I. BACKGROUND.
Main Street has the "Village" virus, a disease produced by provincial over-confidence and complicated by complacency and righteousness. Elements of contagion include exclusivity, stereotypes and ridicule. Particularly susceptible are idealistic newcomers to Gopher Prairie, like Mrs. Dr. Will Kennicott (Carol), subject of our report, who contracted the virus years ago when she first arrived as a young bride. Today, she rallies periodically, but often regresses as the disease takes hold with renewed vigor.
Mrs. Kennicott's one hope for complete cure appears to be the experimental vaccine, humoricus satiricus lewisi. Human trials are now in progress in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, supervised by Sinclair Lewis, M.D., the vaccine's creator. Mrs. Kennicott has agreed to be inoculated if the vaccine proves safe. Should vaccine trials fail, the prognosis for Mrs. Kennicott's complete recovery is poor. However, she may experience increased periods of remission by following some rather unorthodox disease management practices. In the process of discovering the "Village" virus vaccine, Dr. Lewis noticed that immunity seems to develop in some patients who learn to laugh at life's absurdities, enjoying them as unique experiences. Strangely, the immuno-reactor in humoricus satiricus lewisi could be described as a scientific platitude: "Laughter is the best medicine."
II. PREDISPOSITION TO INFECTION AND ONSET.
Interviews with Mrs. Kennicott revealed not only memories of her first days in Gopher Prairie, but also details of her subsequent infection by the "Village" virus. Selections from interview transcripts are reprinted here, with commentary by Robbins when warranted.
[MRS. KENNICOTT:] When I met Will, I had been a St. Paul librarian for three years. As a person, I was, and still am a romantic, full of ideals, and somewhat impractical. In contrast, Will, an establishment in Gopher Prairie, was a conservative realist who lived for convention. My innovative spirit was awakened when Will begged me, "Come on. Come to Gopher Prairie. Show us. Make the town--well--make it artistic. . . . Make us change!" (22). I accepted the challenge, but it was not long after we married that I realized I had promised fidelity not only to him, but also to his town, and I was ill-prepared for an intimate relationship with either. I can recall my terror when I realized that, unlike the pretty town of Will's description, what I saw was "a frontier camp" (30). I wanted to run away and hide in a big city where I could feel secure in my anonymity. I saw that my "dreams of creating a beautiful town were ludicrous. Oozing out from every drab wall, I felt a forbidding spirit which I could never conquer" (38). When I returned from my very first walk through town. I found Will exulting: "Have a walk? Well, like the town? Great lawns and trees, eh?" (41). I had to force myself to say, "It's very interesting" (41), when I really wanted to cry from disappointment.
Within the first month, I found myself bothered by a spiritual malaise which was relieved only when I strained against sacred Gopher Prairie tradition. The challenge of improving a prairie town appealed to my romantic soul, and I looked forward to devoting myself to making personal, social or aesthetic improvements wherever I could. For my efforts, I suffered only reactions of disapproval, intolerance and ridicule.
[NOTE: Mrs. Kennicott's romantic idealism, together with her revolutionary fervor for change, should be recognized as a predisposition to infection. Often, the virus-prone person experiences an acute dissatisfaction with environment, in which impossible dreams hinder commonplace action, and laughter is absent. The disease is further characterized by childish reactions to daily routine and responsibility which may include any of the following:
an impulsive desire for play,
restlessness,
curiosity,
an innocent need for perfection,
impractical and unrealistic expectations,
short attention span,
indecision, and
a belief that "wishing will make it so."
In Mrs. Kennicott's case, it will become obvious that nearly all the signs are manifest. ]
III. NARRATIVE EXAMPLES OF PATIENT'S RECURRING SYMPTOMS AND REACTIONS.
A. EARLY SYMPTOMS AND REACTIONS.
[MRS. KENNICOTT:] My face still burns bright with embarrassment when I remember our housewarming, the first party we hosted. We had already been guests at other gatherings, where I "discovered that conversation did not exist in Gopher Prairie . . . the young smart set, the hunting squire set, the respectable intellectual set, and the solid financial set . . . sat up with gaiety as with a corpse" (49). So determined was I to teach them all how to play, that I planned our housewarming around a Chinese theme, with original games, costumes and oriental food. I was a precocious child challenging powerful, forbidding adults by giving them a fresh, lively experience.
The results disappointed me. Everyone--the town and Will, too,--put me in my place. I remember Will's exact reaction. His only comment was, "Don't cross your legs in that costume. Shows your knees too plain" (81). And Vida Sherwin later revealed how the guests reacted. She gossiped, "I guess some of them felt you were showing off--pretending your husband is richer than he is . . . they felt you were starting a dangerous competition by giving a party such as most people here can't afford" (97 -98). In bitter chagrin, after Vida left, I felt I had "tripped into the meadow to teach the Iambs a pretty educational dance and found that the Iambs were wolves" (100). I began at once to feel like an organism under microscopic study in the laboratory, stuck on a slide, wriggling, but unable to escape, being stared at and studied from every direction.
