About

The Hardy Boys are best known as the series of mysteries solved by America's best brother sleuths: Frank and Joe Hardy. Originally published in 1927 by Grosset & Dunlap, they were born from the mind of Edward Stratemeyer, founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate. By 1929, the first 8 mystery novels had sold over 115,000 copies. By 2023, this number has swelled to over 70 million novels sold as the series has continued to include over 190 volumes. Outside the traditional novel, The Hardy Boys trademark has been attached to 4 video games, 2 comic book series, and 5 different TV series. The most recent series simply called "The Hardy Boys", had its 3rd season premiere in July 2023 on Hulu. Since the inception of this series, the target audience has remained young boys. It  encourages them to be intelligent, resourceful, and loyal. Easily identified with the triumph of good over evil, The Hardy Boys embody wish fulfillment and the promotion of American ideals of boyhood.

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The purpose of this project is to explore and highlight the racial profiling of characters in The Hardy Boys and the relation of these stereotypes to their roles within Bayport’s community. The focus will be on the two Hardy boys and their “chums” as readers will be joining them across multiple mysteries.

 

The nature of the study as a form of distant reading dictates a relatively simple approach of searching through each of the first 58 novels and documenting appearances of specific characters and the descriptions surrounding them. This was accomplished by using the software Voyant Tools created by Stefan Sinclair of McGill University and Geoffrey Rock of the University of Alberta to determine the frequency of specific characters.  This application was created to "enhance reading through lightweight text analytics such as word frequency lists, frequency distribution plots, and KWIC displays." From there I asked the tool to identify 5 words before and after each of the Hardy's groups' names to determine what descriptions were given to these characters so I could compare and contrast the trends of the main cast against the minor characters as critiqued by Meredith Wood, Mark Connelly, and Paul Deane. 

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Existing literature that covers the racial issues present in these children's novels  extends from published books, mainstream news sources such as the Atlantic and WSJ, to several academic journals . Even before social media and the internet, the racist language was well known publicly, to the point that in 1959 the first 38 novels were revised to remove the harsh racial language. Notably, none of the reoccurring chums were ever written as people of color. Tony Prito and Phil Cohen are the minority representatives in the group, being Italian and Jewish respectively. Only in later novels do one-off friends or allies appear characterized as a person of color.

 

 

 

 

Mark Connelly in 2012 wrote an account of the original 58 novels in his book The Hardy Boys Mysteries: A Cultural and Literary History. With chapters concerning race, class, and gender, Connelly offers historical context behind some of the chums nationalities and how they broke barriers as minority figures, but also harshly criticizing the stereotypes prevalent throughout the series. Identified as one of the most negative depictions of African Americans in The Hardy Boys, #14 The Hidden Harbor Mystery (1935) contains the following scene where a black father is speaking to his son:

The old man sniffed contemptuously.

"Wastin' yo' time when yo' talks to him. Evah since he's been up No'th with Massa Blackstone he thinks he's smart. Fine new clothes, big diamon' ring, an' he swaggers 'roun' heah lak he own de place."

Jones eyed his son with disfavor. It was evident that he was worried over Luke's apparent propserity, as well as his unseemly conduct since coming from up North [141-142].

Connelly notes how this reminiscent of many complaints from the Jim Crow South, that it was shameful for a black man to lose his attitude of a respectful servant that "knows his place". That his son was to "restive" or "uppidity" from being in the North (Connelly, 2012, pg. 116).

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Meredith Wood's essay "Footprints from the Past: Passing Racial Stereotypes in the Hardy Boys", condemns not only the hatred against Asians, but also the transphobic implications of a particular scene from Footprints Under the Window:

Fearful that Fong or his companions are still nearby, they plan to disguise Wat -  as a woman. Says Frank, "We can dress him up as a girl. He's just the type" [106].

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But what "type" is this? Frank believes that Wat can pass as female. But to pass to whom? Despite the fact that Wat needs to be secreted from Louie Fong - another Asian man - the brothers force Wat to dress as a woman. Clearly, the boys think that white people will be fooled by the disguise because as an Asian male, Wat is portrayed as physically small, and this makes him appear feminine to the brothers. If young readers are still unsure of the difference between Asian American and white men, the narrator makes it clear. Wat is "slight of build with a sallow, effeminate face" (93).

By disguising Wat as woman, the Hardy brothers assert themselves as the superior heterosexual, for they are too muscular and too white to pass for a woman. This scene and disguise establish the foreground of the roles of the white heterosexual and the feminine.

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Titled "Black Characters in Children's Fiction Series Since 1968", Paul Deane from the Department of English at Bentley College points to how the rewrite of The Hidden Harbor Mystery wipes out nearly all traces of race from the villains and side characters except for it to describe "a minute and unimportant role is ascribed to a 'sly looking negro boy.'" So while the publisher went to great lengths to revise the original novel, it retains instances of minorities occupying servant-like roles with less than desirable descriptions while Frank and Joe retain their white superiority.

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