MAIN STREET by: Sinclair Lewis
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| Main Street by Sinclair Lewis |
Summary
Louis Main Street made fun of the monotonous, abnormal or hypocritical life of a small town in Gopher Prairie, Minnesota. As an author, Sinclair Lewis has received national and international recognition for his profound presentation of American life and his critique of American materialism and tyranny.
The main character in this story is Carol Milford who graduated from Blodgett College in Minneapolis and then became a librarian for three years in St. Paul until she married Dr. Will Kennicott who lives in Gopher Prairie, a small Midwestern city. After their honeymoon in Colorado, the newlyweds travel by train to Gopher Prairie, a town of 3,000 people that appears to Carol as lifeless. Main Street is disappointing for Carol, as it has few buildings and no park.
Suddenly she realized she might have made a mistake. She seeks social pleasure in her city life, but finds the small town more reserved and intimate than her friends back home. She tries to liven up the evening and finds herself lecturing her husband on the sensitivity of others.
But she won't give up without a fight. She wanted to make it a beautiful city with elegance and attractiveness. She recruits a drama club that puts on a show, The Girl from Kankakee. She also joins the Bridge Club of Young Married Women as well as a literary society called The Thanatopsis Club but finds the programming to be dull and boring. Finally, her ideas are now showing real interest - after all, Carol is a librarian by trade, but the library board is concerned about books as property, and the local librarian doesn't like people taking books, because she likes them to be kept clean. On a separate note, a local man is ostracized from the community for the death of his wife and child, even though he did not cause their deaths. The city seems capable of making some pretty blunt judgments.
Carol meets a woman named Vida Sherwin who shares some traits, such as the fact that they both married draft men, but Vida is conservative as Carol is liberal, and Vida values simple family life. Her army husband comes home and runs the Bon Ton store in town. Another acquaintance of Carol is Jay Bullock, a lawyer Carol knows. Her attraction to him inspires her to keep trying to improve the town, but that doesn't stop her from failing. Compare the lawyer with Percy Bresnahan, a local money man who deals aggressively with Carol and is fired.
Eventually, all the local men's attention breaks her, and Carol finds a relationship with Eric Valborg, until her husband, Dr. Kennicott, finds out and arrests her, warning Carol of the dangers of living in a family of immigrants. Once again, the city shows its ruthless judgment, this time against a young Fern Mullins who has been seduced by Cy Bogart, her student. Verne leaves town, like all the outcasts before her, and in the end, Carol breaks down and flees town, leaving her husband.
After a stint working in Washington, DC, she returned to her husband and they continued to pursue their family together. It finally becomes clear to Carol that her true anger is not at others, but because of the systematic injustice in the world, and that she dreams of a better life for her daughter.
Main Street Analysis
This novel is largely about feminism, as it explains the birth of the feminist movement in the life of a social young man. Early in the novel, Carol Milford accepts a marriage proposal from a small-town man and inadvertently condemns herself to a dark, boring, often racist and misogynistic life. The plot revolves around small episodes that show Carol pushing her dislike for this conservative life that she leads a little more. Eventually she leaves, but even city life cannot heal her wounds, and in the end she is content to return to a normal married life and she prays for a better life for her daughter. Her silent dream is a future with feminism, as she discovers that although her emotional issues seem local, they are actually systemic issues beyond her control.
In light of all this, Main Street can be called a feminist critique of polite society. The image of marriage presented in the book is that marriage offers smart women a platform to make a difference. In other words, a woman's influence is only tolerated through her marriage, which is morally wrong. The image of female life presented in the novel is that due to the social pressures of society, marriage does not actually satisfy the emotional needs of doomed women, and she finds herself constantly courting the men of the city, unsatisfied. and hoping for their sexual liberation. . .
This representation of the life of a woman is deeply repressed, and worse, the city constantly posts harsh judgments against women, in particular for sexual abuse. These things eat away at Carol, and at the end of the novel, she silently turns to a feminist cause, out of desire for her daughter.
