mythology. By the ’60s, Adams was claiming to have written all the books. As ably recounted by Rehak, the struggle between the authors played out as the tomboyish Nancy was edited into demure submission and back out again. This tension mirrored the ebb and flow of 20th-century feminism, and Rehak traces her heroine’s independent spirit to the Suffragists’ battle for the vote. But by also recounting the flapper backlash and Depression conservatism, she paints a scenario recognizable in more recent days. Of course, no movement is ever entirely undone, but these battling forces — as personified in Nancy’s two mothers — shaped a heroine whose struggle remains familiar.
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