Main Street

When she enjoys an outing with a group of neighbors and Kennicott, Carol is inspired to take up a new project. They join the Goulds, the Dyers, the Clarks, Vida, and others for many hours of parlor games, drinking, and jovial conversations, the likes of which they do not have at home. Carol is keen to continue such amusing antics. She suggests that they start the Gopher Prairie Dramatic Association. The others respond enthusiastically. To ready her new plan, Carol asks Kennicott to take her to see the performance of several plays at the Cosmos School of Music, Oratory, and Dramatic Arts. Kennicott is hesitant, but he eventually agrees to take Carol to Minneapolis to see the plays. When they arrive in the city, Carol is surprised to find herself suddenly so self-conscious. She feels entirely out of place after so long in the “rustic” (190) Gopher Prairie. Still, she and Kennicott manage to have a good time in the city, feeling “altogether cosmopolitan” (193). He is not necessarily interested in the plays; Carol is also not sure exactly how good they are. Regardless, she returns home with the belief that she can use the theater to recreate the exotic stories and places that she has seen on the stage.

Carol starts her theater group, and at first, the participants share her enthusiasm. The first problem arises when the group selects its first play. Rather than the rich array of classic or contemporary plays that Carol favors, the group chooses a silly, frivolous play titled The Girl from Kankakee. Carol puts her disappointment aside and throws herself enthusiastically into the project. Even more than any other project in the past, she shows her passion for directing and producing the play only to find herself confounded by the others’ lack of focus. When the debut night arrives, Carol is daring to dream that she might be able to convert the people of Gopher Prairie to “conscious beauty” (205). As soon as the play begins, however, she realizes that the actors are terrible. The Gopher Prairie Dramatic Association actors have no clue that they cannot act. Carol registers this as a failure on her part. Searching for consolation, she tells herself that the town does not need to be a cultural hub. It exists to support the farms nearby, rather than for any cultural reasons. This is undermined when she overhears a conversation in which the same local farmers complain about the townspeople manipulating the local economy to ensure that the farmers remain underpaid. The town’s market manipulation prevents the farmers from taking their produce to other places, trapping them in the area. Carol feels just as trapped. She is horrified by the idea that she may be stuck with these people forever and finds herself thinking of escape.

Over the next three years, Carol struggles to find anything to interest her. She feels “in exile from herself” (208), though she does find delight in the wedding between Miles Bjornstam and Bea, who get married a month after the performance of the Gopher Prairie Dramatic Association. Miles gives up his more radical proclamations and takes a more respectable job, and Bea becomes pregnant soon after the wedding. Even the joy of a new baby, however, is tarnished for Carol. She faces criticism from women such as Juanita Haydock because she allowed a good employee to leave to get married. Juanita and the women believe that Miles is not a reputable man, and Carol is stunned by the “casualness of their cruelty” (209). In spite of his reputation, Miles is determined to show his worth. He feigns nonchalance when no one comes to call on him and his family.

Carol is appointed to the board of the local library. She is excited by the idea that she could modernize the library and impressed that many people in the town are quietly well-read, but her enthusiasm fades fast. The other board members, she soon realizes, have no interest in anything new. Carol does not fight back. For the first time, she quietly heeds the status quo and serves her two-year appointment without challenging anyone. When an adult education group named the Chautauqua Company comes to town with a series of lectures and presentations, Carol is briefly excited by the idea of a “condensed university course” (214). She is unimpressed by the mundane presentations, however. In contrast, the people of Gopher Prairie praise the lectures and congratulate themselves on educating themselves by attending. The beginning of World War I in 1914 throws many countries into chaos, but the war has little effect on Gopher Prairie. Kennicott dismisses the war as “none of [their] business” (217). Carol dreams up ways of escaping the town. She obsesses over the sound of the passing train. When she becomes pregnant, however, she at last has something positive in her life.

Carol’s pregnancy makes her the focus of much unwanted attention, as every woman in Gopher Prairie wishes to give her advice. Carol gives birth to a baby boy and names him Hugh, after her own father. For two years she devotes herself entirely to him. When Kennicott’s Uncle Whittier and Aunt Bettie visit, Carol’s irritation is increased. Whittier and Bessie may be newcomers in Gopher Prairie, but Carol recognizes in them many of the worst, most annoying qualities of the townspeople. They are obsessed with money and religion, preaching their own morality and insisting that anything modern is just a passing, ridiculous fad. Carol must remind herself to be patient and assures herself that they will leave soon, only to be confounded by their announcement that they plan to move to Gopher Prairie. Carol is struck by the realization that they have swapped their own Main Street for the Main Street of Gopher Prairie. If she moved to another town, she believes, she would be stuck in the same sort of small-minded community.

Despite these irritations, she finds joy in Hugh, and she even notices how much the baby’s arrival has changed Kennicott. He helps to establish a child welfare week in the community, wherein a prize is given to the healthiest baby. Miles and Bea have a son of their own, named Olaf, who wins the prize. This is controversial, however, as many people in the town are perturbed that the prize has not been awarded to “decent parents” (224). The attitudes against Miles and Bea are so intense, Carol realizes, that she must sneak over to their house so that Hugh can play with Olaf. In spite of her discontent, she feigns happiness so as not to appear as “an abnormal and distressing traitor to the faith of Main Street” (225).

