Girl Sleuth

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Book: Girl Sleuth Read Online Free PDF
Author: Melanie Rehak
income set the family well above the average—playing in back lots and in the street was less acceptable than it was for the boys they knew. The outdoor pursuits open to girls fell more along the lines of hopscotch, hide-and-seek, hoops, and jacks. Roller-skating was popular, too, though the long skirts in fashion made it treacherous. Girls were allowed outside by themselves, but not after dark and only with at least a bit more supervision than their brothers. Games and recreation were also critical vehicles for imbuing girls with the idea that they were different from boys. They were given dolls by the score in order to teach them how to be mothers, and one child-rearing book published in 1905, when Harriet was thirteen years old, suggested that mothers throw tea parties with their daughters “so they could ‘acquire niceties of speech and manner.’” As historian Victoria Bissell Brown notes, girls of the era “adopted the assumption that women were—or should be—more moral, less materialistic, more selfless, and less aggressive than men . . . Rare was the girl who emerged from this era’s upbringing with a secure sense of her own independence or an unbridled eagerness to pursue her own interests.”
    Nonetheless, Harriet, or Hattie as she was known, was as much of a tomboy as the times and her Victorian-era parents permitted. This was acceptable, but only up to a certain point—as one girl put it in a 1902 interview, “After the age of thirteen, a lady should not climb trees unless to get away from a dog.” Dark-haired, with a solid build and a long face, Hattie claimed to be “the best one-handed fence vaulter” in the neighborhood in spite of the high collars, dark stockings, and dresses she wore. Though she was not often found trading books or marbles over fences with neighborhood boys, Harriet couldn’t help but come into contact with the opposite sex on a regular basis. A certain amount of interaction with boys was also encouraged, as it provided “the inculcation of respect for and interest in that which was masculine.” Among the boys she was acquainted with was a nearby neighbor, Russell Vroom Adams, whose family kept chickens in the backyard. The Stratemeyers bought both chickens and eggs from him, and, as Harriet recalled, “my sister and I used to tease him unmercifully.” These encounters, mean-spirited though they may have been, somehow formed the beginning of the solid foundation on which Harriet’s marriage to Russell in 1915 would be built.
    The mockery that poor young Russell endured was also a sign of the willful streak Hattie developed early on. It flared up in situations when she felt she was being treated unfairly, beginning when she was still a schoolgirl. Her parents, perhaps thinking that as the eldest she could carry on the family name as her middle name after she married, had not given her a middle name at birth. But Harriet would have none of it. When her grandmother gave her the gift of a locket with her initials engraved on it, the intertwined “H” and “S” looked to her like a dollar sign, which she found embarrassing. Determined to change her lot in life, she took Margaret as her middle name and informed her friends that they were to address all mail to her, from then on, as Harriet Margaret Stratemeyer. But she had neglected to tell her father, and he discovered her plan, presumably when one such-addressed letter arrived at the Stratemeyer home. The result was a cutting lecture on the all-important subject of taking pride in her given name, a lesson that Harriet remembered as long as she lived.
    She repeated the story of her youthful digression so often it became part of her lore, much as Edward’s story about the publication of “Victor Horton’s Idea” had become part of his. A mini-drama composed of one part determination and one part bowing to tradition, it was
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