ABSTRACT
THE MANY ROLES OF HARRY LEWIS: A STUDY OF

MOTIVE AND METHOD IN CREATIVE TECHNIQUE

BY

David Robertson Angus

This is primarily an analysis of the vital function
of role playing in Sinclair Lewis's creative technique, as

shown in his first seven books, Hike and the Aeroplane, Our

 

gr. Wrenn, The Trail of the Hawk, The Job, The Innocents,

 

 

 

 

 

Free Air, and Main Street. First of all, the three separate

 

aspects of Lewis's role playing activity have been identi-
fied: his personal fondness for mimicry and acting, his
habit of projecting himself into his fictional characters,
and his bent for fantasies centered around occupational
identity exchanges. When brought together, these actions
reveal specific attitudes and behavior, characteristic not
only of Lewis himself, but also built into the personali-
ties he created in fiction. It is demonstrable that role
playing and role attribution comprise Sinclair Lewis's
prime method of character development in his novels.

An examination of this method back to its source in
Lewis's basic orientation toward life affords some sur-

prising new discoveries about his motivation for writing.

David Robertson Angus

It must be observed that this form of criticism entails the
use of a "psychological approach." Obviously, such an
approach must be used with discretion; nevertheless, the
tools and insights of psychological inquiry contribute
greatly toward an understanding of Lewis's method, his
characteristic achievement and, more particularly, his
curious limitations.

Identification of Sinclair Lewis's basic person-
ality as that of a self-defeating "moral martyr" is not
therefore a procrustean operation. Much of the documen-
tation has already been done in Mark Schorer's impressive
biography and in the memoirs of Grace Hegger Casanova and
Dorothy Thompson. The significant conclusions have re-
mained to be drawn here--significant, because this repre-
sentation of Sinclair Lewis illuminates some heretofore
unexplained deficiencies in his writing: the episodic
structure, the lack of plot, the confused point of view,
and the essentially soulless quality of his characters
decried by many of his critics.

"Look how the father's face / Lives in his issue,"
observed Jonson of another dramatic portraitist. The same
may be said for Sinclair Lewis, who injected himself almost
compulsively into the lives of his characters, whose fears
and fantasies became their limitations, and whose inhi-
bitions denied his creatures the full enjoyment of their

successes o

David Robertson Angus

Success came hugely to Sinclair Lewis after the

publication of Main Street, forcing him into the new and

 

compromising role of Celebrated Author, a posture he could
not accept or reject unequivocally. Since this triumph
had the effect of moving Lewis into grander and more com-
plex (but scarcely different) dimensions of artistic pro-
ductivity, it has seemed best to focus upon his early
books, those published between 1912 and 1920, where the
motivation and method of Sinclair Lewis's creative tech-

nique cOuld be most clearly demonstrated.

THE MANY ROLES OF HARRY LEWIS: A STUDY OF

MOTIVE AND METHOD IN CREATIVE TECHNIQUE

BY

David Robertson Angus

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1970

6 Copyright by
DAVID ROBERTSON ANGUS

1971

ii

TO
GARTHA LEE,
in thankful tribute to the depths
of her love and patience,

and to

WILLIAM and JOYCE,
for their examples of enduring faith,

this work is gratefully dedicated

iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author gratefully acknowledges his debt to
Professor Sam S. Baskett, chairman of his graduate com-
mittee and Director of this dissertation, for his judicious
guidance and wisdom; and to Professor Russel B. Nye and
Professor William W. Heist, whose encouragement and numer-
ous helpful suggestions have been most sincerely appreci-
ated.

This research on Sinclair Lewis would have been
extremely difficult without the good offices of Dr. Ronald
Wilkinson and Mrs. Caroline Blunt of the Special Collections
division of the Michigan State University Library, and the
assistance of Mrs. Florence Hickok of the Reference section.
The author is also indebted to the staffs of the State of
Michigan Library in Lansing and the Grand Rapids Public
Library for special favors, and the Board of Education of
the Lansing School District for granting a sabbatical year
for study in residence at the University. To all these
generous men and women the author expresses his deepest

thanks.

iv

Chapter

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE MANY ROLES OF HARRY LEWIS . . . .

HIKE AND THE AEROPLANE: FLIGHTS OF
FANTASY 0 C O C O O O O C O O

 

OUR MR, WRENN: ESCAPE INTO ANONYMITY .

THE TRAIL OF THE HAWK: THREE FACES OF
DANGER. O O O O O I O O O O O

 

 

THE JOB: IMMURED IN THE CITY . . . .

THE INNOCENTS: A REVERSAL OF ROLES . .

 

FREE AIR: I'M ONLY A SMALL-TOWN BOY
MYSELF. O O I O O O C O I O 0

MAIN STREET: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO PERCY
BRESNAHAN? O O O C O O O O 0 O

 

THE VITAL FUNCTION OF ROLE PLAYING IN
LEWIS ' S WORK. 0 O O I O O O O O

BIBLIOGRAPHY O O O O O I O O O O O O

Page

35

67

110

152

198

224

269

320

338

CHAPTER I

THE MANY ROLES OF HARRY LEWIS

Literary criticism in the United States still has
not produced a definitive assessment of the mind and tech-
nique of America's most widely patronized novelist, Sinclair
Lewis. Seeing Lewis as a novelist of surfaces, his critics
have been too preoccupied with superficialities in his
work, and their general conclusions have been, unhappily,
correspondingly two-dimensional. Few scholars have ap-
parently read Lewis with objective insight. That is, too

many readers have been distracted by the feeling of identi-

_fication which the author evokes in his vast reading audi-

ence--those reflections of themselves in attitudes of
heroism or danger which audiences love to feel--when they
should have exercised, rather, a sensitivity to the need
which pressed Sinclair Lewis to be an artist, to find that
audience, and to write some of the best and worst novels in
the American language.

