Harriet the Spy
| File:Harriet the Spy.jpg | |
| Author | Louise Fitzhugh |
|---|---|
| Sprache | Englisch |
| Genre | Children's, Spy novel |
| Publisher | Harper & Row |
Publication date | 1964 |
| Publication place | Vereinigte Staaten |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 298 pp |
| ISBN | NA Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character |
Harriet the Spy is a novel for children by Louise Fitzhugh, published in 1964. It won the Sequoyah Book Award.
It was made into a 1996 film of the same name for Nickelodeon starring Michelle Trachtenberg. It was the first film made by Nickelodeon Movies.
Plot summary
Template:Spoiler Harriet M. Welsch is an outgoing 11-year-old girl aspiring to be a writer. Harriet lives a privileged life on the Upper East Side, something she reflects on throughout the book. As practice for her career, she writes everything she encounters and thinks down in a notebook, and she watches other people. Her nurse, Catherine Golly (known to Harriet as Ole Golly), has encouraged this.
Harriet's observations cover her family, care taker, school, friends and spy route. After school, she goes to observe a set of people who have no idea of her existence. They include Harrison Withers, a bachelor with 26 cats; the Robinsons, a very wealthy but boring couple; Mrs. Agatha K. Plumber, an indolent divorcee; an Italian immigrant family that runs a grocery store, the Dei Santis; and the Dei Santis´ deliveryman, Little Joe Curry, who has a habit of stealing food from the grocery for snacks and to give to a gang of hungry children who visit him regularly. Harriet is a very good spy, having never been caught until one point in the novel when Mrs. Plumber's maid, Nadine, catches her spying in the Plumber house's old dumbwaiter.
Harriet's best friend is Simon "Sport" Rocque, and she is also friends with Janie Gibbs and Beth Ellen Hansen. (Sport and Beth Ellen eventually starred in their own novels by Fitzhugh.) Janie is interested in science, particularly chemistry, and is quite distrustful of her parents, especially her mother, who is trying to turn her into a "proper lady" by sending her to dancing school. Sport is a very mature boy who takes care of his father and himself by cooking, cleaning, and managing the family's finances (Sport's mother abandoned him and his father and apparently has all the money). The reason this has happened is that his father, as an author, has no regular work and is often oblivious to his family's troubles. Beth Ellen is a beautiful, but very shy and timid, girl from a rich family. To tell the truth, Harriet finds Beth Ellen somewhat boring (and Janie outright despises her).
Among the other students in Harriet's class at school include rich and popular class bully and perpetual teacher's pet, Marion Hawthorne (described by Harriet in her notebook as a potential ("lady Hitler"); Marion's second-in-command, Rachel Hennessey; the repulsive Pinky Whitehead; Laura Peters, who has a habit of smiling at everyone all the time; the somewhat pudgy Carrie Andrews, whose father is a doctor; and a new student, the Boy with Purple Socks, who is so dull no one can remember his real name (Peter Matthews).
One evening, Ole Golly and her boyfriend, George Waldenstein, takes Harriet out of the house, to see a movie without Harriet's parents´ permission. When her parents find out, they fire Ole Golly -who then stuns everyone by admitting that she would have soon left anyway, since she believes Harriet is at the age where she no longer needs a nurse and since George has proposed to her. Ole Golly shortly thereafter marries her boyfriend and moves to Montreal, Quebec.
One day during a game of tag, Harriet loses her notebook and is mortified when her friends find it and Janie proceeds to read all of Harriet's secret thoughts to everyone. The children find some of what she wrote hurtful, such as comparing Sport to "a little old woman" for his continual worrying about his father, or "WHO DOES JANIE GIBBS THINK SHE'S KIDDING? DOES SHE REALLY THINK SHE COULD EVER BE A SCIENTIST?" Janie and Sport join the rest of the class in forming the "Spy Catcher Club," of which Marion Hawthorne (naturally) declares herself president. The club meets regularly to think up ways to make Harriet's life miserable, including stealing her lunch (tomato sandwiches with mayonnaise), passing nasty notes about her in class, and having Rachel spill ink all over her and disguise it as an accident.
