Main Street

“On a hill by the Mississippi where Chippewas camped two generations ago, a girl stood in relief against the cornflower blue of Northern sky.”

The first line of the novel reminds the audience that towns such as Gopher Prairie did not spring from nothingness. In spite of what the inhabitants tell themselves about making a country from nothing, their homes are built on land that—just two generations ago—would not have been considered a part of the United States. The town’s youth (and the land’s previous inhabitants) stands as a rebuke against the immovability of the ideas that Carol encounters. In spite the residents’ insistence on tradition, Gopher Prairie is a barely more than a blip in historical terms.

“Besides, things are changing. The auto, the telephone, rural free delivery; they’re bringing the farmers in closer ‘touch with the town.”

The isolated small towns that pepper the Midwest are being dragged—sometimes reluctantly—into the broader American monoculture. Inventions such as the telephone and the automobile may seem like they offer freedom and opportunity, but the result is to create a web of identical towns rather than the isolated regional cultures that existed previously. Technology is not necessarily about progress; it is about consecrating the broader American identity through consumerism.

“They were a blurry theater-audience before which she self-consciously enacted the comedy of being the Clever Little Bride of Doc Kennicott.”

Carol feels nervous when she is introduced to her husband’s friends. With so few people in the town, she will not get a chance to disappear into anonymity. She thinks of her social performance metaphorically as a theatrical performance, in which she plays a role already written for her rather than being her authentic self.