The first Nancy Drew books were action-packed adventure stories ghostwritten by the first woman ever to receive a masters of journalism from the University of Iowa in 1927.
Mildred Wirt Benson (under the pen name “Carolyn Keane”) still remains an unsolved mystery, but it’s obvious that she lived in a different world. Benson practically fell through time, according to Wikipedia, living for 97 years, from 1905 to 2002. And though she didn’t write Password to Larkspur Lane, she is responsible for the The Mystery at Lilac Inn, which is often cited for another unfortunate anachronism in the original Nancy Drew series – racism.
In fact, the book’s first three chapters are all about Nancy trying to find a substitute housekeeper when her maid goes out of town, with Benson writing that there’s a “slovenly colored woman” who Nancy rejects (along with an “Irish woman,” and a “Scotch lassie.”) And in a 1930 Benson book, The Hidden Staircase, she uses almost identical language to describe the villain’s maid – a “fat, slovenly looking colored woman”. When Nancy sneaks in through the cellar window – and accidentally makes a noise – she brings the villain’s maid downstairs to investigate. And then the maid says….
“I done reckons my old ears is playing me false. I hears noises dat sounds like dey was in de basement and dey was only in my haid.”
Yes, Benson writes the maid’s dialogue with the same dialect throughout the book. Later Nancy sneaks into a room in the hallway, and the villain’s pet parrot starts squawking. The maid comes running, and Nancy hides in the closet.
“How comes you so excited to-night, talkbird?” the woman demanded crossly. “You carries on like a fool with all yo’ squawkin’ and speechifyin’.”
And when the cops finally come, the maid holds them off with a shotgun.
To be fair, it was a long time ago. When Applewood Books ultimately republished these original texts in 1991, they added a preface with some soul-searching, acknowledging that “Much has changed” in America. (“The modern reader may be delighted with the warmth and exactness of the language, the wholesome innocence of the characters…but just as well, the modern reader may be extremely uncomfortable with the racial and social stereotypes…”)
No matter how ugly these scenes are, the preface concludes, “These books are part of our heritage. They are a window on our real past.” And all of these books were eventually re-written, though even those changes offer their own cultural clues.
By the 1950s Mary Mason’s simple getaway car had become an elaborate two-man submarine, and jewel thief Mary was transformed into a spy for a massive foreign espionage ring – presumably reflecting anti-communist Cold War tensions.
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