The people on Harriet's spy route fare little better. The bachelor's cats are taken from him and he becomes depressed, the wealthy but boring couple receives a hideous sculpture to show off, the indolent woman reacts hysterically to her doctor's announcement that she must be confined to her bed for the rest of her life, and the immigrant family's truck is ruined by their lazy son.At that time harriet is caught.
Hurt and utterly lonely, Harriet resorts to childish tantrums and resolves to get back at her former friends by thinking up a special punishment for each one. She gets into trouble when she carries out some of her plans (including cutting off a chunk of Laura's hair, hiding a frog in Marion's desk, and teasing Rachel about her estranged father). Harriet tries to resume her friendship with Sport and Janie as if nothing ever happened, but they both reject her. On top of that, Harriet is spending all her time in class writing in her notebook and is not doing any schoolwork, and her grades are suffering. Harriet's parents confiscate her notebook, give her a spanking, and make her see a psychologist. The psychologist tells her parents that she needs encouragement from Ole Golly and the ability to write in school. Golly writes to Harriet, telling her that if anyone ever reads her notebook, "You have to do two things, and you don't like either one of them. 1. You have to apologize. 2. You have to lie. Otherwise you are going to lose a friend."
Meanwhile, dissent is rippling through the "Spy Catcher Club": Marion and Rachel (at whose house the club meets) are calling all the shots, and Sport and Janie eventually get tired of being bossed around by Marion and quit the club, inspiring most of their other classmates to do the same. Eventually all that's left of the club is Marion, Rachel, Carrie, and Laura, playing bridge and Mahjong in the afternoons, a caricature of the stereotypical suburban "ladies´ club" of the 1950's. Harriet, spying on them, reflects with brief pity that they will probably do exactly that for the rest of their lives.
Harriet's parents speak with her teacher, and she is appointed editor of the class newspaper (replacing Marion Hawthorne). The newspaper -featuring some stories about the people on Harriet's spy route, as well as juicy gossip about her schoolmates´ parents (which Harriet has overheard from her own parents) - becomes an instant success. Things improve for those on her spy route as well: Harrison Withers obtains a new kitten, the Robinsons manage to find some people to look at their hideous sculpture, Mrs. Plumber, having received notice from her doctor that she really did not have to stay in bed, becomes full of bountiful activity, and the Dei Santis´ "lazy" son becomes a very studious worker after he obtains a job he likes as a trucker.
After some time as the editor, Harriet makes amends to her former friends through the paper, offering a printed retraction and saying that the statements in her notebook "WERE UNFAIR STATEMENTS AND BESIDES WERE LIES." Sport and Janie forgive her, and all is well again.
Characters
Harriet M. Welsch: She is the protagonist of the book. Harriet strives to be a spy, and her habit is to write in her notebook, which always happens to be a green composition book and her fifteenth one since she started writing when she was eight years old. She seems to know many things by going around and spying. The M in her name stands for Middle. Harriet also greatly loves her caretaker, Ole Golly, and is willing to act mysteriously or hazardously for anything.
Simon "Sport" Rocque: He is one of Harriet's best friends. Since Sport's father is a novelist, he has to manage financial accounts and keep house. He loves to play sports and has to leave for another school in seventh grade. He is featured in the book "Sport."
Janie Gibbs: Janie is the other of Harriet's best friends. She plans to blow up the world someday, and calls her family The Rat Pack. She sometimes does experiments just to bug them.
Beth Ellen Hansen: Beth Ellen is an extremely shy girl and is easily manipulated at the beginning of the series. Harriet had observed, "She always looks like she might cry." She was the prettiest girl in their class, and was considerably rich. Toward the end of the book, she stands up to Marion and Rachel and storms off.
