There has been talk about how Louise Fitzhugh, the author of Harriet the Spy, was a butch lesbian who went by the nickname "Willie". And how Harriet is, to quote one blogger, "the quintessential baby butch".
But a rereading of the book shows more: she probably has Aspergers. Along with her author.
Authors tend to write what they know. And no-one knowing what Aspergers was back then, if the author had it, she would simply have projected it into her character.
Harriet dresses very masculine by 1960s standards, being totally practical. She carries her notebook with her everywhere she goes, and is a creature of habit and routine, to the point of eating the same food all the time, and refusing to eat any other types of sandwiches. She sneaks through her neighborhood out of curiosity, not malice, and spies on people to observe them and their odd, illogical behaviors, much like an anthropologist studying a foreign culture. And it's clear that regular people truly are a foreign culture to Harriet. She doesn't understand that blunt honesty is not appreciated by others. She is surprised when Ole Golly, on a date where she's given a food that she hates, refuses to acknowledge that she hates it. The simple concept of lying to avoid hurting feelings is something that has to be explicitly taught to Harriet.
Besides that, Harriet takes things people say at face value. One of the more well-known scenes in the book is when a note is being passed around, saying "Harriet smells". Harriet doesn't take it as a meaningless insult, but instead believes it, and heads off to figure just what exactly smells about her (answer: nothing).
Then later, she has severe difficulty apologizing to the kids she'd offended with her candid, blunt thoughts about them IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS in her notebook.
Finally, there's the gender roles. People on the autism spectrum are frequently at least somewhat adrogynous and chafe at society's gender-based expectations (along with other kinds of expectations). Look at Harriet's friends, Sport and Janie. A boy who has to take care of the housework and bills for his single father, and a girl who plays around with chemicals. These are Aspie-created characters. In the 1960s.
In short, this may, even if unintentionally, be the earliest known Aspergers literature.
Possibly the first, and totally unintentional, portrayal of an Aspie
There has been talk about how Louise Fitzhugh, the author of Harriet the Spy, was a butch lesbian who went by the nickname "Willie". And how Harriet is, to quote one blogger, "the quintessential baby butch".
But a rereading of the book shows more: she probably has Aspergers. Along with her author.
Authors tend to write what they know. And no-one knowing what Aspergers was back then, if the author had it, she would simply have projected it into her character.
Harriet dresses very masculine by 1960s standards, being totally practical. She carries her notebook with her everywhere she goes, and is a creature of habit and routine, to the point of eating the same food all the time, and refusing to eat any other types of sandwiches. She sneaks through her neighborhood out of curiosity, not malice, and spies on people to observe them and their odd, illogical behaviors, much like an anthropologist studying a foreign culture. And it's clear that regular people truly are a foreign culture to Harriet. She doesn't understand that blunt honesty is not appreciated by others. She is surprised when Ole Golly, on a date where she's given a food that she hates, refuses to acknowledge that she hates it. The simple concept of lying to avoid hurting feelings is something that has to be explicitly taught to Harriet.
Besides that, Harriet takes things people say at face value. One of the more well-known scenes in the book is when a note is being passed around, saying "Harriet smells". Harriet doesn't take it as a meaningless insult, but instead believes it, and heads off to figure just what exactly smells about her (answer: nothing).
Then later, she has severe difficulty apologizing to the kids she'd offended with her candid, blunt thoughts about them IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS in her notebook.
Finally, there's the gender roles. People on the autism spectrum are frequently at least somewhat adrogynous and chafe at society's gender-based expectations (along with other kinds of expectations). Look at Harriet's friends, Sport and Janie. A boy who has to take care of the housework and bills for his single father, and a girl who plays around with chemicals. These are Aspie-created characters. In the 1960s.
In short, this may, even if unintentionally, be the earliest known Aspergers literature.