Sinclair Lewis, the celebrated author, the public
figure, may be compared to one of those glittering, multi-

faceted, revolving globes which decorated the jampacked

dance pavilions of the twenties and thirties: a hollow

sphere of papier maché decked with tiers of mirrors, and

 

spun by machinery outside of itself, while colored spot-
lights blazed upon it, and the band played. So in his
novels Lewis gives us back ourselves in brilliant, broken
bits, and scholars have tried to match the pieces into a
meaningful mosaic, only to be disappointed. To know the
significance of Sinclair Lewis, one must probe deeper than
the shiny surfaces, to find the infrastructure, the struts
and props which hold the parts together and keep the ball
intact.

Sheldon Grebstein has observed that there were in
effect two Lewises, a public and a private man, a confir-
mation of the artist-schizophrenic which critics repeatedly
find in American literature. This analysis, although acute,
fails to satisfy, since it suggests that the American mind
understands dichotomies more readily than paradoxes, es-
pecially when one realizes that there were not merely two,
but many Lewises--a whole fagot of personalities, each
splinter needed for a separate role. Support for this
thesis may provide bases for a new, fuller understanding
of Sinclair Lewis's novels, and of the author's position as
the first public victim of the twentieth-century anxiety
neurosis in our literature: alienation.

Much has been written about the significance in
Lewis's work of the themes of farm-to-city migration, of

cultural bankruptcy and shabbiness, and of spiritual

poverty. But these are only incidental tunes of the times.
The keynote in Lewis's novels is not even "character," as
one might suspect; it can be found in the distinctive
values which Lewis gives to words--words that can be
molded to suit any need, words with a substance either
sound or spurious. In the final analysis. Lewis's famed
characters exist not as personalities but as speakers of
words, not doers of deeds or thinkers of thoughts; one
realizes that ultimately Carol Kennicott, Babbitt, Elmer
Gantry, and Dodsworth are memorable not primarily as
"people" but as value-systems. Further, they are value-
systems based not upon an intellectual epiphany, but on
an emotional, desire-and-aversion foundation.

The works of an artist, considered together, often
reveal habitual favorite themes, attitudes, and mental sets
which vary little throughout his opera; our familiarity
with his tropes and predilections we attribute to his

"style,' and there, very often, analysis ends. When the
artist is a painter, one notes the favored direction of

his light source, pose of the limbs, the repeated arrange-
ment in a landscape perspective, a distinctive curl of the
sea-wave. If he is a novelist, one looks beyond the ex-
pectation of mere entertainment or the development of pre—
possessing characters toward the identification of familiar
patterns of thought, or sequential clusters of emotional

intensity, which become as identifiable in themselves as

the author's personal habits, or his thumbprint.

Throughout the novels of Sinclair Lewis, particularly in

the early ones--Hike and the Aeroplane, Our Mr. Wrenn, The

 

Trail of the Hawk, The Job, The Innocents, Free Air, and

 

 

Main Street--in the search for a unifying theme or design,

 

one finds instead a prime technique, repeated with many
ostensible variations, which at first appears to be an
apprentice's old reliable mechanism for cranking out short
story plots and unsophisticated characters in half-
forgotten novels. Then, unexpectedly, this single tech-
nique reveals itself as the key concept, not only to Sin-
clair Lewis's work, but to his life as well: it is the
human behavioristic technique of role playing.

Since the novelist's death in Italy in 1951,
scholarly books and articles, as well as many personal
reminiscences, have issued from the presses--proof that
Lewis is as good literary news nowadays as he was during
the Twenties and Thirties. So much has been written about
him, indeed, with such a wealth of documentation and de-
tail, with so many critical assessments and pronouncements,
that at times Sinclair Lewis appears to have been a cre-
ation of the publishing industry.

To an extent, he was. Lewis had an uncanny gift
for anticipating the shifting moods and tastes of the
American consumer of fiction, and he helped to generate,
and later capitalized upon, an aspect of the media ex-
plosion which occurred when the novel as an art form was

supplanting older, established modes of mass entertainment

and idea communication: vaudeville, the Chautauqua plat-
form, the tent-revival sermon, and sentimental romances by
women authors. In addition, Lewis's flair for making
startling public statements, especially after he had be-
come an international celebrity, and his propensity for
exciting literary quarrels, assured that he would always

be the object of public curiosity. The award to Lewis of
the 1930 Nobel Prize for Literature, since it was the first
to an American author, commanded world attention which he
eXploited assiduously in the promotion of his later novels,
as well as reprints of his earlier ones, and in the culti-
vation of new literary and social contacts.

