Main Street is a novel by the American author Sinclair Lewis. The best-selling novel created great controversy after it was published in 1920 and made Lewis internationally famous.
Main Street is set in the small Minnesota town of Gopher Prairie, inspired by Lewis’s birthplace of Sauk Centre, Minnesota. The novel portrays the pettiness, hypocrisy, dullness, intolerance, and monotony that Lewis saw in small-town American life in the early 1900’s. The novel challenges conventional attitudes toward marriage, small-town values, and the roles of men and women in society.
The central character in the novel is Carol Kennicott, the wife of a sympathetic but unimaginative Gopher Prairie physician. Carol attempts to improve Gopher Prairie by introducing progressive ideas and cultural breadth into the community. However, she is defeated by the complacency of the residents and the hostility of the town’s leading citizens. Carol defends the outsiders in the town, especially those who are poor or express unconventional views. Eventually, she leaves her husband, taking her young son with her, and works for two years at a government office in Washington, D.C. Realizing that she prefers small-town to city life, Carol returns to Gopher Prairie to resume her previous roles as a wife and mother.
Lewis satirized the narrow-mindedness of American small towns. However, he also mocked the attitudes of pretentious intellectuals who looked down on such towns. The novel is noted for its accurate rendering of middle-class Midwesterners, their speech, and their customs in the early 1900’s.