Main Street Characters
Carol Milford Kennicott
A midwesterner and a librarian by trade, Carol's story takes her to a miserable small-town life, away from her more liberal life in St. Paul. The novel mainly concerns her relationship to small town characters.
Dr. Will Kennicott
The husband of an unhappy wife. Dr. Kennicott's natural authority in the small town attracted Carol to him, but he turns out to be more conservative than she originally hoped for, and he often criticizes her for her curious and spunky attitude.
Bea Sorenson
A free-thinking person and an ethnic Swede, Bea becomes the victim of the town's vicious judgment after the tragic death of his wife and child.
Guy Pollock
This character is a lawyer, and he helps us to understand Carol, because she finds herself very attracted to Guy, a liberal person who also is tired of small town life.
Erik Valborg
Oddly, Carol doesn't succeed in making a relationship between her and Guy, but she does find an affair with Erik Valborg instead. Erik is also Swedish, and the two are quickly discovered.
Fern Mullins
Poor Fern is a young lady and a high school teacher, not much older than her own students, and that means she is tempted by her own students, especially Cy Bogart, and at a dance, she can't help herself, and the two become involved. Before long, she's the talk of the town, and the way the town mistreats her in the aftermath is the last straw for Carol who leaves right behind Fern.
Main Street Themes
The Outsider v. the Status Quo
The Outsider is always a danger to maintaining the status quo and Main Street is a novel obsessed with revealing how the citizens of its typical American town easily fall into a series of ingrained patterns of behavior that eventually evolve into the status quo. social that must be protected. although the reasons for asserting such protection are not always clear. In the case of Fern Mullins, the outsider's threat to the status quo is quite obvious: his ideas about sex education threaten to upset the whole social order of a town that depends on certain things being done at home. certain times. On the other hand, the outsider who came to organize the non-partisan National Defense League posed the most vague threat to the existing order since he fled the city in fear of what he might have. to say ; He didn't even get a chance to tell people what his plans were. Of course, at the center of the subject pitting the outsider against "the way things are done" is Carol Milford whose idealistic predictions of what life in a small town would be like would almost instantly be subverted by the harsh realities of prejudice. class, rumors and exploitation. . For the poor and the general intellectual vacuum.
Subverting the Image of Small Town America
Then, as now, whimsical depictions of small-town American life tended to work against the big city. The townspeople were ruthless, rigid, and deceptive, and were viewed with suspicion. In contrast, people in the countryside were honest and innocent and could easily be victimized when they traveled to the big city. Main Street hasn't elicited raucous comments from most who've lived in the kinds of prairie towns it represents since it permeated the gloss to reveal how isolation and the effects of alienation have contributed to the most negative aspects of rural society. The harsh climate, rugged terrain, and lack of easy and effective means of communication have been revealed to contribute to the spread of bias and prejudice and the reproduction of the status quo.
The Search for Identity
Carol is set in a small-town environment that doesn't fit the idealized version she's been told exists, which turns her into an outsider, but this outward situation is also part of the objective journey she takes toward self-discovery and creation. of his own identity. Lacking the desire or will to fit into the status quo that is somewhat of a comfort to longtime residents, but is a hellish existence in Carroll's eyes, she naturally assumes an identity that exists. outside the traditions and expectations of society. environment. Carol embarks on a desperate struggle to define herself outwardly by the diverse interests and knowledge she's accumulated, but that's not enough to motivate her to take up any of them as a career. The great irony in her life is that she fails to recognize her natural inner rebellion and act totally against anything that smacks of creepy conformity.
Religion
The influence of religion is a contributing factor to the status quo that breeds prejudice, stimulates gossip and stifles intellectual development. To be accepted on the main street of this city is to be a Christian. It is a Protestant denomination. Not Mormon. And being a non-Mormon Protestant Christian is not so much about following the ways of Jesus Christ or paying so much attention to the Bible, but about acquiring the strength and authority that offers the security to despise those who are not fit. This description.
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