Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

 

In my continuing quest to wrap up my Classics Club Challenge this year, I picked up Main Street by Sinclair Lewis. I have never read anything from him before, making this a great fit for the "classic by a new-to-you author" prompt in the Back to the Classics Challenge as well. Since I read so many books from the past, I'm used to not knowing much about them before I start. There's not a whole lot of buzz flying around the internet for books that are over 100 years old. However, in this case, I had actually seen a few reviews on classics blogs and gotten a few comments praising this novel, so I started off hoping that this would be an entertaining one.

The plot of Main Street follows Carol Kennicott, a young women recently graduated from college in Minneapolis and freshly married. She loves art and music and wants to have a big, exciting life. She isn't exactly sure what she would like to do, but she knows that she wants adventure and culture. Her new husband, Will, is a prominent doctor in a small town named Gopher Prairie in Minnesota. At first, she is very hesitant to move there with him, but he assures her that there are opportunities for her there; she is just what the town needs to liven it up. Intrigued by the idea of introducing art, music, and community improvements to the place, she agrees to move there and set up a household.

Within minutes of arriving at Gopher Prairie, Carol begins to feel like she made a mistake. The townspeople there are nice enough on the surface, but lurking underneath is a culture of closed-mindedness and judgement. Carol's enthusiasm for art and music are interpreted as arrogance and her efforts to improve the town are viewed with suspicion. She is constantly being gossiped about and watched by her neighbors, her every word and action picked apart in an effort to find faults. The few times she arranges events, they never go according to plan, and she soon becomes frustrated at the town's adherence to their old ways. Even her husband becomes annoyed with her, eventually accusing her of thinking that she is better than their neighbors and wondering why she can't simply be happy with things the way they are.

Naturally, in the face of this criticism, Carol falls into a depression. She begins to see Gopher Prairie as a prison instead of a home and she yearns to get away from it. Her feelings improve somewhat with the arrival of a son, Hugh, but she still feels like she is meant to do more than waste away in a stagnant town having the same conversations with the same people over and over again. She tries to distract herself in various ways, including developing a close (and scandalous) friendship with a like-minded man that works in the tailor's shop, but as usual, everything she tries to do ends very poorly. Eventually, she feels like she simply must leave in order to find her own happiness, but taking control of her own destiny is a difficult thing and she's not sure if she truly wants to walk away from everything she knows.

This novel covers the span of several years in Carol's life, and I have to say that Lewis did an excellent job covering the complexity of her feelings and the monotony of the years she spends in Gopher Prairie. My edition of the novel had 517 pages, and parts of it definitely dragged on. I believe this was on purpose to give the reader a sense of what Carol was feeling day after day in the town. It was tough at times to see her get disappointed again and again by everyone around her, but this was an effective technique to make you understand her struggle. I don't mean to imply that the entire story was depressing either; it was often witty and sarcastic. There were genuine moments of happiness and excitement throughout as well. As we all do in real life, Carol cycles through a lot of emotions rapidly throughout her days. At times she is hopeful, determined, and loving. At other times she is bored, cynical, and melancholy. She is imperfect as well, and has her moments of being arrogant just like everyone else, even though she doesn't realize it. It was realistic to the way people actually think, which I really appreciated. 

I was also impressed with Lewis' ability to write a believable female character feeling isolated and yearning for freedom. I could deeply relate to her struggles. I moved to a new, smaller state a few years ago, and I work in a small town where everyone has known each other for years. It's hard to fit in. The things Carol was thinking were often things I have thought too. I know what it's like to be feeling great about life and hopeful one minute, then get smacked down by a weird comment and feel sad the next. I know what it's like to have a hard time finding people with the same interests as you and feeling lonely a lot of the time. Carol's inner monologues were very genuine and allowed me to make a strong connection with the story. I could empathize with her, so I was invested in her struggle.

One of the biggest ideas in the novel, and the idea that the novel is probably the most famous for exploring, is small town America and its reluctance to embrace change.  Lewis makes it clear throughout the story that Gopher Prairie's Main Street is no different from any Main Street in any small town. The people are stuck in their ways, judgmental of others, and hostile to change. He lampoons the citizens of Gopher Prairie pretty mercilessly, creating characters that are unbearable in their simultaneous ignorance and arrogance. Not everyone is completely terrible, but everyone ends up being disappointing in one way or another. Whether it's through constant spying and gossiping about each other, being outright cruel to anyone who doesn't follow their societal norms, or being unwilling to try new things, the townspeople are quite the cast of characters. At the same time, they do have their moments of being kind and loyal as well, and even Carol doesn't hate everyone all the time. Living in a small town seems to require a fairly complex balancing act, and Lewis shows throughout the story that saying the right words, wearing the right clothes, and behaving the right way are deeply important matters that trump real forward progress. Yet, even in this socially fraught atmosphere, these places get a hold on people. Carol is consistently torn between leaving and staying in Gopher Prairie, even though it makes her miserable most of the time. She admits that there is a certain comfort in the community of a small place where everyone knows each other. So while the overall tone is negative towards these little towns, there is a grudging acknowledgement of the comforts they bring people too. Again, it was a realistic, if unflattering, portrayal.

I think was stood out to me the most of all in Main Street was the ending. I won't go into detail because I don't want to spoil anything for anyone, but I appreciated how it focused on inner changes rather than outer ones. It wasn't a perfectly neat ending, or an exciting one. I wouldn't even say it was particularly satisfying. What is did give you though, was a lot to think about. I liked that it was quiet and probably pretty close to what would happen in real life.

So although this book was long and deliberately monotonous a lot of the time, I really enjoyed my experience with it. I thought that it was very realistic and relatable to what people go through when they move, particularly women who move for a husband and find themselves adrift in a strange place. I liked watching Carol's journey. I was also happy to get a chance to read Sinclair Lewis's bitingly sarcastic prose. I would like to try another one of his novels eventually. This was one of those times where the book definitely lived up to the good things I heard about it.

Challenge Tally

Back to the Classics 2021 (A classic by a new-to-you author): 2/12

Classics Club (#37 on my list): 84/100 books completed

Total Books Read in 2021: 5