Sinclair Lewis had an actor's dramatic instincts
and sense of timing. Professor Schorer's indispensable
biography1 is filled with accounts of Lewis's compulsion
for imitations and impressions, his fascination by the
stage, his love for charades and costumes, and his in-
sistence upon being the center of attention in any gather-
ing. But these masquerades and performances are never
fully integrated into a comprehensive critical analysis of
Lewis, as they might have been, and are treated in context
merely as an author's eccentricities. Schorer complained
in a later article that he did not believe a biographer

should write as if he were indeed a psychoanalyst.

Some of my reviewers wished that I had; they wished
that at some point I had said plainly, flatly, what

 

lMark Schorer, Sinclair Lewis: An American Life

(New York, 1961).

 

 

was wrong with Sinclair Lewis. It was precisely be-
cause I was unwilling to make such a statement that I
made the book so long. I wanted to give the reader
all the evidence that I coherently could which would
permit him to say to himself what was wrong with Sin-
clair Lewis. . . . I do not think that the jargon of
psychoanalysis would have heightened either the comedy
or the pathos of that life.2
Yet the reader is somehow disappointed by what seems an
abrogation of a critic's duty, and the pejorative flavor
of the word "jargon," suggesting that there can be no
middle way: either one must write using the psycho-
analytical terminology, or else one should write hundreds
of detailed pages to avoid using it, all for the purpose
of not coming to the penetrating, well-informed critical
appraisal that the patient reader would have desired.
Schorer's best evaluations of Lewis appear when he identi-
fies "the problem in Sinclair Lewis's life" as "simply the
fact that he was, at the center of himself, beneath the
gilded trappings and the expansive gestures, no larger, no
more mature, no more human than [his] characters, forever
trapped in a coarse and starved and empty youth."3 He is
most illuminating when he submits that Lewis "did not know
what self-knowledge is."
He was, of course, the kind of artist who is

temperamentally unable to objectify his anxieties or
even draw upon them except in the most superficial

 

2"The Burdens of Biography." 22 the Young Writer,

ed. A. L. Bader (Ann Arbor, 1965), pp. 162-163.

 

3Sinclair Lewis: An American Life, p. 740.

 

 

way in his own art, and the artist, after all, is not
different from the man who contains him.

. . . Not many men are doomed to live with such a
mixture of warring qualities as he was. Consider him
at any level of conduct—-his domestic habits, his
social behavior, his character, his thought, his art
--a1ways there is the same extraordinary contradiction.
Sloppy and compulsively tidy, absurdly gregarious and
lonely, quick in enthusiasms and swiftly bored, extra-
vagant and parsimonious, a dude and a bumpkin, a wit
and a bore, given to extremities of gaiety and gloom,
equally possessed of a talent for the most intensive
concentration and for the maddest dishevelment of
energies; sweet of temper and virulent, tolerant and
abruptly intolerant, generous and selfish, kind and
cruel, a great patron and a small tyrant, disliking
women even when he thought he most loved them, profane
and a puritan, libertine and a prude, plagued by self-
doubt as he was by arrogance; rebel and conservative,
polemicist and escapist, respectful of intellect and
suspicious of intellectual pursuits, loving novelty
and hating experiment, pathetically trusting in
"culture" and narrowly denying "art"; cosmopolitan
and chauvinist, sentimentalist and satirist, roman-
ticist and realist, blessed--or damned--with an extra-
ordinary verbal skill and no style; Carol Kennicott
and Doc, her husband; Paul Riesling and George F.
Babbitt; Harry Lewis and Dr. E. J. Lewis or Dr. Claude
B. Lewis; Harry Lewis and even Fred the miller, who
never left home.

One might list these conflicting qualities in
opposite columns and suggest that there were two
selves in Sinclair Lewis; but all these qualities
existed together and simultaneously in him, and in
their infinite, interacting combinations there must
have been not two but six or eight or ten or two
hundred selves and, because they never could be one,

a large hole in the center.4

This sort of inventory, although undeniably true,
is maddening: it details all the symptoms of a man who
suffers a "jittery and despairing" and yet "representative"

American life, but still it demurs at a diagnosis. In a

 

4Sinclair Lewis: An American Life, pp. 809-810.

 

 

supporting article Maurice Kramer notes that the concern
of Schorer's biography
with minutiae is also in perfect keeping with its
subject, who was (as Schorer makes absolutely clear)
a master of mimicry who could not resist his gift and
who in fact found it a vital substitute for self-
analysis.
Without wondering why Lewis could not resist, Kramer adds
that the basis for Lewis's attitude toward his surroundings
is
distinctly negative. He saw his society with a terribly
sharp sight, but what he saw were glossy surfaces that
he knew to be surfaces. Unable to find a center in
himself, he found only emptiness again in the society
to which he eagerly sought to attach himself.5
These views echo what was said first, and in many

ways best, by Thomas K. Whipple in his early, intuitive

article "Sinclair Lewis," first printed in the New Republic

 

and later in Spokesmen. Whipple, while conceding that
Lewis's "knack for mimicry is unsurpassed," points out
that it is "all charged with hostile criticism and all
edged with satirical intent which little or nothing es-

6

capes." The hollowness Whipple finds in the author's

characters:

The central vacuum at the core of these people is
the secret which explains their manifestations. Having
no substance in themselves, they are incapable of

 

5"Sinclair Lewis and the Hollow Center," The
Twenties, Poetry and Prose: .20 Critical Essays, eds.
Richard E. Langford and William E. Taylor (DeIand, Florida,
1966), p. 67.

