Harriet The Spy - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

Eleven-year-old Harriet M. Welsch is an aspiring writer, who lives in New York City's Upper East Side. A precocious and enthusiastic girl, Harriet enjoys writing and aspires to become a spy. Encouraged by her nanny, Ole Golly, Harriet carefully observes others and writes her thoughts down in a notebook as practice for her future career. She dedicates her life to her future career. She follows an afternoon "spy route" during which she clandestinely observes her classmates, friends, and people who reside in her neighborhood. Her best friends are Sport, a serious boy who lives with his father, and Janie, an aspiring scientist.

Harriet enjoys having structure in her life. For example, she regularly eats tomato sandwiches and adamantly refuses to consume other types of sandwiches. Harriet's routine life is abruptly changed when her parents attend a party. Ole Golly and her suitor, Mr. Waldenstein, take Harriet out for dessert and a movie. When they return home, they discover that the Welsches have returned early to an empty house. When Mrs. Welsch attempts to fire Ole Golly, Mr. Waldenstein discloses to the Welsches that he proposed to Ole Golly that evening, and she has accepted. In an astonishing about-face, Mrs. Welsch exclaims, "You can't leave, what will we do without you?!" Ole Golly replies that she had planned to leave soon because she believes Harriet is old enough to care for herself. Harriet is crushed by the loss of her nanny, to whom she was very close.

Later at school, during a game of tag, Harriet loses her notebook. Her classmates find it and are appalled at the mean and tactless things she has written about them. For example, in her notebook she compares Sport to a "little old woman" for his continual worrying about his father. Harriet has given her honest opinion of the world as she sees it and does not mean to be rude. In fact, she insists, her notebook is private and not for anyone else to see. The students form a "Spy Catcher Club" in which they think up ways to make Harriet's life miserable, such as stealing her lunch, passing nasty notes about her in class, and spilling ink on her.

Harriet regularly spies on them through a back fence and concocts vengeful ways to punish them. She realizes the consequences of the mean things she wrote, and though she is hurt and lonely, she still thinks up special punishments for each member of the club. After getting into trouble for some of her plans, Harriet tries to resume her friendship with Sport and Janie as if nothing had ever happened, but they both reject her. Harriet spends all her time in class writing in her notebook as a part of her plan to punish the Spy Catcher Club. As a result of never doing her schoolwork, her grades suffer. This leads Harriet's parents to confiscate her notebook. Hearing of Harriet's troubles, Ole Golly writes to her, telling her that if anyone ever reads her notebook, "you have to do two things, and you don't like either one of them. 1: You have to apologize. 2: You have to lie. Otherwise you are going to lose a friend."

Meanwhile, dissent is rippling through the Spy Catcher Club. Marion, the teacher's pet, and her best friend Rachel are calling all the shots, and Sport and Janie are tired of being bossed around. When they quit the club, most of their classmates do the same.

Harriet's parents speak with her teacher and the headmistress, and Harriet is appointed editor of the class newspaper. The newspaper—featuring stories about the people on Harriet's spy route and the students' parents—becomes an instant success. Harriet also uses the paper to make amends by printing a retraction and is forgiven.