I'd purchased a boxed set of the first six some time ago, but hadn't gotten around to opening any of them until now.
Now, these aren't parallel passages vis-à-vis plot--that's kind of hard to do, actually, as the plot points don't match up all that well--but they definitely show you how timid and deferential Nancy has become in the rewrite.
After finishing the first one, The Secret of the Old Clock, I was struck by three things: (1) the daring character of Nancy, which seemed far ahead of the way females were seen in 1930, when the novel was first published, (2) how dated many of the references were, such as Nancy being afraid to drive because it looked like it was going to rain--which turned out to be justified rather than quaint, as the road she was traveling was unpaved and turned into a virtually impassable mudstream very quickly, and (3) the demeaning portrayal of the only black character in the book.
As to (3): the black character spoke in dialect, which in itself isn't necessarily racist, I'd suppose, but he was also portrayed as incredibly stupid, and the demeaning way that he was treated by other characters was hard to endure.
(2) and (3) gave me some insight as to why the books had been rewritten in 1959. And apparently there was also a perceived need on the part of the publisher to shorten the books, so as to save on publishing costs. I decided to read the rewritten version to see how it differed.
Enough time had passed that the specific details of the book were no longer vivid in my mind, so the only things that really stood out to me were (1) that unnecessary elements had been added in, (2) that Nancy seemed less decisive than she had in the original, and (3) that the black character had been replaced by a white guy...who was still no mental giant, but who wasn't treated disrespectfully by the other characters. So I was puzzled by the rewrite, as it not only seemed largely unnecessary, but also resulted in a novel of appreciably lesser quality.
But by then I had already moved on to the second novel in its original form, The Hidden Staircase.
This time I started reading the rewrite when I was only halfway through the original. I'd planned to just read them in parallel, but circumstance, interest, and brevity combined to make me finish it in about a day. This time the specifics of both books were fresh in my mind, however, and I had a better feel for what had been done to Nancy courtesy of the rewrite.
For one thing, once again a Black character had been presented in demeaning fashion (heavy dialect, low intellect, subservient position...and surly character to boot) in the original, and had been eliminated in the rewrite.
And for another thing, once again plot elements had been added and subtracted, and both had led to a novel which was less focused, less coherent, and less interesting than the original.
But what really hit me was how Nancy had been softened.
In the original, she was 16, very independent, and pretty much fearless. She also packed a gun.
In the rewrite, she was 18, seemed to need the help of others at every turn, and liked to do girly things: like dressing up in costume and playing at a Colonial style dance...like mooning around about a boy... like having the emotional depth of a petri dish. (At one point she learns that her father has been kidnapped, and shortly thereafter she deals with this by going to a lunch counter and having split pea soup and pie, then reading a story in a detective magazine, then going back to Twin Elms mansion to investigate the ghost story which brought her there. God grant me a daughter who cares more about me than that, right?) And needless to say, there was no gun.
Check out these two excerpts:
Now, these aren't parallel passages vis-à-vis plot--that's kind of hard to do, actually, as the plot points don't match up all that well--but they definitely show you how timid and deferential Nancy has become in the rewrite.
It seems inescapable to me that the original novels were much stronger and much better, both in terms of plot and Nancy Drew's character. But the racism.... I certainly don't want any of that. But is the way to handle a negative depiction of Black characters in an old novel to eliminate them from the story? Seems to me that a better solution would be to write an Introduction which talked frankly about this, both in terms of indicating the historical context (in 1930 the times were so racist that this wasn't even perceived as being wrong) and clearly stating that it was unfair and inaccurate (in terms of depicting Black folks as inferior White folks). Of course, another solution would be to rewrite the Black characters and eliminate the dialect and demeaning portrayal, maybe even give them a bigger role in the novel. I'm not sure how I feel about that, though. It smacks not only of revisionism, but of censorship. I'd lean toward the Enlightened Introduction approach. And there was a little bit of that in the Introduction to the facsimile versions I read...but not nearly enough.
At this point, I'm committed to reading the first six Nancy Drew novels in their original form, and I think I'll go ahead and read the rest of the rewritten versions alongside them. I've also requested a book from the library entitled Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak, which I'm hoping will give me more insight into this whole thing. And I'm going to see if I can get my hands on more of the originals...since the first 34 books (1930 to 1956) were all revised between 1960 and 1975)...but thus far I've been unsuccessful in tracking down anything beyond the first six, and I really don't want to throw a lot of money down into this rabbit hole.
News as it happens.
ADDENDUM, aka As It Happens 1:
Just checked, and the Louisville Free Public Library has the rewritten Nancy Drew books 1 through 56 available in e-version. I haven't gotten around to checking for print versions, but I'm sure they have at least many of them. (Old Man that I am, I often prefer print copies of books.) However...looks like they don't have any of the books in their original form.
And I have been able to find out that there are more facsimile versions of the original books...but they tend to be a bit pricey. For instance...when I looked for the 7th book, The Clue in the Diary, I couldn't find it in any of the libraries I have access to, and when I went to see if it could be bought, I found this:
So that's obviously not going to be happening.
Which meant that I couldn't go past Book 6 on my Nancy Drew Then / Now Project.
Which made me sad.
And then I thought...is there any chance that The Internet Archive could help me out here? I went for a look, and...
Mmm-hmm. That's at https://archive.org/details/clueindiary00keen_0/mode/2up if you need it, by the way.
I didn't really want to look for anything beyond that, as I'd had enough disappointments in the past couple of days to give me a bellyfull, but I girded up my loins and typed in the title of the next book in the series (#8), Nancy's Mysterious Letter. And was disappointed when I saw this:
No cool 1930s style covers. And clearly four of the five book covers were from modern editions. But what about that coverless book? Could it be? I stilled my beating heart and clicked on that one. And?
Check out that publication date. So maybe the Nancy Drew Project is not over.
Huzzah!
Per usual, More News As It Happens.
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