 

6Spokesmen: Modern Writers in American Life
(New York, 1928), pp. 208-209.

 

 

 

being genuine. They are not individual persons;
they have never developed personality.

The point is well made, but the question which goes begging
is, What, indeed, was Lewis's concept of personality?
Whipple proceeds:

No special discernment is needed to detect a self-
delineation in Lewis's novels, for after all the world
he deals with is no more the world of Carol Kennicott,
George F. Babbitt, Martin Arrowsmith and Elmer Gantry
than it is the world of Sinclair Lewis. He belongs to
it as completely as do any of his creatures.7

He deprecates Lewis's "poverty of invention or imagination,"
noting that

Closely allied to [his fondness and aptitude for
mimicry] is his extreme dependence on his own experi-
ence and on his power of observation. . . . Further-
more, it is significant that his interest is in social
types and classes rather than in individuals as human
beings. With few exceptions, his treatment of his
characters is external only; he confines himself
largely to the socially representative surface,

rarely exercising much insight or sympathy. He is
above all a collector of specimens.

The burden of Maxwell Geismar's essay is similar.
While conceding that Lewis displays "wit and eloquence and
artistic vitality," Geismar feels that the novelist lacks
a full understanding of the writer's craftsmanship, and
"operates in a sort of intellectual vacuum," and that
"Lewis himself, like his most typical figures, is the

Eternal Amateur of the national letters."9

 

7Spokesmen, pp. 214, 218.

81bid., pp. 218-219.

9"Sinclair Lewis: The Cosmic Bourjoyce," The Last
9; the Provincials (Boston, 1949), p. 147.

 

10

These views have been seconded and rephrased by
critics and reviewers to the extent to becoming common-
place. It now seems obvious that students of Lewis have
been so preoccupied with the diverting sounds and surfaces
that it is difficult for them to discuss anything else.
Apparently no one has seen the need to show that the curious
inconsistencies and weaknesses and lack of "soul" in Lewis's
characters may comprise the technique by which an anxious
and insecure artist felt compelled to dominate and control
his creations--by hobbling them with defects or by exagger-
ating them with ludicrous names or attributes. It can be
shown, however, with a great deal of evidence, that not
only did Sinclair Lewis have a fundamental need to invent
fictional characters and move them about like the figures
in chess (a game which became a passion of his later years),
and to assume their roles in speech and action, but that
role playing must be in fact the essential orientation for
a study of Lewis on three levels: in his personal and
social life, in his activity as an artist, and most inter-
estingly, in the reliance of his characters upon role play-
ing as the major device by which they achieve any degree of
self-esteem or success. It can further be seen that role
playing served Sinclair Lewis the double purposes of es-
cape from painful reality and a search for an identity, or
at least an image, for himself which would attract the
attention and approval of those whose love he dared not

hope for. If, at the center, Lewis's life and works seem

ll

I'hollow," it is because he was too much preoccupied with
piecing together a personality and acting out the parts,
and--like Eliot's "Prufrock"--taking time "To prepare a
face to meet the faces that you meet."

The details of Sinclair Lewis's early life have
been related many times by reviewers and critics, by his
two wives, Grace Hegger and Dorothy Thompson, and by the
author himself, with varying points of view and emphases.
Schorer's biography stresses the loneliness, awkwardness,
sensitivity and gullibility of the young "goofy boy" in
Sauk Centre, Minnesota, who invented screw-people and key-
people as companions for solitary games. Young Harry did
not share the interests of his older brothers Fred and
Claude, and he was not well enough equipped for physical
competition; consequently, he withdrew into fantasies and
books. Schorer concludes, "In what was often a peculiarly
empty life there were many hours that only reading could

£111."10

The effect of his mother's death when Harry was
six years old has been passed over too perfunctorily, how-
ever. True, the boy's father, Dr. E. J. Lewis, remarried
a little more than a year later, but a sensitive six-year-
old does not experience the death of his real mother with-
out deep, if silent, shock. Her name had been Emma

Kermott, "and nothing is known of the Sauk Centre life of

this faint figure except for the sparse and yellowing

10Sinclair Lewis: Ag_American Life, p. 25.

 

12

record of her end in the files of the newspaper."11

Perhaps it was a projection of this mother remembered from
early childhood that Lewis later sent to assail Gopher
Prairie in the guise of Carol Kennicott, the character

whom he also identified with himself.12

One puzzles over
the similarity between the names Kermott and Kennicott
until it becomes clear that in Lewis's handwriting the
hour humps of "r-m" in the family name, evenly divided,
produce the double "n" in the character's. Perhaps this
similarity of last names is more evidence of Lewis's desire
to identify with Carol.
However the loss of his mother may have affected

Harry, there is no doubt of the lasting power over him of
Dr. Lewis, a methodical and critical ex-schoolteacher
turned country doctor. He was the father, as Grace Hegger
Lewis wrote,

whose approval he was constantly seeking or angrily

rejecting, the father who had said and never ceased

to say: "Harry, why can't you do like any other boy

ought to do?" I know nothing of psychoanalysis but

even I can see that the influence of the father-

figure at this early age may have created the neuro-

ses from which he later suffered.l3

And yet, "How many characteristics of his father the author

son displayed!" wrote Dorothy Thompson in her touching

 

ll§££g£§££,£gg£§: Ag_American Life, p. 16.

