In which nostalgia drones on forever and ever.
Earlier, lotuseyes and I were chatting and we got to discussing ally random discussion and so this post shall be, well, random.
It started, I think, by my commenting about how I consider it very unjust that most of Noel Streatfeild’s Shoes books are apparently out-of-print now that I’m just discovering them. This led to a discussion of books from the first half of the 20th century, and how a lot of books for young women were about girls giving up adventuring to “grow up” and get married. (Note: This does not apply to the Streatfeild books I’ve read.) This led to discussions of Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and then naturally moved on to Sweet Valley High. I feel this is a totally natural progression! Anyway…
Nancy Drew
I read I think 15 of the Old School books earlier this year and the “giving up adventuring when you get a guy” thing is definitely present as an assumption of what will happen?
In most of the books, Nancy’s father and her boyfriend, Ned, are a presence in her life, but they’re pretty deliberately kept off-page most of the time? Nancy’s frequently on a trip, or Mr. Drew and Ned are out of town on some pretext, or so busy with something else that Nancy barely sees them for an extended period of time. When they do hang around more, they don’t take over the book, but there’s kind of an active attempt to prevent the assumption that they should do everything. And I think it’s pretty notable that Ned is around a lot more in the books that came out in the 80s and 90s, and that those are the books where Nancy needs rescuing more often, and is constantly fretting about her love life and having to prove that she’s a good girlfriend. I actually jumbled those together with the originals for several years after I quit reading them, which turned me off of Nancy Drew until I realized that and decided to ignore the rebooted ones.
Another thing about the original books is that Nancy’s first sidekick is her friend Helen (I think that was her name. These books are at my parents’ place, so I can’t double check.) who gets engaged after a few books. Right after she announces her engagement, she abruptly disappears (She does return later, though not as a main character, and not regularly. I suspect fans wrote in all “OMG WHAT HAPPENED TO HER?”) and is replaced by Bess and George (conveniently named to help us spot the girly-girl one and the tomboy) who are Nancy’s permanent sidekicks. Notably, while both Very Much Like Boys, neither ever, to my knowledge, has a boyfriend for more than a few dates.
This kinda…makes me wince when I think about it, but at the same time, at least there was an active attempt to keep them adventuring, and it was written specifically to have girls adventuring and not taking a backseat to the boys.
Hardy Boys
When I read out of Nancy Drew and had to wait for new ones to come out, I started reading Hardy Boys. I read both the originals and the reboots at the same time, and I think the Fail of the reboots actually stands out way more. In the original books, both Frank and Joe have steady girlfriends who sometimes take a secondary role in their girlfriends. The reboot literally began with Joe’s girlfriend getting fridged so that he could spend the books angsting about The One dying and how He Must Find Her Killers, while still getting to be girl crazy and having various one-book-only love interests. I think that, every once in a while, her brother, who was one of their main sidekicks in both versions, got to sniffle in the background and remind us that he was hurting too. And you know, this was years before I really started noticing gender and racial issues, and I remember even then wondering why her boyfriend’s loss was apparently so much more important thamnher brother’s.
And then there’s Frank’s girlfriend, Callie. Callie does not get fridged, but I know my teen self though that, if anything, Frank treated her with less respect than in the originals, and how she was basically treated as the harping girlfriend. Meanwhile, Frank was always being Tempted by other girls (IIRC, a lot ended up evil or dead, though it may have just been a few) who were never seen again. Like all of Joe’s girls. And…I’m pretty sure that, comparatively, Frank and Joe were actually much better in the originals? Like, I think Joe was probably still girl crazy, but faithful, and I’m pretty sure Callie was presented more positively, and Frank didn’t have wandering eyes?
And I haven’t read either the Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys reboots since I was a teen, so my mind has probably made these things more prominent than they were in a lot of the books, and that they didn’t show up quite as much as I remember? But I’m pretty sure they were still there.
Then there were the “Super Mystery” crossovers where Nancy, Bess and George would meet Frank and Joe and Nacy and Frank would be Perfect For Each Other, but angst because it was Wrong, and they loved their significant others? Meanwhile, it would flipflop each book whether Bess and Joe liked each other or George and Joe liked each other, with no mention of Joe liking the other in the previous book. I mean, in retrospect, those things made perfect marketing sense, but no sense whatsoever in their respective canons.
