Harriet the Spy

“If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day.”

Ole Golly quotes Dostoevsky in this statement. It is an injunction for Harriet to learn how to feel as well as see. Love and empathy lead to understanding. At this stage of the story, Harriet merely observes and records facts.

“OLE GOLLY SAYS THERE IS AS MANY WAYS TO LIVE AS THERE ARE PEOPLE ON THE EARTH AND I SHOULDN’T GO ROUND WITH BLINDERS BUT SHOULD SEE EVERY WAY I CAN. THEN I’LL KNOW WHAT WAY I WANT TO LIVE AND NOT JUST LIVE LIKE MY FAMILY.”

The irony of this statement is that seeing doesn’t automatically lead to understanding. Harriet does have blinders on. She sees without compassion. Her conclusions about others are limited to her own narrow, judgmental perspective.

“She looked around, pleased as always by the order, the efficiency of it. She always picked up everything immediately, not because anyone nagged at her—no one ever had—but because it was her room and she liked to have it just so. Harriet was just so about a lot of things.”

The neatness of Harriet’s room parallels the tidiness of her mind. She likes to categorize people in the same way that she sorts her belongings. Everything has its proper place. However, Harriet will learn that people defy classification and cannot be placed into tidy categories.

“It was there that she had first begun to hear what peculiar things people say to each other. She liked to sit at the counter with her egg cream and let the voices from the tables behind her float over her head.”

Harriet is describing the game she plays at the diner while she sips her egg cream. She correctly identifies the appearance of a speaker from their vocal qualities alone. This is another example of her focus on categorization. While Harriet is clever in identifying appearances, she has no understanding of what others feel. 

“When they were alone they never said a word to each other. Harriet liked to watch them when they had company, because it made her laugh to see them showing off their house. Because the Robinsons had only one problem. They thought they were perfect.”

Harriet is describing the Robinsons in terms that could easily apply to her. She loves to show off her intellect by spying on others. She also thinks her way of doing things is perfect. Throughout much of the novel, Harriet demonstrates no insight into her own behavior but is a cruel judge of others.

“HE LOVES TO DO THAT. IS THIS WHAT OLE GOLLY MEANS? SHE SAYS PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEIR WORK LOVE LIFE. DO SOME PEOPLE HATE LIFE? ANYWAY I WOULDN’T MIND LIVING LIKE HARRISON WITHERS BECAUSE HE LOOKS HAPPY.”

Harriet is watching an old man at work building birdcages. She notes his euphoria from the expression on his face. However, her words indicate that love and the workings of the heart remain a complete mystery to her. She envies the fact that Withers “looks” happy.

“There was something that made her feel ridiculous when she shouted at Ole Golly. Maybe because she never got the feeling with Ole Golly that she did with her parents that they never heard anything.”

Ole Golly manages to influence Harriet because she actually listens to the girl. She knows what makes her tick. Harriet’s detached relationship with the other adults in her life leaves her feeling isolated and misunderstood. That isolation will intensify further when her classmates get her notebook. 

“THERE IS MORE TO THIS THING OF LOVE THAN MEETS THE EYE. I AM GOING TO HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THIS A GREAT DEAL BUT I DON’T THINK IT WILL GET ME ANYWHERE. I THINK MAYBE THEY’RE ALL RIGHT WHEN THEY SAY THERE ARE SOME THINGS I WON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT UNTIL I’M OLDER.”

Harriet’s words are unintentionally quite accurate when she says that something about love doesn’t meet the eye. Love is an emotion and is invisible to the eye. As a spy, Harriet uses her eyes to categorize the world, but her powers of observation are useless when confronted with an intangible emotion.

“‘I told her that if she wanted to come with me and start over she could. But she didn’t.’ A harshness crept into his voice. ‘She didn’t. Well, that was her choice. We all make choices.’ ‘Every minute of every day,’ Ole Golly intoned.”

Waldenstein is explaining his ex-wife’s choice to go her own way, leaving him and taking their son with her. Ole Golly is quick to understand and appreciate the power of individual choice. Her view is that all people are responsible for their own actions at every moment in time. Harriet will soon learn this lesson.

“‘I mean, what does it feel like to have somebody ask you?’ Harriet was getting very impatient. Ole Golly looked toward the window, folding something absently. ‘It feels … it feels—you jump all over inside … you … as though doors were opening all over the world.… It’s bigger, somehow, the world.’”

This is a rare moment in which Harriet focuses on feelings as she asks Ole Golly about getting engaged. Her nanny explains how it felt to receive her the marriage proposal. In essence, she is describing the expansive feeling of love.

“I FEEL ALL THE SAME THINGS WHEN I DO THINGS ALONE AS WHEN OLE GOLLY WAS HERE. THE BATH FEELS HOT, THE BED FEELS SOFT, BUT I FEEL THERE’S A FUNNY LITTLE HOLE IN ME THAT WASN’T THERE BEFORE, LIKE A SPLINTER IN YOUR FINGER, BUT THIS IS SOMEWHERE ABOVE MY STOMACH.”

Ole Golly just packed up and left. In processing her loss, Harriet mentions tactile sensations and describes them as “feelings.” Externally, her life is exactly the same without her nanny. She is still very much a stranger to her own inner world since she can’t access her personal emotions of sorrow yet.

“Ole Golly always said, ‘Math is for them that only want to count everything. It’s them that wants to know what they’re counting that matter.’”

