Main Street Married

Marriageabout:blank

Even the girls who knew that they were going to be married pretended to be considering important business positions. (1.2.8)

At Carol’s college, women have two options after they graduate: get a job or get a husband. In Sinclair Lewis’s time, it was assumed that married women would quit their jobs to be full-time homemakers.

“Why do these stories lie so? They always make the bride’s home-coming a bower of roses. Complete trust in noble spouse. Lies about marriage.” (3.3.24)

Carol thinks that all the sweet stories she’s heard about marriage over the years have been total lies. Now that she’s actually married, she looks ahead to a life of boredom and dissatisfaction. Is there a middle ground between fairy tales and total dissatisfaction? If there is, Carol hasn’t found it yet.

But the advocate of freedom in marriage was as much disappointed as a drooping bride with the alacrity with which he took that freedom and escaped to the world of men’s affairs. (4.1.7)

When Carol and Will first arrive at their new home, Will asks permission to go check on his office to see if anything has happened with his work. Carol tells him to go ahead, but she secretly feels disappointed when he does. Even at this early point, she realizes that she will always have to compete for Will’s attention with his job.

“Oh, my dear, don’t you suppose I know? These first tender days of marriage—they’re sacred to me” (5.5.18)

Vida Sherwin tells Carl that there are lots of things to be involved in in Gopher Prairie. But she also says that she respects Carol’s right to get settled in first—after all, Carol has only been married a short time, and Vida wants to make sure that the new bride gets to enjoy her first days of marriage.

She could not have outside employment. To the village doctor’s wife it was taboo. (7.2.3)

Carol is sad to realize that she can’t get a job now that she’s married to Will Kennicott. The society of her time simply wouldn’t understand why the wife of a doctor would want to have a job. And you know how small-town folks are with things they don’t understand—not pleased, apparently.

[It] was as a Nice Married Woman that she attended the next weekly bridge of the Jolly Seventeen. (7.3.3)

Carol quickly realizes how difficult it’s going to be to fight the entire town of Gopher Prairie. When she first moves in, she openly expresses her opinions on politics and a bunch of other subjects. But she tones it down for a while when she realizes how unwanted her opinions are.