Main Street (novel)
The novel
Main Street by
Sinclair Lewis was published in
1920. The novel is set in Gopher Prairie,
Minnesota a fictionalized version of
Sauk Centre, Minnesota, Lewis’s hometown. This portrait of the town was not particularly sympathetic, and the book was banned in neighboring
Alexandria, Minnesota. The protagonist is Carol Kennicott, a doctor's wife, who is seeking to fit in to a very closed society. The novel is important for a number of reasons. Among them is the portrayal of a strong female protagonist (who during the novel leaves the town for a period to work in Washington), and what one might now call
feminist themes, by a male writer. Lewis later won the
Nobel Prize in Literature.
Though it was not expected to be extremely popular, in the first six months of 1921, it sold 180,000 copies.
See also