Main Street is
usually thought an attack on small-town narrow-mindedness, which it is,
but it is more nuanced than that. Protagonist Carol Kennicott, the
big-city girl who is moved to Gopher Prairie by her husband and rails
against the town’s provincialism, is naive and vague about her
aspirations. Her husband, Will, a doctor, is unimaginative and stodgy
but well-meaning, steady, and surprisingly tolerant in places. Some
critics suggested that Lewis had too much affection for his hometown of
Sauk Centre, Minnesota, on which Gopher Prairie was based, to condemn
it completely.
The story takes place in the early 20th century. Carol has graduated
from a small women’s college in Minneapolis. She and Will meet in the
Twin Cities, where he is visiting. When she arrives in Gopher Prairie
as a new bride, Carol immediately finds it ugly. Her attempts to
improve the town by promoting civic building projects, organizing a
drama club, and encouraging reading fail. She expresses liberal
opinions and is resented.
To be sure, Carol’s judgment isn’t wrong — Gopher Prairie’s citizenry
is uninterested in the bigger world, smugly self-satisfied, gossipy,
and resistant to nonconformity and change — but her actions are
headstrong. Lewis sympathizes with her while showing her as immature.
When Carol makes her accommodation with the town at the end, it’s not
clear whether Lewis is saying she’s given up or grown up.
Main Street is one of the
most influential novels ever published in America. Critics noted that
it was more informative about small-town America than sociological
studies, and its image of the small town still holds today. Lewis won
the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930.
Home
My
reviews
My
friends' reviews