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| Jack, who wanted to be known as Jill, and Jill, who wanted to be known as Jack, went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Source: @Spectator pic.twitter.com/tDjGbGFi7T |
In their original incarnations, the wildly popular Nancy Drew series of mystery books, first written by a two-woman team (under the pen name Carolyn Keene) in the 1930s, were rife with racism and anti-Semitism. Villains were often shifty-eyed, hook-nosed, or swarthy. A “Negro caretaker” is “lazy.” In response to pressure from their publisher, the authors re-edited the books in the late 1950s. That means that the Nancy Drew stories you or I remember were already minus the obviously offensive passages and plots, scrubbed clean and made PC (well, PC by midcentury standards, anyway).
But some would argue that the excisions also left the stories less meaty overall (certainly the original authors felt that way). Did we miss out? Not just on interesting subplots and adventurous twists, but on the chance to, say, discuss with parents and teachers how times had changed, or why people once felt a certain way about people different from them — or why some still harbor those prejudices?
