Super Girl Nancy Drew Girl Detective Essay
Super Girl: Nancy Drew, Girl Detective Essay, Research PaperSuper GirlTurning up, every kid has his/her ain personal graven images, runing anyplace from He-man to Barbie to the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. The adolescent maestro sleuth Nancy Drew is one of these outstanding figures in the eyes of many immature misss.
Her narratives Tell of escapade and enigma, yet they besides seem to happen a topographic point in at that place someplace to reflect the lady-like and proper nature of Miss Drew. Nancy is a paradox, but a paradox that frequently goes unnoticed. The Nancy Drew narratives satisfy two criterions, escapade and domesticity, and show them from both sides without one time bewraying the intuition that they might belie each other.
The first thing that we can instantly detect about Nancy is her penchant in the colour of everything around her, as Bobbie Ann Mason points out ( 74 ) . Mason notes that Nancy owns a bluish auto, wears bluish apparels, has bluish eyes, and even the screen of all the novels about her narratives is bright royal blue ( 74 ) . Our society has tagged the colour blue with a strong masculine undertone. A babe male child is given bluish rattlings, bluish plaything trucks, and bluish covers. This tells us something about Nancy? s personality ; she has an improbably adventuresome attitude, dauntlessly meeting dangerous state of affairss. In The Clue of the Broken Locket, Keene shows one of these cases:Bess was concerned. ? Why, Nancy, you might hold slipped off that roof and been killed! ?Nancy grinned.
? I guess I? m a tough old sleuth, ? she answered. ( 74 )Nancy is, like she said, ? a tough old sleuth, ? and she can make more than keep her ain in a society that is dominated by work forces ; she excels in it with her superior mind and acute experimental powers. As Mason writes, ? Nancy manages the impossible effort of being wholesomely? feminine? ? while besides turn outing herself strong, resourceful, and bold, the most independent of the miss sleuths? ( 74 ) .
The reader of a Nancy Drew book ne’er gets to bury the sugariness of our lady-like heroine who wears her bluish primly and elegantly ( Mason 74 ) .During the 1930? s and 1940? s, the clip period which the original series of Nancy Drew books were written, Nancy? s activities were non ever the socially recognized activities of 16 to eighteen twelvemonth old misss. So when Miss Drew pulled off stunts like the antecedently mentioned roof incident on page two, it was flooring to read that a miss of her age would travel mounting on a roof and endanger her life in such a manner. Then she turns about and acts out the wholesomely feminine outlooks of the clip with easiness, as shown in Keene? s The Clue in the Jewel Box:As the misss sipped their tea and Ate delightful, frosted bars, their hostess radius instead unhappily of present day-to-day life in her native land so changed from the yesteryear. ( 27-28 )Keene conveys this dainty aura that Miss Drew possesses to her readers many times throughout the series of escapades, and the reader normally doesn? t even believe twice approximately demuring this facet of her character. On the other manus, when Nancy endangers her life about deliberately, the reader is shocked at first, but so goes on to except the behaviour as it is presented and acquire caught up in the suspense that necessarily follows.Nancy is besides mature good beyond her 18 old ages, even for the 1930? s.
She has merely a shred of puerility in her organic structure, and it merely shows itself on occasion. Readers respect Nancy? s earnestness. She seldom loses her cool, and when it does go on, she regains control rapidly and easy. Even if she is locked in a room full of spiders, she still acts calmly, unlike about any stereotypically frightened miss. Alternatively of acquiring the? creeps? , she logically returns to happen an issue, demoing that at all times she possesses infinite sums of bravery and composure.Not merely is Nancy perfect, but she possesses the ideal qualities of each age and sex: kid, adolescent, grownup, miss, and male child. She has made her pace into maturity, shown by her improbably high adulthood degree and ability to manage most state of affairss calmly and efficaciously.