The narrative switches focus to Vida, a “personage and a force” (227). Vida’s days are busy and exciting, but her nights are often tough. Vida tries to repress her strong sexual desires, believing that sex is a shameful, taboo subject. She blames her sexual desires for the failure of her first relationship: She was once in love with Will Kennicott. When Vida was 34, Kennicott had seemed to return her interest in him. Vida was very attracted to Kennicott. She viewed him as a hero with a “magnificent body” (228) but she felt the need to maintain a distance between them. When Kennicott eventually abandoned his romantic pursuit of Vida, he married Carol instead. This places Vida in a difficult position. She very much loves Carol, sharing her obsession with culture and appreciating her youthful energy, yet Vida is also jealous of the “amusing, naïve, curiously learned” (230) Carol. She has little patience for Carol’s dreams of reforming Gopher Prairie. Vida sees Carol as someone who speaks loudly about change, but who does very little to make this change happen. Vida maintains her friendship with Carol in part because it keeps her close to Kennicott. At the same time, she has her own needs and desires, which she cannot ignore forever.

Five years pass since the end of her brief dalliance with Kennicott, and Vida becomes interested in a man named Raymie Wutherspoon, who works as a salesman in a store owned by Harry Haydock. Vida sees Raymie as an intellectual equal and believes him to share her political views. When she tries to make her romantic intensions clear, however, Vida is frustrated by Raymie’s timidity and nervousness. Eventually, she threatens to leave the town, telling Raymie that Gopher Prairie has nothing to offer her. Raymie embraces her, his timidity falling away. By June of that year, they are married. The marriage has a profound effect on Vida. She exudes “self-confidence and happiness” (236). She is keen to make sure that her husband is happy as well, so much so that she manipulates Harry Haydock so that he makes Raymie a partner in the business. Raymie feeds off Vida’s confidence and becomes a more confident person.

After her marriage, Vida moves from the boarding house where she has been living into a house with Raymie. She enthusiastically embraces the challenge of running a household. Carol envies Vida’s delighted domesticity. This envy becomes more pronounced as Carol reads books and magazines that detail the frustrated existence of housewives in small towns, in the “ten thousand Gopher Prairies” (239) across the country. Carol tells Vida about these ideas, complaining about the way in which such small towns are portrayed in mainstream culture. Carol takes umbrage with the idea that small towns are centers of friendship and virtue. She also disagrees with the way the towns are presented as quaint and delightful in vaudeville shows. Carol believes that this depiction of small-town life is incorrect. Such towns are fixed, uninspiring, and incapable of imagination. These places value only money and mediocrity, Carol believes, which causes any intelligent young person or woman to flee the “stale oligarchy” (242).

Vida disagrees. She points out how Carol complains and mocks the town often, but does little to affect any meaningful change. Most people in the town do not want Carol’s “street-planning or table-manners or crazy communistic ideas” (245). The real issues for the people of Gopher Prairie, Vida says, include the new school. For many years, Vida and others have worked to have a new school building in the town, all while Carol was half-heartedly trying to launch a drama club that she believed would change the entire town. Carol is taken aback by the criticism but recognizes that there is some truth in Vida’s words. Carol starts to volunteer her time on various projects, such as the Camp Fire Girls and the hiring of a nurse for rural communities. She is still rebellious and repeats the phrase “I am I” (247) as a mantra of reassurance.

By April 1917, the United States has entered World War I. Raymie is sent to a training camp for officers, while other men—sons and husbands—are either drafted into the military or enlist of their own volition. Vida takes up a passion for the war cause. Though many doctors are recruited, the town’s practitioners vote that Kennicott should remain in Gopher Prairie. Now aged 42, he will continue to offer medical services while the other doctors are away. Little else changes in the town. The women who previously gossiped over games of bridge now dedicate their time to making bandages and talking about the war, as well as how much they dislike Germans. When Cy, the son of Mrs. Bogart, attacks the son of a German farmer, he is praised for his actions, while everyone ignores that the German farmer’s older son enlisted in the war and died a hero’s death.

In June, the millionaire Percy Bresnahan comes to Gopher Prairie. He is the most famous person ever to hail from the town, having made a fortune during his time as the president of an automobile company in Boston. Carol prepares to dislike Percy. He is dismissive of her interest in the Bolshevik Revolution and insists that the Tsar will be back in power soon. To Carol, Percy is the embodiment of materialistic greed and dubious business practices. She wishes that he would use his money for good, rather than his own enjoyment. Percy quickly deduces Carol’s reason for disliking him. In turn, he notices that she takes pleasure in feeling superior to those around her. He suggests that what she truly dislikes, however, is the same basic human nature that exists everywhere. Carol is one of the “parlor socialists” (258), Percy says, and she would soon give up her beliefs if she had to compete for professional success in the city. Carol is dazzled by Percy’s command of statistics. She feels flustered when he refers to her as a “darling child to play with” (259); he is disappointed that he must return to Boston and not play with her longer. Even after he has left Gopher Prairie, Carol finds herself thinking about Percy Bresnahan.