Note: I consistently try to type “Frank’s boyfriend.”
Sweet Valley High
I actually don’t remember a lot about these, but a lot of general impressions. This was basically a high school soap opera that maintained a status quo that only changed a few times in, like, a hundred books (WHICH I RELIGIOUSLY READ WHEN 10-16 STOP JUDGING ME) about perfect-but-opposite blond twins and their friends and rivals. I’m pretty sure my eyebrows would reach my hairline now over Elizabeth and Jessica’s Perfect Blonde-ness, though. But I’m pretty sure that this is the root of my fondness for stories about sisters, and that Lila is the root of my love for “bitchy” cheerleaders who are typically loyal and Secretly Poor Little Rich Girls, though that type wasn’t fully realized for me until Cordelia Chase, who I took about 3 scenes to be utterly in fictional love with. I think, though, that I didn’t really appreciate Lila until after reading a few dozen of the books. (There’s also Monet St. Croix, of course, but I’ve never read her with the Poor Little Rich Girl feel, and it also took a while for me to really appreciate her, too.) And, of course, I read a bunch of the Sweet Valley Twins books. I outgrew the franchise around when the university stuff started.
But! What prompted SVH was the Legacy books. The Legacy books were historical sagas about the ancestors of the main characters. The first book was about Jessica and Elizabeth’s maternal ancestors, and the second about their paternal ancestors. And then there was a book about Lila’s ancestors, and another about Bruce‘s. Bruce was kinda Lila’s male counterpart, IIRC, only more snobbish and with fewer redeeming qualities for a long time. Anyway, I suspect I’d find them silly now, but as a teen, I thought they were hugely epic, and they probably began my preference for historical fiction. I mean, one of them made my cry, guys! And my whole life, I’ve almost never cried over fiction. But there was Character Death and I think it was right after she was Separated Forever from her True Love (he may have died?) And I think that may have been the first time ever that not only did the lovers not end up together, but they repeatedly didn’t end up together over six generations, much less that one of them died.*
Anyway, I suspect now that the books were partly meant to be educational, because I remember the storylines mostly centering around Important Parts of American History? But mostly, the books were meant to make us love the modern characters more and see them as the payoff of generations of their families’ trials and tribulations, either because they’re the result of generational Love That Cannot Be because their parents are the ones who finally pulled it off, or to make you root for members of the current generation to get together, even if it isn’t really a plot in the book. (If you read all four Legacy books and didn’t at least once think it wouldn’t be so bad if either Jessica or Lila hooked up with Bruce I shall accuse you of lying. Even though Bruce was never worthy, IIRC. I think I did always assume Lila and Bruce would eventually get married or something.)
And you know, it’s kind of silly now and easy to see how the books were really cloying and manipulative, but it was very effective manipulation at the time, and when you’re 14 and you read about six generations of two families repeatedly trying to be together and never being able to be together and not only are the main characters of the series the children of the two who finally worked it out, but they’re named for the set of twins who first came to America, one of whom had the first Love That Cannot Be, it is the most incredibly epic thing ever. And then they did the same thing with supporting characters and their families.
You know, typing all this up, it’s no wonder I love Anna Godberson’s The Luxe books with a passion that exceeds their actual quality. (Mind you, I also think the books are good on their own merit, even beyond the cheesy OMG EPIC HIGH SOCIETY MELODRAMA surface, because there’s also a hefty dose of realism under it, especially later, and I like how not everyone ends up conventionally happy, but unconventionally happier than they would have been otherwise, and the whole “ending of an era” thing.)
And this post has ended up way longer than I meant for it to be and I feel everyone should now chime in with what kid/teen serials they read when wee and even more impressionable.
*I tried to explain “But she died!” to my father, who suggested I stop reading if it was upsetting me, and didn’t understand that I couldn’t. Then he got that same look he got when my brother cried when Julia Roberts died in Steel Magnolias and told my parents to never let him watch something where someone died again. We’d both already been exposed to repeated character death, so his reaction is actually understandable.