 

12Ibid., p. 286 and n.

13With Love From Gracie (New York, 1955), pp. 90-91.

 

13

memoir, citing Lewis's insistence on exact routines, his
passion for order and detail, his punctiliousness in
financial dealings, and inquiring, "Are such characteris-
tics the result of early environment, even though one
rebels against it, or are they congenital?"14

Harry's older brother Claude was the son who earned

the father's praise and approval. Claude, who later became
a physician also, presented unbeatable competition for
Harry in sports and in his leadership of the neighborhood
"gang." If the younger boy tried to join Claude and his
friends, he was invariably "ditched" by the gang's
"commando-chief, Charley McCadden." Long afterward Lewis
wrote that "for sixty years I have tried to impress my
brother Claude," and acknowledged that it "has been my
chief object and my chief failure."

I had always failed to startle Claude's gang at
skating, diving, shooting prairie chickens, or bobbing
for fish through the ice, so I would have to overwhelm
them with strictly high-class intellectual feats. All
right, then I'd become a reporter, and then they'd be
sorry!15 -_—_

It is certain that the combined effects of his own

mother's death, the disapproval of the stern father, and

the lifelong rivalry with his brother Claude (whom the

 

l4Dorothy Thompson, "The Boy and Man from Sauk
Centre," Atlantic Monthly, CCVI (November, 1960), 44-45.

 

15"I'm an Old Newspaperman Myself," The Man from
Main Street, eds. Harry E. Maule and Melville H. Cane
(New York, 1963), pp. 76, 79.

 

 

l4

author sought to transform into an ally in maturer years
and who became a surrogate-father after E. J. Lewis died),
and Harry's own ungainly appearance resulted in the "crip-
pling process" observed by Schorer. The youth, searching
for some identity which it was permissible to assume, be-
came a play actor, a show-off, and an escapist into liter-
ary adventures. A boy could not see that men like Dr.

E. J. and Claude grew up confident and unassailable behind
cold walls of custom and rules made up by themselves, and
other men like them, to discourage nonconformity or criti-
cism from the outside. Such a life is secure, involving
few risks, requiring little imagination.

Imagination the young Harry had in abundance; it
furnished the structure of his refuge during childhood and
the source of his vigor and pride in manhood. It became
his excuse for being, and at last, his living. It was the
paradoxical quality which both his wives found most en-
dearing about Sinclair Lewis, and it was the weapon by
which he kept them and his friends, as well as his environ-
ment, at a distance. "And yet how little I seem to know of
this man with whom I had such a close relationship--or was
there nothing more to know?" Grace Hegger Casanova wrote
wistfully. "Didn't he--and I--1ive as much on the surface
of life as did most of his characters, superbly as one

heard and saw them but whose inwardness was unexplored?"l6

 

16with Love From Gracie, p. 334.

 

15

In an unsent letter to Lewis, written in 1938 or

1939, Dorothy Thompson had expressed similar feelings while
enduring an agony of separation and hostility from her hus-
band.

I am not happy, because . . . I have loved a man who

didn't exist. Because I am widowed of an illusion.

. . . I do not "admire and respect you." I have loved

you. . . . I am a woman--something you never took the

trouble to realize. My sex is female. I am not in-

sensitive. I am not stupid. I do not love you for

your wit, or for "nostalgia"--my nostalgia antedates

our marriage. I loved you, funnily enough, for your

suffering, your sensitivity, your generosity, and your

prodigious talent. . . . I do not even know you--the

you of the present moment.17

It was a phenomenon of Lewis's life that his un-

spent aggressive rage should have made him so much of a
stranger to those who loved him. The psychoanalyst Karen
Horney has observed that, in addition to Freud's diagnosis
of personality disturbances traced to traumata sustained
during developing childhood sexuality, many individuals
suffer from what she describes as the "basic neurosis,"
the apprehension that one's environment is essentially
inimical, which causes children to adopt a defensive or
hostile posture that endures for a lifetime.18 In the case

of Harry Lewis, it is a safe deduction that a similar de-

fensive orientation toward his surroundings accounts for

 

17Vincent Sheean, Dorothy and Red (New York, 1964),
pp. 277-278.

 

18The Neurotic Personality gf Our Time (New York,

1937).

16

the intense hostility which T. K. Whipple detected in
Lewis's early writings.

. . . of one thing there can be no doubt: that he
[Lewis] has hated his environment, with a cordial and
malignant hatred. That detestation has made him a

satirist, and has barbed his satire and tipped it with
venom. . . . Years of malicious scrutiny have gone into

the making of his last four volumes [Main Street,
Babbitt, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry]. Such observation
is but one sign of a defensive attitude. Undoubtedly,
his hostility is only a reply to the hostility which
he has had himself to encounter in a practical
society.l9

Linked to this evident hostility toward his milieu

was a generous amount of aggression directed against him-

self, apparently a punishment for being found inexplicably

lacking in commendable qualities by his father and brothers,

a self-limiting penalty manifest in his sometimes depre-
catory references to himself (at other times overcompen-
sated for in inflated self-congratulation and his insis-
tence on nothing but praise), and his habitual role as a
helpless and appealing child by which he captured the

affections of women. By emphasizing his obscure and un-

promising boyhood, as he did repeatedly in his autobi-

ographical sketches, Lewis could make his achievement seem

incredible and gigantic, as when he purported to show how

"a Harry Sinclair Lewis, son of an average doctor in a

Midwestern prairie village" ever "became a writer at all,"

by speculating:

 

19Spokesmen, p. 219.