Harriet has difficulty in math class. Numbers are a mystery to her, but words are easy. Ole Golly’s comment emphasizes meaning over fact. Numbers are useful only in context. They are analogous to Harriet’s spying activities. She enumerated all the facts, but she doesn’t understand what they mean.

“WHEN SOMEBODY GOES AWAY THERE’S THINGS YOU WANT TO TELL THEM. WHEN SOMEBODY DIES MAYBE THAT’S THE WORST THING. YOU WANT TO TELL THEM THINGS THAT HAPPEN AFTER. OLE GOLLY ISN’T DEAD.”

Even though Harriet knows Ole Golly isn’t dead, she might as well be. Harriet knows how to respond to only the material world and its inhabitants. Ole Golly’s physical absence is all that matters to her. Harriet doesn’t connect her nanny’s existence to memory or emotion.

“I WILL NEVER FORGET THAT FACE AS LONG AS I LIVE. DOES EVERYBODY LOOK THAT WAY WHEN THEY HAVE LOST SOMETHING? I DON’T MEAN LIKE LOSING A FLASHLIGHT. I MEAN DO PEOPLE LOOK LIKE THAT WHEN THEY HAVE LOST?”

Harriet is observing Harrison Withers after all his cats were confiscated. Obviously, he lost something that he loved. Harriet also lost someone she loved, but her lack of empathy doesn’t allow her to see the connection between herself and the old man.

“She looked at all their eyes and suddenly Harriet M. Welsch was afraid. They just looked and looked, and their eyes were the meanest eyes she had ever seen. They formed a little knot and wouldn’t let her near them.”

Harriet’s classmates just read her notebook. Ironically, Harriet doesn’t understand the reason for their animosity. She physically notes their mean eyes, but the cause escapes her. Their meanness remains a mystery because she isn’t seeing her hurtful words from their perspective.

“The cook turned her back and Harriet heard her mutter, ‘Oh, you, you hate everybody.’ This was too much. Harriet ran to her room. She did not hate everybody. She did not. Everybody hated her, that’s all.”

Harriet demonstrates an ample amount of dislike in her journal entries for everyone around her. However, she fails to see this crucial point. The cook’s perception reflects Harriet’s evident hostility to everyone else. Of course, the girl doesn’t recognize her own behavior as being hateful. From her perspective, she is telling the truth: Everyone hates her. She is also paranoid about the reaction of others to the “truth” she writes.

“‘That’s right. Now, you see, Harriet? When people hurt us they are sorry afterward, and we have to forgive them quickly so they will feel better.’ Miss Elson huffed and puffed.”

One of Harriet’s classmates just played a deliberate prank on her and claimed it was an accident. Harriet’s teacher is oblivious to the undercurrent in the classroom. Her advice to forgive is relevant to all her students, since they were all hurt by Harriet and are as uninterested in offering forgiveness as Harriet is.

“THEY’RE TRYING TO CONTROL ME AND MAKE ME GIVE UP THIS NOTEBOOK, AND SHE ALWAYS SAID THAT PEOPLE WHO TRY TO CONTROL PEOPLE AND CHANGE PEOPLE’S HABITS ARE THE ONES THAT MAKE ALL THE TROUBLE.”

Harriet is paranoid about the motivation of her classmates. She fails to see that she hurt them with her callous observations. Instead, she recalls some of Ole Golly’s advice out of context and uses it to justify her own obstinate stance.

“She found that when she didn’t have a notebook it was hard for her to think. The thoughts came slowly, as though they had to squeeze through a tiny door to get to her, whereas when she wrote, they flowed out faster than she could put them down.”

Throughout the novel, Harriet demonstrates an attachment to her daily habits. Keeping a journal is one of those habits. It represents an intellectual security blanket, and its loss leaves her feeling blank inside, like a sheet of paper with no lettering on it.

“‘The cook stood looking at the flat cake. It lay there in the pan as if someone had stepped on it. ‘There is something wrong in this house. It was never this bad before. Mrs. Welsch is going to hear from me all right, all right.’”

Harriet just deliberately jumped up and down, causing the cook’s cake to deflate. She is acting out her frustration over the loss of Ole Golly and the ire of her classmates. However, Harriet is so alienated from her own feelings that she doesn’t recognize this as the cause. The cook understands that there is a deeper issue causing this behavior.

“Remember that writing is to put love in the world, not to use against your friends. But to yourself you must always tell the truth.”

Ole Golly writes these words of advice to Harriet. They stress the communal nature of writing. Putting one’s thoughts down on paper will launch them out into the world. Since words are powerful double-edged swords, Ole Golly distinguishes between using them lovingly or destructively.

“IT WAS HARD MAKING UP HIM FINDING THE CAT BUT I THINK I MADE UP A GOOD MORAL—THAT IS THAT SOME PEOPLE ARE ONE WAY AND SOME PEOPLE ARE ANOTHER AND THAT’S THAT.”

Harriet is thinking about a story she published regarding Withers and his cats. Her moral suggests a level of tolerance that was missing in most of her writing earlier in the book. She now recognizes that everybody isn’t like her, and she shouldn’t judge others for being who they are. 

“As she went over the fence she thought to herself, I’m glad my life is different. I bet they’ll be doing that the rest of their lives—and she felt rather sorry for them for a moment. But only for a moment. As she walked along the street she thought, I have a nice life. With or without Ole Golly, I have a nice life.”

Harriet was watching the ringleaders of the anti-spy club. They are conventional thinkers and probably always will be. She finally shows some restraint in condemning the behavior of others and is willing to simply let them be. In the process, she comes to appreciate her own unique life.