She also joins the Thanatopsis Club, a literary organization, and tries to change the club programs, which are stilted and superficial.

Carol becomes a member of the Jolly Seventeen, a bridge club composed of an elite group of young married women.

An early project is the formation of a dramatic club, which functions just long enough to present one mediocre production, The Girl from Kankakee. On the way home, however, she is lectured by her husband on the danger of shocking people.Īs time goes on, Carol makes one attempt after another to enlist the help of others in uplifting Gopher Prairie. She tries to introduce something different. Her first social evening is also a disappointment, for she finds the conversation of both men and women personal and trivial. It is then that she realizes the shabbiness surrounding her. The prairie, vast and empty, stretches away on every side.ĭreams end and realism begins when Carol takes a thirty-minute walk, inspecting the town, north and south, east and west. The Kennicott family home is outdated and stuffy. Main Street has two-story brick shops flanked by Fords and lumber wagons. In the drab town are three thousand dull people, in a social strata ranging from Swede farmer to bank president. The story proper begins when, after a honeymoon in the Colorado mountains, the Kennicotts approach Gopher Prairie on the train. She is a rebel against ugliness and conformity, and one factor in her decision to accept Kennicott is the opportunity to make over a planless middle west prairie town. Paul (Minnesota) for three years before her marriage to Dr. Consequently the narrative presents a series of episodes rather than a tightly constructed plot.Ĭarol Milford Kennicott, a graduate of 'sanctimonious' Blodgett College, with a year of additional study in a Chicago library school, works as a librarian in St.

In writing Main Street, Sinclair Lewis paid little attention to formal plot development.

Sinclair lewis mainstreet