Sinclair Lewis was born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, a few miles from where my mother grew up in Osakis. After being educated on the East Coast at Oberlin and Yale, he moved to Washington D.C. and wrote this best seller in 1920 about life in rural Minnesota. I was motivated to read the book while contemplating my own move back to Minnesota and how I should set my expectations.
The protagonist, Carol Milford, is a sophisticated, beautiful Minneapolis girl who marries a medical doctor, Will Kennicott, and moves to Gopher Prairie, a fictional Sauk Centre, with ambitions of transforming its architecture and culture. She hits barrier after barrier, never making progress on her grand project. She attempts entertaining, theater, social clubs, even designing a house with her husband, but none of her efforts ever take hold. No one else shares her values.
Carol meets Guy Pollock, who is well read, agnostic, but is also admittedly given over to the "village virus" (ch 13), which is his term for a life of resignation in the simplicity of a small town. Carol is attracted to him, even considering if having an affair with Guy would be possible, but she resolves on being faithful to Will because she is still fond of her husband. But signs of weakness in their marriage are clear.
She finds some solace in having a son, Hugh (ch 20), but refuses to resign herself to the simple quiet life of a country wife and mother.
She meets Percy Bresnahan (ch 23), the local boy who made it big manufacturing cars out east. In comparison to his sparkling conversation and sharp dressing, Will is boring and shabby. But Percy leaves and Carol keeps trying to be a good wife.
She finds friendship with a simple Swedish handyman Miles Bjornstam who marries her maid Bea, starts a farm, and has a baby. But his wife and child die with a sickness for which he is to blame, and so he ends up leaving the town in disgrace. Carol finds no lasting happiness in friendship.
But everything comes to a head when Carol meets Erik Volberg, a country boy who is an avid reader with grand ambitions as a big city fashion designer, but lacks any experience or serious education. She takes walks with him and enjoys conversation, dabbling with romantic interest. In Chapter 31, Erik aggressively declares his desire for her, alone in her bedroom, but she rejects him. He wants a lover, she wants an aspirational friend, so they part ways. The chapter ends with an ominous, "The next day, the storm crashed."
The storm of chapter 32 is the disgrace and banishment of her friend Fern Mullins. When the high school teacher Fern is accused of getting drunk and possibly fooling around with her student Cy Bogart, the vicious, self-righteous, condemning nature of Gopher Prairie is exposed. Will and others realize Cy is hardly innocent, but they feel no compulsion to save Fern. Cy's mother is blind to her son's mischievous nature, but Carol believes strongly that society is at fault. She says, "The job of corrupting Cy was done by your sinless town, five years ago!" And this fault is ultimately theological. She tells Fern, "My dear, Mrs. Bogart's god may be - Main's Street's god. But all the courageous intelligent people are fighting him...though he slay us."
In chapter 33, Carol meets up with Erik for a long walk, only to be discovered by Will. He seems calm at first, but in private Will is outraged. But his outrage is not that she that she loves another man, but that Carol will be exposed to the wrath of the town. He says, "You better cut it out now. I'm not going to do the outraged husband stunt. I like you and I respect you, and I'd probably look like a boob if I tried to be dramatic. But I think it's about time for you and Valborg to call a halt before you get in Dutch, like Fern Mullins did." His concern is social, not personal. Then they argue about Will's actual medical accomplishments compared to Erik's potential cultural accomplishments. Will handily wins the logical argument and Carol is shut down. But they still care for each other, so they decide to go away on a 3 month California vacation, leaving their son Hugh with Aunt Bessie. This seems to be a good thing, but they return to a sleet storm, lonely streets, and no one being terribly interested in their adventures. Happiness will not be found in travel.
The final blow in chapter 35 is the arrival of Mr. James. Blausser, a land speculator, leads a campaign to promote Gopher Prairie as the best city in the world. He wants to draw more business to the town, thereby increasing his property values. It's a classic "fake it till you make it" scheme, and no one seems to be bothered by it. Carol has been sincerely trying to make Gopher Prairie a bit more like Minneapolis or Paris, but Mr. Blausser swoops in and declares that it already is! Carol is disgusted.
Carol is now devastated and wants to leave Gopher Prairie. She gets Will's permission to move to the east coast indefinitely, under the pretense of joining the war effort. She finds office work in D.C. for two years. Will comes out and tries to woo her. In chapter 38 he makes one of the more touching speeches in the book. "Look here, Carrie; you think I'm going to ask you to love me. I'm not. And I'm not going to ask you to come back to Gopher Prairie!...I just want you to know how I wait for you. Every mail I look for a letter, and when I get one I'm kind of scared to open it, I'm hoping so much that you're coming back." He communicates genuine care and humility.
But then he comes to his most serious matter saying, "'Nother thing. I'm going to be frank. I haven't always been absolutely, uh absolutely, proper." And then he begins to confess his affair with a neighbor woman, Maud Dyer. This is the point of repentance, where real reconciliation and healing is possible. But Carol cuts him off and says, "It's all right. Let's forget it." We can be sympathetic to Carol's hurt, but here was her best chance at finding love. But her lack of anger or even feeling over her husband's unfaithfulness is proportional to her lack of care over her husband. Sadly, Carol does not believe her happiness will be found in marriage.
The book quickly draws to an end with Carol finding a muted happiness in the social and political aspirations of her son and newborn daughter (ch 39). She says, "Think what that baby will see and meddle with before she dies in the year 2000! She may see an industrial union of the whole world, she may see aeroplanes going to Mars." She has given up on herself, her friendships, her personal ambitions, and her marriage, but has not given up on her ideals. Her final word in the book is, "But I have won in this: I've never excused my failures by sneering at my aspirations, by pretending to have gone beyond them. I do not admit that Main Street is as beautiful as it should be! I do not admit that Gopher Prairie is greater or more generous than Europe! I do not admit that dish-washing is enough to satisfy all women! I may not have fought the good fight, but I have kept the faith." Her hope is being part of some transcendent cause to which she has been faithful. She doesn't have to see much of any result in her life and in her town, as long as she's a part of some ideal of Progress.
After giving this final thought, her husband responds with a total lack of understanding and sympathy. He doesn't have a clue about what she just said, and he doesn't care. And she seems to not care either.
I enjoyed the book because Lewis is a talented writer, the characters are engaging, the descriptions of humanity's messed up condition are vivid, and the Minnesota setting is special to me. But Sinclair Lewis's worldview is empty. He tries to find significance in societal struggle and cultural accomplishments, but misses the primacy of love. Carol could have gone to small town Minnesota and learned to love people - her husband, her simple and sinful neighbors, her work, and her place. She had many opportunities to pursue love instead of accomplishments. But both she and it seems Lewis himself don't see the centrality of love. Jesus taught us that our greatest obligation and our greatest joy is to love God with all our heart, mind and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. And he taught us what love is, to lay down our lives for our friends. This may seem like stodgy tradition and old fashioned religion, but I think the book, as excellent as it was, only showed how right our Lord was.
