Eleven-year-old Harriet M. Welsch is a precocious only child and a ruthlessly observant eleven-year-old who lives in Manhattan and is morbidly fascinated by the lives of others. Through her daily "spy routes" she escapes the drudgery of school and "kiddie stuff" by spying on anyone she deems intriguing. She carries around her notebook like a security blanket, writing down painstakingly detailed observations about her peers, neighbors, and even strangers, and will go to great lengths to get dirt on people, including hiding in the dumbwaiter of the rich and sedentary Agatha K. Plumber and staking out her territory near an Italian grocery store so she can eavesdrop on the Dei Santis' family drama. Occassionally, she shares little bits of information with Ole Golly, her nanny whom she is closer to than her own parents, but no one else, including her best friends Janie and Sport.
Characters
In Harriet The Spy, Louise Fitzhugh creates a world of colorful and memorable characters in addition to Harriet M. Welsch herself. Janie Gibbs, Harriet's close friend, is a budding mad scientist who likes to mix potentially dangerous chemicals in her room, or "laboratory." Sport Rocque, a shy boy with an absent mother whose father is a struggling writer,cooks for the both of them and manages the bills without any help. Ole Golly is the erudite nanny who treats Harriet like an intellectual equal rather than speaking down to her like many adults do, and Harrison Withers, a neighbor, builds bird cages and keeps twenty-six cats which he has to hide from the Board of Health.
Conflicts and Resolution in Harriet The Spy
When Ole Golly marries Mr. Waldenstein, a stout and once wealthy man who is now a delivery boy, and leaves the Welsch household, Harriet, although fairly stoic, grieves for her in her own way, and little by little, her world starts to unravel. Although her notebook entries are often humorous and eerily accurate, Harriet is a tough critic, and when her classmates accidentally get a hold of her notebook and read the less-than flatting observations about themselves, they are hurt and out for revenge.
They alienate Harriet, steal her lunch, and spill ink all over her, and aren't finished yet. As a result of her classmates' cruel behavior, Harriet goes through a period of depression and loneliness and commits minor acts of violence as a form of rebellion so she doesn't have to go back to school and face her peers. After awhile, she decides to face her adversaries and exact revenge of her own. Her classmates, determined to give Harriet her comeuppance, start the Spy Catcher Club, which even her former best friends Janie and Sport have joined. But when prissy Marion Hawthorne makes herself the club president, politics ensue, and many of the members, unhappy with the thought of a dictatorship, stand up for themselves and leave the club.
Harriet, who has ceased thinking up ways to get even with her classmates and whose parents have been taking her to see a therapist, is still writing in her notebook incessantly, but after coming to terms with her own flaws, she has become humbled and is able to make peace with Sport and Janie.
Major Themes
Through Harriet's keen and witty journal entries, Fitzhugh focuses primarily on class differences, criticizing the rich for being boring,superficial, and out of touch with reality, and portraying the poorer characters as having more depth and interesting lives.
Agatha K. Plumber, who does nothing but lay in her luxurious bed all day talking on the phone, and the Robinsons, who have nothing better to talk about than their house, garden, and other material possessions are good caricatures of the moneyed and ineffectual people who are too self-absorbed to really see what is going on around them. The Robinsons even have a hideous sculpture of a giant baby delivered to their house, which they claim to be "high art."
Even the presumably uneducated delivery man scoffs at their tacky taste. Harriet's mother is also characterized as being out of touch with her own child, although Harriet's father is witty and somewhat foul-mouthed and seems to refute a lot of what Harriet's mother says such as her insistence that Harriet attend dancing school.
Characters such as Harrison Withers and the Dei Santis are sympathized with, and Harriet finds spying on them irresistible, as she visits them quite often. At one point after visiting her friend Sport's noisy and messy apartment, she thinks about her quiet house, with her parents and servants, and writes a notebook entry contemplating what makes someone rich and poor.
As somewhat common in young adult novels, Fitzhugh also treats many of the adults, including Harriet, Janie's mother, and Harriet's teachers being as oblivious to what's really going on in their child's and students' lives. Ole Golly and Mr. Waldenstein, who really understand and connect with Harriet are the exceptions to the silly-and-boring adult rule, but they get married and move away leaving Harriet to figure out the world on her own.
Dryly funny and complete with lively illustrations that Fitzhugh drew herself, Harriet the Spy is a timeless gem of a novel that is not limited to young adults alone.
Fitzhugh, Louise. Harriet The Spy, Dell Yearling 1964, ISBN 0-440-41679-5
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