 

17

A good many psychologists have considered that in
such a case, the patient has probably by literary exhi-
bitionism been trying to get even with his schoolmates
who could outfight, outswim and outlove, and in general
outdo him. Of me that explanation must have been partly
true, but only partly, because while I was a mediocre
sportsman in Boytown, I was neither a cripple or a
Sensitive Soul.20

The "Sensitive Soul," in this context, suggests the effemi-

nate, shrinking flower stereotype which Lewis repeatedly

abused in his novels. Lewis usually derided the notion of

"sensitivity" in himself, because with these emotional

connotations it was incompatible with his basic need to

present himself as a hearty man among men. He preferred

to allude to it as "awareness."

Crowded out of the highroad to vigorous young man-

hood by others, especially Claude, who traveled it with

more assurance, and shunning the ostensible alternatives
of invalidism or deviation, Lewis confined himself to a
course of largely vicarious living in a realm peopled by
companions of his own invention, encountering situations

into which he could project himself as the hero, or play

all the parts--essentially the antisocial world of a covert

delinquent.

Many antisocial acts, seemingly motiveless, can be
understood when they are considered as not due to
conscience defects, socio-economic factors or cultural
influences, but rather as idiosyncratic reactions to
the subject's own emotional feelings projected on to
some person or some situation, and then reacted
against by the subject.

 

PP-

20
70-71.

"Breaking into Print," The Man from Main Street,

 

18

Projection is a primitive, narcissistically based
defense mechanism. The use of such a mechanism indi-
cates an awareness of personal separateness and indi-
viduality and of external objects, but the individual
quality of such outside objects may never enter into
the subject's consideration--fee1ings and ideas are
merely projected on to an external "something." The
person using such an emotional mechanism reacts only
to his own ideas and feelings perceived by him as if
they originated in the external person or the external
situation. Ego growth and relationship capability can
remain stunted at this level where the ego relates
only to its own projected images, with increasing
narcissistic-autistic investment. Since there is no
real relationship to people in the environment as
individual human beings, meaningful incorporation
and introjection do not occur.2

In other words, people sometimes exhibit a hostility toward
their surroundings which is commensurate with the powerful
threat they attribute to some outside source, but which in
reality generates from within themselves. The above pass-
age, quoted from the recent literature of psychiatry, not
only seems to forecast the kind of personality Harry Lewis
was to become, but can also offer an explanation for the
self-righteous tone of his attacks upon society, the oddly
limited, juvenile emotional fabric of his most highly
developed heroes, and the aura of man-eating menace
accompanying many of his women.

Although Professor Schorer pointedly refers to

Lewis's "reticences about sex, he does not choose to
suggest that the author was afflicted by a castration

anxiety which rendered him at least partially impotent.

 

21William M. Easson, "Projection An An Etiological
Factor in 'Motiveless' Delinquency," Psychiatric Quarterly,
XLI (April, 1967), 228-229.

 

19

His wives were not notably reticent. Grace Lewis recalled
the game they used to play: "trying to make our marriage
ideal."

Having separate bedrooms was another [game]--the two
rooms off the bungalow living room, each with its own
small bath, we knew would help preserve the romance
which might be clouded if I had to see him shave and
he beheld me tousled in the morning. We met at break-
fast fresh and crisp, changed clothes before dinner,
prided ourselves on our imagination and intelligence
about the job of marriage. We did not know, I don't
think we ever knew, that "the jolly little coarse-
nesses of life" were what drew two people comfortably
together.22

She also reported "situations in which Hal was trying to
turn love or fancy on and off like a faucet and was hurt
when the faucet did not function as he wished." On the
painful subject of Lewis's "philandering," his first wife
suggests that usually his visits to other women were for
monologue-style conversational purposes, and "if the
woman were very pretty and she told him that she had
listened to him talk, and nothing more, he would be furious
at the lost opportunity."

He seemed unable to recognize that the sexual act
was not important to him, that making love was rather
a nuisance, and though he was essentially masculine
and abnormalities of any kind were shocking to him,
he could not supply the confident and robust elements
which make for success in a love affair. As he did
not believe in his own capacity to evoke love, it
may be that this realization of his inadequacy drove
him to the solace of drink.

In his novels there are no truly passionate love
scenes because he did not know how to create the truly
passionate men or women to inspire them.23

 

22With Love From Gracie, p. 57.

23Ibid., p. 325.

20

In a letter to Lewis at the occasion of their

separation, Dorothy Thompson refers to an admission of his:

But you said to me once, half whimsically, half apolo-

getically, "I exist mostly above the neck." Well, I

understood that. So do I. . . . People like you and

me build up images, sometimes, and fall in love with

them.24
Revelations like these, placed alongside the remark Dorothy
attributes to Claude Lewis, that "Harry had a huge inferi-
ority complex. Had it as a kid," and added to internal
evidence in Lewis's first seven books, point toward an
inescapable conclusion that, although not totally incapaci-
tated sexually, Lewis was often severely inhibited by his
emotional anxieties and by his imaginative compulsion for
role playing. Uncertain of the role he should assume other
than that of a child (both women wrote about knowing in-
stinctively that he was a "child" and needed to be pro-
tected), Lewis masked his confusion with hostility. He
accused each wife of trying to humiliate him or dominate
him. When his sons were little boys, he seemed to regard
them as rivals. He traveled far and often from his fami-
lies, possibly to avoid the real responsibility of pro-
longed intimacy, although the role of traveler is in many
ways enviable, affording one infinite changes of scene,
varieties of faces to scrutinize, habits to watch, speech

to join in and overhear, situations and plots to conjure

up, games to play by oneself or with an acquaintance, new

 

24Dorothy and Red, p. 267.