She passes into male district swimmingly with her astonishing daring and unafraid attitude, but she ne’er gives up the comfortss that she has because she is female. Harmonizing to Mason:Nancy? s stripling readers may non cognize whether to shave their legs and giggle to pull boys they are detecting, or to fall in the male childs? games and emulate them to win their blessing, but Nancy does both. ( 78 )Her kid comes out in the occasional giggles that she lets slip every one time in a piece, normally while she is dizzy with alleviation after a peculiarly hard instance. Though it is besides non frequently revealed, her adolescent side does come frontward on occasion, but normally merely in the presence of her everlastingly faithful fellow, Ned. In The Secret of the Golden Pavilion, she expresses a rare concern about danger directed toward her fellow:Ned, down on one articulatio genus like a football lineman about to bear down his oppositions, lunged. His shoulder thudded against the masonry.? Oh, Ned, ? Nancy whispered, ? You? ll interrupt a bone.
? ( 172 )These few happenings put her in better position and lend a touch of pragmatism to her character by demoing her moving her existent age.There are some things in these narratives that are subtly more appealing than the auto pursuits, snatchs and burglaries that tend to take topographic point on in adventuresome facet of the narratives. Nancy is invariably at some elegant map, run intoing elegant people or hosting a tea party for her friends. In defence of her tea-party scene, Nancy exploits her feminine trickeries to the fullest, trusting to a great extent on her inherent aptitudes, intuition and appeal. She knows she has them and therefore uses them to her full advantage. If she didn? T, so she wouldn? T be using all of her given powers. Keene displays her usage of these powers good in The Secret in the Old Attic:? Are you ill? ? he asked in a coarse, heavy voice.
Nancy did non desire to reply inquiries. To avoid them she pretended to conk. The act was good timed, for the adult male, frightened, instantly rushed into the hall for aid. The immature investigator smiled. ( 67 )Nancy is to the full cognizant of the utility of her feminine craft, hence makes herself an even stronger sleuth by utilizing it decently. She is non a wholly? ? male-imagined adult female? made up of? semisynthetic beds? ? ( Littler 129 ) ; she is domestic merely to function the demands of herself and those that she cares approximately. At the beginning of most of the narratives, the reader is told of Nancy? s domestic duties:Since the decease of her female parent many old ages before, Nancy had managed the family.
On the whole she had engineered everything so skilfully that father small dreamed of the heavy duty which rested upon her shoulders. ( Lilac Inn 12 )This lays out an image of Miss Drew that immediately conveys her as legal residence. Then the narrative begins, and the reader discovers that she can be everything but that if she so desires, and exchange back at a minutes notice.From the immature misss who foremost read about her initial escapades to those that started with the newer Nancy Drew Files series, she was the ace miss of about every coevals of immature readers, snuff outing the competition with easiness. Nancy Drew, in her entireness, is the image of what most adult females long to be, and what most immature misss want to be? when they grow-up. ? She is both escapade and domesticity. In the function of the miss sleuth, Nancy escapes clip and enjoys the best of all universes. At the vernal age of 18, she gets to be an grownup without giving her right to an escapade.
With all of this, she still maintains her gracious, tactful, capturing and entirely good personality feature of the socially excepted adult females of the clip. Nancy is a merchandise of the adult females? s rights motion of the early 1900? s, when adult females were still thought of as in the supportive function of work forces, but they were get downing to make things by themselves and standing up for what they believe in. Thus developed the popularity of a character like Nancy Drew that is bold, strong, resourceful, independent, and non afraid of anything.
Plants CitedHammett, Dashiell. Red Harvest. New York: Vintage Books, 1929.Keene, Carolyn. The Case of the Broken Locket. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1934.& # 8212 ; . The Mystery at Lilac Inn.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1929.& # 8212 ; . The Secret in the Old Attic. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1944.& # 8212 ; . The Secret of the Golden Pavilion.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946.Littler, Allison. ? Marele Day? s? Cold Hard Bitch? : The Masculinist Imperatives of the Private-Eye Genre. ? The Journal of Narrative Technique vol. 21 ( winter 1991 ) : 121-133.Mason, Bobbie Ann.
? Nancy Drew: The Once and Future Prom Queen. ? Feminism in Women? s Detective Fiction. Ed. Glenwood Irons.
Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1995. 74-92.