Ole Golly Waldstein: Ole Golly is Harriet's caretaker an confidante. She is immensely loved by Harriet and Sport, and she frequently quotes out of books. Toward the middle of the series, she moves away with her new husband, George Waldenstein.
Marion Hawthorne: Marion is like a cruel leader, and pushes her way through by force. She had forced Beth Ellen to second her motion of becoming officer. It so happened that she or Rachel became officer every year. Marion is extremely afraid of frogs.
Rachel Hennessey: Rachel is Marion's best friend, or hanger-on. They were inseparable, and Rachel always mimicked what Marion did. She is quite sensitive about matters about her father, and her mother is well-known as a prolific baker of cakes.
Mrs. Agatha K. Plumber: She is one of the ladies on Harriet's spy route. She is divorced, and lives with her maid, Nadine. She sticks to her bed, spending her day chatting on the phone and living off of her ex-husband's money. But later on, she starts to get out of bed and go to parties.
Carrie Andrews: Carrie is one of Marion's supporters. Once, Harriet had pinched her expertly, and she had hit Marion in retaliation, thinking it was her. She, like Rachel, is also a bit sensitive about her father.
Pinky Whitehead: Pinky is at first thought to be a loser, and hated by mostly everyone in disgust. But he speaks his mind, and speaks out against Marion and Rachel.
Differences between the book and the movie version
- Rachel Hennessy, a white character originally (drawn in the book as having dark hair and freckles and wearing glasses), was portrayed as an Asian.
- Among the episodes in the novel cut from the movie version included Ole Golly taking Harriet and Sport to meet her reclusive (and presumably mentally ill) mother in Chapter One, and a brief subplot about Harriet and Janie rebelling against their mothers' decisions to send them to dance school to make them more "ladylike." It can be assumed that the "dance school" storyline was cut because of the many changes in social conventions since the novel was first published.
- In the book, Ole Golly leaves the Welsch household to marry Mr. Waldenstein and move to Montreal. In the movie, Ole Golly merely decides it's time to move on, and for Harriet to be more independent. Later in the movie, Ole Golly returns for a visit to talk to Harriet about white lies and apologies, rather than writing to her.
- A subplot was added to the movie, involving the use of pen ink "foot tattoos" as a symbol of Harriet, Sport and Janie's friendship. When Harriet lost her friends, she was later seen furiously erasing her foot tattoo. When she regained them later in the movie, they were seen exchanging foot tattoos again.
- Little Joe Curry, the deliveryman for the Dei Santis' grocery on Harriet's spy route, disappeared from the movie version, but his trademark personality traits were given to Ole Golly's beau, Mr. Waldenstein. In the movie, Mr. Waldenstein is a delivery boy for the Hong Fat food emporium and passes food through a window to a group of hungry children.
- In the movie, Janie was played by an African-American actress, Vanessa Lee Chester; in the book, Janie was a Caucasian girl with blonde hair and freckles.
- In the book, the immigrant family on Harriet's spy route, the Dei Santis, are Italian-American. In the movie, the family is Chinese-American, and the family name is changed from Dei Santi to Hong Fat (although the subplot about the lazy son wanting to take the truck remained intact).
Louise Fitzhugh wrote two sequels, The Long Secret and the posthumously published Sport. The book has also elicited two spin-off novels, Harriet Spies Again by Helen Ericson (2002), winner of a 2003 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery, and Harriet the Spy, Double Agent by Maya Gold (2005).
Live action series
In 2004-9-21, Mainframe Entertainment announced Protocol Entertainment will produce 22 half-hour episodes, with 2 Friends Entertainment acting as Executive Producers and US sales agent and Mainframe retaining international distribution rights. Rick Mischel, CEO of Mainframe, will be engaged by Protocol as an executive producer on the project.[1]
Trivia
 | This article contains a list of miscellaneous information. |
- One of Harrison Withers's cats is named Marijane, presumably for Fitzhugh's friend Marijane Meaker, who wrote under the pen name M. E. Kerr.
