Comparing and Contrasting
This week I read the first Nancy Drew book The Secret of the Old Clock in the original text and then the revised text. If you don’t know, The Old Clock was orginally written by Mildred Writ Benson in 1930 under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. Writ Benson was one of several ghostwriters that the Stratemeyer Syndicate hired to write several children’s series. Nancy Drew was the longest running and most popular of these series. Then, in 1959, Harriet Stratemeyer revised the text of the first 34 Nancy Drew books. It was ostensibly to update the language, specifically, the racial stereotypes, which the publishers had been receiving complaints about, but the revisions also succeeded in shortening the books (making them cheaper to publish) and altering the Nancy Drew character.
In the original book Nancy is 16 and fiercely independent. In the revised text, Nancy is 18 (in 1930 most girls did not go to school past age 16, but by the 1950s kids attended school until age 18, so her age had to be changed to explain why she never went to school) and is much more dependent. Not only on her father, but also on her maid Hannah Gruen who was a mere servant in the original text, but more of a surrogate mother in the revised. The revised text also makes Nancy more, well to be blunt, nice.
In the original text Nancy’s main reason for getting involved in the mystery (what happened to the will of a wealthy old man, Josiah Crowley, who recently died) is that she dislikes the family set to gain the entire inheritance, the Tophams. Specifically, the Topham daughters who Nancy used to go to school with. Through searching for the will, Nancy becomes friends with Crowley’s former neighbors, Allie and Grace, orphaned sisters who live on a small farm outside of town, and is spurred on by her desire to help them.
In the revised text, a young girl names Judy is created who Nancy saves after seeing her almost hit by a truck. Through Judy, Nancy meets Judy’s aunts, the Turner sisters, who are Crowley’s cousins (only minor characters in the original book) and becomes interested in finding Crowley’s will in order to help them get the money they need to raise Judy.
Nancy isn’t the only one who goes through a change in the revision, in the original text Allie strives to improve her chicken farm in order to help support her and Grace. In the revised book, Allie hopes to use the inheritance to pay for voice lessons.
Also, the revisions didn’t so much remove racial stereotypes as remove all non-white characters. The original text does have a pretty painful portrayal of a black caretaker, but the revised text doesn’t improve that portrayal, just makes the character white instead of black.
The revised text does have some improvements. Shortening the book also made the story move much faster. Still I liked the original much more then the revised and would recommend finding them if you can.
Luckily, Applewood Books released a reprint of the original text of the first 21 books. They can be found on ebay, Amazon and alibris.
