Nancy Drew a eugenicist? …

Christian Century, Dec 28, 2004 by Rhoda Kraus, Amy Laura Hall

HAVING READ every Nancy Drew mystery, in print some three-to-four decades ago, I am intrigued by Amy Laura Hall's reference ("Good breeding," Nov. 2) to how eugenics "made its way into everything from Nancy Drew mysteries to the Ladies' Home Journal."

My memory not only fails to retrieve the dialogue between Nancy and/or her father and/or Ned theft would lead to that conclusion, but I fear my youthful perspective on the world at that time would have failed to interpret such dialogue as eugenically inspired.

Could Hall please be more specific about how that mystery series contained eugenic themes?

Rhoda Kraus

Harrisonburg, Va.

Amy Laura Hall replies:

The reference is to The Secret at Shadow Ranch (1931). Nancy begins to suspect that Martha Frank is not the true guardian for Lucy when she compares Frank's "coarse" features with Lucy's "perfect features and her curly golden hair." This is only one of several examples in the book. A key part of the plot is the discordance between Lucy's innate, not-to-be-disguised genetic excellence and the "sharp black eyes" of her supposed guardian.

I certainly did not mean to malign Nancy Drew in general. The details about the story appeared in the initial version of my essay), but were edited out to meet the word limit.