 

21

poses to take up, diverting masquerades to attribute to
other unassuming travelers. All these entertainments can
be bought under the pretext of doing research for the next
novel. But the theme of all these activities is still

"escape." As a sort of voyeur-voyageur, one experiences

 

the illusion of not having to stay in character, of being

someone else ("Bunburying,' Oscar Wilde would have called
it) and enjoying a delicious Charade in the presence of
unwitting common travelers, or, to switch the players,
being a keen-eyed observer-reporter of any random group
and purporting to see their secret lives of comedy,
tragedy, and oddity.

Sinclair Lewis has been commended as both an ob-
server and a reporter of the American social scene, and
scarcely anyone has failed to praise his gift for mimicry
of national idiom or his ear for accent or speech pattern.
But it is evident that these and other Lewisian techniques
were outgrowths of a more deeply fundamental, organic need
for an escape-defense into role playing and projecting,
and that by arbitrarily assuming a variety of characters
and traits, he tried to subdue and control the people near
him in real life, chiefly by some form of aggression
through speech. When one probes to discover a cause for
such a basically juvenile approach to living, one must
conclude that Lewis's emotional development was checked

midway in his youth, possibly as a consequence of his

mother's death, but more probably because rivalry with his

22

brothers and the cool disapproval of his father denied
Harry Lewis his full male role, a condition which is at
the bottom of the novelist's palpable rage and hostility
toward his environment, noted by Whipple.

Further inquiry would strongly suggest that Sinclair
Lewis belonged to that unhappy group of self-defeating
people who wish to perpetuate a childish emotional posture
which both alleviates and reinforces deep inferiority feel-
ings. Such individuals suffer lifelong feelings of help-
lessness and isolation, connive for the love or appro-
bation of their usually authoritarian parents, accept mere
noticing or pity as cheap substitutes for love because of
self-condemnation for unworthiness, and cannot accept love
when it is given. They are often thrown into confusion by
success or victory, avoid self-examination that might dis-
cover a remedy for their anxieties, demand perfection from
themselves and from others, will not abide criticism, and
frequently have childish fantasies of solitary splendor and
omnipotence in situations where authority figures, like
parents, are belittled or controlled.25 The occurrence of
these behavioral patterns in the life of Sinclair Lewis,
and their parallel incidence in the actions of characters
he created, must not be overlooked. Placed in this con-

text, Lewis's impersonations, masquerades and "stunts" can

 

25See Samuel J. Warner, Self-Realization and Self-
Defeat (New York, 1966), for an extensive discussion of
this kind of behavior.

 

23

be seen to function not only as escapes from the responsi-
bility of being oneself, but as maneuvers for punishing
himself and others: himself, by presenting a pathetic or
inferior or ridiculous pose to excite the attention of an
audience; others, meaning those whose affection for him
was vital, by implying that they were responsible for the
painful straits to which he had been reduced. Thus,
Lewis's typical clown-roles as waiter, chauffeur, shoe
clerk, or tourist were probably more than whims to amuse
his friends; they also appear to have been dramatizations
of his own fear of insignificance, and a childish posture
carried over from efforts to appear innocuously pleasing
in the sight of his father.

The earliest recorded instance of Harry Lewis's
role playing is in a recollection by a family friend that
the boy announced during a visit, "I eat grass like cows!"
got down on hands and knees in the yard, and actually ate
a good amount of it. Another friend recalled the intensity
with which Lewis played Robin Hood in boys' games. Lewis's
own self-ironic memory of threatening to become a reporter
in vengeful compensation for his feeble physical skill is
quite revealing, in that it associates a projected role
with a juvenile power play designed to dominate or impress
others.

"Impress." This word has key significance in the
life and works of Sinclair Lewis. It appears in the youth-

ful Harry's notebooks, indicating his satisfaction at

24

attentions he received for various performances. It occurs
in Lewis's interpretation of his relationship with his
brother Claude, who became his surrogate father after B. J.
Lewis died. It provides crucial motivation for the actions
of Hike and little Mr. Wrenn in Lewis's first two books.
But most strikingly the word reveals the creative pattern
of an author who lacked the confidence to gain approval
through normal avenues of social intercourse, and could
seldom endure contact with others without a grandstand play
for attention or the support of several faked personalities.
Such role playing sometimes extended to the assumption of
fictitious names and the wearing of false whiskers. When
one remembers Allan Updegraff's observation that Lewis was
the only man he knew who ever learned to be charming, it

is hard to avoid suspecting that the charming gentleman was
another role added to the Lewis repertoire.

