Doubtless, thousands of other women's ears perked up when Sen. Charles Schumer, introducing Sonia Sotomayor at Monday's confirmation hearing, mentioned the Latina jurist's girlhood affection for Nancy Drew books.
The smart, plucky girl-detective was a role model for many women who recognized themselves in Nancy - including Hillary Clinton, Oprah, Sandra Day O'Connor and Laura Bush, to name a few.
Add yours truly to the list. My father introduced to me to Nancy Drew when I was in the fifth grade. He and I sat side by side on the living room couch to read the first book together, taking turns to read aloud. Thus began my long love affair with reading. By the end of the school year, I had completed the entire collection.
Nancy Drew was a natural fit for me. She and I both were raised primarily by our lawyer-fathers. Both of our mothers had died when we were 3. Favorite titles corresponded to my own experience (the early rumblings of empathy?) and home, names such as The Mystery at the Moss-Covered Mansion, The Hidden Staircase, The Secret in the Old Attic. We didn't live in a mansion, but our house was old and spooky.
How clever were the writers of these books, who understood the secret yearnings of little girls in love with mystery and hidden things. Other words sprinkled among the titles were baited fields to the ripe imagination: phantom, ghost, witch, haunted, mysterious, charm. It didn't hurt that Nancy Drew had a spiffy roadster and could throw on a summer frock faster than you could say "hiya."
Nancy could do anything, and a generation of girls who lived vicariously through her heroic adventures assumed they could, too. But Nancy didn't so much inspire as reflect girls' blossoming self-image and the spirit of the times. Thus, girls as diverse as Oprah, Judge Sotomayor and a certain WASP from down South could see themselves in the same absurdly talented, teenage sleuth.
The importance of this identification with an accomplished member of one's own sex can't be overestimated. The same applies to boys as well, but that is a subject for a separate column. (Actually, I wrote a book: Save the Males.)
But when Sonia Sotomayor and I were girls, there were few girl-oriented books and fewer female professional role models. On my weekly visit to the public library, I checked out as many women's biographies as I could find, searching for someone with whom I could identify.
