Main Street

At the center of Main Street is the conflict between an individual imagination and a community’s desire for conformity. The narrator’s opening survey of Gopher Prairie announces that conformity is a national norm, not a local accident, as the town’s Main Street is “the continuation of Main Streets everywhere” (i). Anything that does not conform, the narrator continues, is considered by the residents to be “worthless for knowing and wicked to consider” (i). This attitude excludes vast swathes of human experience, leaving a narrow range of acceptable possibilities. Carol’s desire to make a place beautiful or interesting collides with a prescriptive civic logic that declares innovation suspect before it appears. Conformity therefore precedes her and outflanks her. The target of her reform is not only physical ugliness but the mental state that accepts the status quo, an acceptance summed up in the pompous assurance that the local hardware store’s turnover is “the envy of the four counties” (i), as if commerce could stand in for culture. The satirical tone of this opening passage evokes the smug satisfaction of the local elite—a class of businesspeople and bankers whose interests extend no farther than the local economy.