The Spy and the Poet: Young Girls as Writers in Harriet the Spy and Anastasia Krupnik

The Spy and the Poet: Young Girls as Writers in Harriet the Spy and Anastasia Krupnik Writers of children's fiction during the 1960s and 1970s such as Louise Fitzhugh and Lois Lowry created female characters who would have been destined for reform in earlier works of fiction. John Rowe Townsend sees these contemporary females as "highlyidiosyncratic " characters "whose personalities have been allowed by their authors to develop without too much regard for what constitutes a proper example" (277). Harriet Welsch (Harriet the Spy 1964) and Anastasia Krupnik (Anastasia Krupnik 1979) exhibit their sometimes "eccentric" characteristics in their writings: Harriet's "spy" notebooks and Anastasia's "important things" notebook. Writing, an occupation which had to be "tamed" out of earlier characters, such as Jo March (Little Women), helps these contemporary females order their worlds. Jo March is a prime example of a young woman who must be "reformed" before she can become a proper lady. Jo's first love is her writing, but this artistic ability is ultimately "tamed to laud domestic and moral virtues" (Clark 81). Cadogan and Craig explain the taming process which was "accepted by writers and readers of nineteenth-century girls' fiction" (54): "Wild" girls were tamed by 1) friends and family, 2) religion, or 3) falling in love. And for these girls writing was not "considered a suitably modest profession" (55). However, for Harriet and Anastasia, writing is a way of ordering their lives~a way that is ultimately encouraged by their parents and by society. Beverly Lyon Clark states that "seemly feminine behavior" (83) for nineteenth-century females required self-control, with aspirations towards "domesticity and moral goodness" (82) and away from the self-expression of art and fiction. Jo March must give up her "castle in the air" of being a famous writer and "outgrow it, like her strong language and her tomboy exuberance" (84). Unlike the "devaluation of writing" (90) that occurs in Alcott's book, writing skills are beneficial in Fitzhugh's and Lowry's works. Harriet's "spy" notebooks and Anastasia's "love-hate" lists are forms of self-expression, preliminary writing exercises which will continue to help them discover other interests and talents. Harriet M. Welsch (the middle initial is one she gave herself) is at the start of Fitzhugh's book a "neat compulsive, upper middle class, urban child" (Bosmajian 72) who is often "inelastic" in her habits. Her daily routine-tomato sandwiches for lunch, special "spy" clothes, cake at precisely 3:40 every afternoon, and reading under the covers with a flashlight until Ole Golly tells her to stop-gives her a "tenuous connectiveness" (76) to the world around her. Spying on other people is the real way Harriet connects with her world. It is an activity she does alone; Sport and Janie, her best friends, are not allowed to go along, and her parents are not even aware that she is spying and recording everything she sees and hears. Harriet fills fifteen green spy notebooks with her insights to the fragments of people's lives she glimpses. When asked why she writes about strangers she observes, Harriet responds, "Because I've seen them and I want to remember them" (11). Ole Golly encourages Harriet's writing and tells her that description "is good for the soul" (32). 200 Harriet takes her seriously. She writes about her teachers, mostly unflattering remarks: "I think Miss Elson is one of those people you don't bother to think about twice" (33); "Miss Whitehead has buck teeth, thin hair, feet like skis, and a very long hanging stomach" (34). And even about her best friends: "Sometimes I can't stand Sport. ... He's like a little old woman" (182). However, Harriet does not use her notebook merely for reports about people on her spy route or to record brutally honest descriptions of teachers and friends. She also tries to figure out people closer to home: her parents and Ole Golly. For instance, when she finds out that Ole Golly has a boyfriend, Harriet writes: "Is everybody a different person when they are with somebody else? Ole Golly has never been this way" (97). At one point, Harriet's mother says...