B. ACUTE SYMPTOMS AND REACTIONS.
[MRS. KENNICOTT:] I joined the Thanatopsis Club because, as Vida Sherwin explained, it was "such a cozy group, and yet it [put] you in touch with all the intellectual thoughts that [were] going on everywhere" (123). Imagine my anguish when I realized that all of the English poets were "discussed" in one day: birthdates and deathdates, scandals and suppositions, but no poetry. At a subsequent meeting, when I suggested that the poems of the English poets deserved study in depth, the pastor's wife said, "I believe it would be nice if the program committee would try to work in another day entirely devoted to English poetry" (127). How could I really be satisfied with such lack of progress!
On another occasion, because I saw a need to help the poor of the town, I suggested several ideas for possible Thanatopsis action. These included self-help programs, an employment agency, mother and baby aid, and a donation of used but clean and mended clothes. But that day, I learned how righteous peopIe, spouting religious stereotypes, can rationalize away social injustice. Mrs. Mary Ellen Wilks, a reader at the Christian Science church, taught me this lesson: "If this class of people had an understanding of Science and that we are children of God and nothing can harm us, they wouldn't be in error and poverty" (141). After such a reaction, why did I ever believe "that [I] could plant a seed of liberalism in the blank wall of mediocrity?" (143).
Never one to lose hope completely, though, I next thought that, if Gopher Prairie would not delve in to literary or social change, perhaps it would support a community arts activity like a dramatic club. Though I envisioned us performing Shaw's "Androcles and the Lion," Raymie Wutherspoon pronounced Shaw both immoral and irreligious, two deadly epithets in Gopher Prairie. When Juanita Haydock promoted "The Girl From Kankakee," my vote was the only nay. I enthusiastically agreed to direct, but little did I know that the cast were more interested in socializing than in producing a fine performance. I knew how completely I had failed as a director when I read the DAUNTLESS REVIEW, which was favorable, but false. In retrospect. I see that I was really bored, and so had to fill my days with action. Perhaps my peripatetic ideas were really an avoidance of any form of intimacy with Will.
[NOTE: In Gopher Prairie's conservatism, its ready acceptance of substandard social conditions for the poor, and its satisfaction with mediocrity, Mrs. Kennicott finds reasons to champion perfectionism and restless change, thus exhibiting advanced disease. The virus gouges away at her health, while the town demolishes her self-concept.
For example, she tries to convince library board members to advocate for wider citizen use of the library, but accepts defeat, admitting that, " for all their pride in being reading men, [they have] no conception of making the library familiar to the whole town . . . they [use] it, they [pass] resolutions about it, and they [leave] it as dead as Moses" (226).
Dr. Kennicott also squelches her enthusiasm and curiosity. Occasionally, to foil her dissatisfaction, he responds with complacent acceptance. At other times, contrary to her youthful exuberance, he seems "as fixed in routine as an isolated old man" (282). For instance, when she tries to discuss the war, he says that, "It's a great old scrap, but . . . none of our business. Folks out here are too busy growing corn to monkey with any fool war that those foreigners want to get themselves into" (233). If she complains that the Chautauqua is less a forum for ideas than "a combination of vaudeville performance, Y.M.C.A. lecture, and the graduation exercises of an elocution class" (231), Will says. "It's a whole lot better than nothing . . . " (231). She recalls one occasion when she suggested. "Let's be wild! Let's ride on the merry-go-round and grab a gold ring! .. (295). Kennicott, she reports, "summarized the whole case against wildness: "Let's try it some other time, Carrie!" (295).
At another point, in a typical child's display of temper, Mrs. Kennicott promises, "I don't belong here, and I'm going. I have a right to my own life" (404-405). Dr. Kennicott's practical rejoinder is this: "If you had five kids and no hired girl, and had to help with the chores and separate the cream, like these farmers' wives, then you wouldn't be so discontented" (404). And, though she once leaves home for more than a year, at her return, the virus progresses until she believes it necessary to reconcile herself to "a humdrum inevitable tragedy of struggle against inertia" (431).]
IV. CONCLUSION.
As shown from the interviews, Mrs. Kennicott suffers from typical virus symptoms of romantic idealism and childish behavior. We believe that there is danger of permanent disability, unless she herself makes a therapeutic effort to manage her disease by developing the ability to view her environment with patience, common sense and laughter. The committee also concurs that the vaccine against the "Village" virus, humoricus satiricus lewisi, will mean complete health for her in the future.
WORK CITED
Lewis.
Sinclair. MAIN STREET.
New York: Signet New American Library. 1980.