My Name is My Password: Revision in
Authorship and Agency in Nancy Drew
The first Nancy Drew mystery was published in 1930. The adolescent
detective series continued publication, and with its success the original, bluespined 34 were revised and republished beginning in 1959 (Dyer and Romalov
239). Located in this repackaging are textual modifications including the erasure
of race and changes in Nancy’s age and relationships. Within the textual
alterations, cover art changes, and illustration revisions are clues to uncovering
what is subversive and pseudo-subversive about stories of a female adolescent
detective. While some feminists dismiss Nancy Drew books based on “uppermiddle-class WASP assumptions,” racism, and classism, many cite Nancy as a
positive influence as a role model in that “she helped make us [feminists]
possible” (Dyer and Romalov 19).
Nancy’s feminist virtues are defined by Dyer and Romalov in their book
Rediscovering Nancy Drew: “Nancy Drew is neither confined to conventional
femininity nor considers herself an exception” (19). However, while I find
subversive messages of adolescent females’ moral authority and agency in the
Nancy Drew books, Nancy as protagonist and the original author, Mildred Wirt
Benson, are both unable to secure that subversive agency. This breakdown is
because their agency of authorship is jeopardized by the structure of the
signature, especially as figured through material revisions. Derrida describes the
signature as the oral presence of the author with the written signature implying
the actually non-presence of the signer (Derrida “Signature” 20). Derrida
describes the structure of the signature as endlessly deferring its authority and
presence to arrive at God in a theological structure. Derrida explains how the
“signature” performs: “It opens f o r itself a line of credit, its own credit, for itself
to itself’ (Derrida “Declarations” 10). This building of imagined authority gives
the signature imagined agency. Foucault interrogates this masking and explains:
“The system of signatures reverses the relation of the visible to the invisible”
(Foucault 26). Within the resemblance of the signature to what it marks is a call
to decipher (Foucault 27). It is by noticing, then, what is the same, recovering
what is lost, and discovering what is added in the revision of Nancy Drew’s The
Clue in the Old Album that I will begin my inquiry into the protagonist Nancy
Drew’s agency and authority focusing on her signature. Retaining this focus on
signatures, I will follow with a discussion concerning the agency and authorship
of Mildred Wirt Benson and the Stratemeyer Syndicate. And, I will conclude
with an abbreviated theory of reading practices.
The Nancy Drew series uses the protagonist’s name as her password,
highlighting the importance of her autonomous individuality and family identity.
For example, in both versions of The Clue in the Old Album, when a motorcycle
policeman motions for Nancy to pull over and shouts, “You know how fast