{"id":4023,"date":"2014-03-20T20:56:19","date_gmt":"2014-03-21T00:56:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/?p=4023"},"modified":"2016-09-12T21:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-13T01:00:00","slug":"harriet-the-spy-at-50","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2014\/03\/20\/harriet-the-spy-at-50\/","title":{"rendered":"Harriet the Spy at 50"},"content":{"rendered":"

I never read Harriet the Spy<\/em> growing up.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure exactly how that happened, although I have some theories. The books I remember reading for fun in the years leading up to adolescence tend to feature boys as protagonists: The Hardy Boys, of course, along with John D. Fitzgerald\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Great Brain<\/em> series, Keith Robertson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Henry Reed<\/em> quartet, and the Danny Dunn novels of Raymond Abrashkin and Jay Williams. Apart from Beverly Cleary\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Ramona and Beezus stories, I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember any \u00e2\u20ac\u0153girl-centric\u00e2\u20ac\u009d pleasure reading from that period; the one Judy Blume book we were assigned in elementary school was Iggie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s House<\/em>. A book about an 11-year-old girl filling her diary with uncensored observations of her classmates and neighbors wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have been on my radar.<\/p>\n

My loss, as it turns out.<\/p>\n

Harriet the Spy<\/em> was the first novel by Louise Fitzhugh, originally published in 1964. Delacorte Press has just released a 50th anniversary edition that features short tribute essays by several authors, including Judy Blume, Lois Lowry, and Gregory Maguire. When it arrived in a batch of other new books, I decided to check out the opening pages on my subway ride home. That opening scene, where Harriet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nanny, Ole Golly, takes her and her best friend Sport out to visit her mother in Far Rockaway, and then Mrs. Golly breaks down when it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for them all to go home? I was not expecting the novel to get that dark, that fast\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and that, as though of you who actually read the novel when you were kids know, is only the beginning.<\/p>\n

I mean, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153PINKY WHITEHEAD HAS NOT CHANGED. PINKY WHITEHEAD WILL NEVER CHANGE\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just bleak.
\n
\nReading Harriet the Spy<\/em> for the first time as an adult, what struck me about the novel was Fitzhugh\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s portrayal of a young child trying to work out a profound emotional pain that she can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fully understand: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A FUNNY LITTLE HOLE IN ME THAT WASN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T THERE BEFORE, LIKE A SPLINTER IN YOUR FINGER, BUT THIS IS SOMEWHERE ABOVE MY STOMACH.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Harriet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s outbursts at her parents and the cook, her vindictive lashing out at her classmates, the rage in her notebook entries—she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clearly acting out her frustration at Ole Golly\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s departure, and the most effective aspect of Fitzhugh\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s telling is that she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t explain or editorialize it. Presenting Harriet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s behavior without commentary makes it more unsettling; in hindsight, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy to see why the novel has disturbed so many adults over the last half-century, and why they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve tried to keep it from young readers.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m hardly breaking new ground by pointing out Harriet is no role model for young readers, at least not in the sense that some stewards of children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s literature would want her to be. Instead of being a figure kids can try to live up to, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one with whom they can identify. Considering what my life was like when I was eight, nine, ten, as my parents were separating and divorcing, I sort of wish I had discovered Harriet the Spy<\/em> then. I suspect that, even with its dark undercurrents, or maybe because of them, it would have been no small comfort.<\/p>\n

I also suspect that having Harriet the Spy<\/em> under my belt would have made a huge difference when it came time to read The Catcher in the Rye<\/em> in ninth grade. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to get too far into this line of thought without having reread Salinger, but Holden Caulfield didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stick with me for very long\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and, right now at least, Harriet feels like a more emotionally authentic character, who finds a more honest way of dealing with the hypocrisy of the world. And when Ole Golly advises Harriet, in her last letter, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re eleven years old which is old enough to get busy at growing up to be the person you want to be,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d you have a real sense that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be able to do it.<\/p>\n

(Yes, I saw there were sequels, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been told they get even bleaker. But no spoilers, please; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll find my own way to those stories eventually!)<\/p>\n

(NOTE: This post originally appeared on Beacon<\/b>.)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I never read Harriet the Spy growing up. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure exactly how that happened, although I have some theories. The books I remember reading for fun in the years leading up to adolescence tend to feature boys as protagonists: The Hardy Boys, of course, along with John D. Fitzgerald\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Great Brain series, Keith […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[965],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4023"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4023"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4024,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4023\/revisions\/4024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}