Content area
Full text
"Too Realistic" and "Too Distorted": The Attack on Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy and the Gaze of the Queer Child
Some people are one way and some people are another and that's that.
From Harriet's notebook
In the early 1960s, Louise Fitzhugh submitted to Harper and Row a manuscript consisting of a child's blunt, insightful, and often obnoxious observations. Charlotte Zolotow, then senior editor of the children's division, wrote in her report on the manuscript, "This isn't a book but it could be."(1) Under the guidance of Zolotow and Ursula Nordstrom, Harriet the Spy grew.
The novel's publication in 1964 shocked critics and librarians, who initially praised the book but then attacked it. To a world in which children's literature consisted of fantasies about stuffed rabbits and saccharine fictions of loving families, Harriet barged in with her unfeminine habits, cruel classmates, rich but neglectful parents, shallow neighbors, and worst of all, her loving governess who advises deceit.
The plot does not seem controversial by contemporary standards: eleven-year-old Harriet wants to be a professional writer and spy. Every day, she spies on a selection of people including a rich lady who never gets out of bed, a family that runs a grocery store, a delivery boy, a materialistic couple, and a quiet man who makes birdcages and owns twenty-six cats. Harriet records all she observes -- both on her spy route and in her life -- in a notebook.
Harriet's troubles begin when Ole Golly, her nanny, marries and moves away. Harriet handles the loss well until her classmates find and read her notebook. Hurt by Harriet's uncensored opinions of them, the students conspire to torment her. Harriet counters their attacks but cannot effectively defend herself without allies. Help comes from two sources: a psychiatrist who advises Harriet's parents to secure for her a position on the school paper and a letter from Ole Golly advising Harriet to apologize and lie. "Remember," Ole Golly says, "that writing is to put love in the world, not to use against your friends. But to yourself you must always tell the truth...You are eleven years old and haven't written a thing but notes. Make a story out of some of those notes and send it to me."(2) Harriet takes...