Accounts of entertainment by Lewis the imperson-
ator abound, Schorer indicates, but especially interesting
are the characters and speeches, invented by Lewis for
trial performances before friends, that were transcribed
almost verbatim into his novels. George Jean Nathan's
memoir particularly records recitations by prototypes of
Babbitt and Elmer Gantry, as well as Lewis's ability to
speak with a variety of dialects and accents, sometimes

with one style inside another, while standing conspicuously

25

26 While there is little doubt of

on a table in a bar.
Lewis's deep satisfaction at his own role playing versa-
tility, it is most important to recognize the direct link
between these performances calculated to impress friends
and win their approval, and his means of earning a living.
It shows the special, self-destructive intimacy between
Sinclair Lewis's personal life and his most successful art:
only by escaping the dreaded insignificance of Harry Lewis
from Sauk Centre, pretending to be Someone Else, testing
the disguise before an audience and then decking out the
full character with carefully staged costume and props,

did the author venture a new work for sacrifice before his
critics. Professor Schorer also offers evidence that Lewis
identified himself very closely with other, earlier heroes,
particularly "Hawk" Ericson, the pioneering flyer from

Minnesota, in The Trail of the Hawk. T. K. Whipple's

 

criticism of Lewis's "extreme dependence on his own experi-
ence and on his power of observation" can thus be viewed
not as an exhibition of scientific insistence by Lewis
upon authentic detail, but primarily as habitual rigidity
in his almost ritualistic role fantasies and personality
inventories.

Another curious aspect of Lewis's need for roles
is his fondness for aliases, particularly in his corres-

pondence. An early letter of his to William Rose Benet

 

26"Sinclair Lewis," The Intimate Notebooks of
George Jean Nathan (New York, 1932), pp. 8-21.

 

 

26

in May of 1908 is signed, "Affectionately/ HSL/ variously/

 

 

Hal,/ Red/ Sink. Lewis Esq/ 23 El. mult/ y generalmente/

 

 

malos." To Jack London in September, 1910, he was "Sin-
cerely,/ Sinclair Lewis/ otherwise/ Hal/ alias/ Red." To
his wife Grace he was sometimes "Toby" or "H." In his ex-

tensive correspondence with Alfred Harcourt he is "s. l."
or "SL" or "slewis." Of course, his first book, the

juvenile Hike and the Aeroplane, was issued under a pseudo-

 

nym and dedicated to his parents. A copy at Yale is ironi-
cally inscribed, "To Sinclair Lewis from the author, Tom
Graham, his altered ego." It is not clear whether the
alteration was performed by the publisher, A. Stokes and
Company, or by the author himself, but the dedication "To
Edwin and Isabel Lewis, the Author's Oldest Friends," is
ambiguous in that it calls attention to his relationship
in an inferior role--that of son to parents--but denies
them their proper roles by relegating them to the secondary
status of "friends." When Hike was published in 1912,
Harry Lewis was twenty-seven years old.

Other variations in Lewis's theme of dramatic
disguise must be noted. Being a traveler appealed to
Lewis more than the travel itself. The role is one which
lends an air of importance to mere restless searching,
while one is at liberty to use and dispose of several
fictitious identities, even though much time must be spent
in idleness from work. Being well traveled pays dividends

to the aspiring snob, who enjoys appearing knowledgeable

27

about foreign parts and customs, and cultivated in his
tastes. Travel means danger to people who are insecure,
because it suggests abandonment of one's familiar identity
and a journey into unknown and possibly hostile surround-
ings, but although travel may seem threatening, the actual
risks are few, and one can return from a trip abroad or
around the country as if from a great victory. Escape from
self through travel is an important theme in Sinclair
Lewis's early works, not for the insights which this form
of education provides for the protagonists, but for the
opportunities they gain to try something new, be someone
different. Both Mark Shorer and David J. Dooley27 have
stressed the yearning of the Lewis character for freedom,
indicated by the drive to break out of a confining existence
to go traveling. But untimately for both Lewis and his
characters, freedom is a terrifying condition; they content
themselves with a flamboyant sortie into the dangerous
existence, and return to approximately the former condition
of confinement, not because they are strong, like James's
Isabel Archer, but because they are weak and chastened.

Not content to play various parts in his own life,
Lewis often maneuvered other people into situations where
they were obliged to play roles with him or opposite him.
The games he played at meals or while traveling are

examples of this ploy. But more revealing were the parts

 

27Eflg A33 2: Sinclair Lewis (Lincoln, 1967).

 

28

he forced his wives to play, sometimes with himself as the
target, and sometimes with the roles reversed. Grace be-
came the idealized "playmate," the cool, intuitive, high-
born maiden of romantic fantasy; Dorothy was cast as the
hearty comrade and fellow traveler. Both women seem to
have done duty as a mother figure as well. When they re-
fused to continue in the characters he had devised for
them, however, Lewis would angrily accuse his wives of
trying to change him and wreck his career, and would attempt
to "punish" them by long absences, while at the same time
soothing his conscience with many letters protesting his
need for their love and companionship. These actions are
similar to the patterns of a neurotic, self-defeating per-
sonality filled with conflicting hostilities, directed
both outward toward real or suspected threats of annihi-
lation and inward in a drive to belittle or degrade him—
self.

Within this framework certain puzzling aspects of
Lewis's artistic career can be seen more clearly. Lewis's
preference for an episodic structure over definite plot may
be an outgrowth of the endemic planlessness in his own life
patterns, which were essentially negativistic in their
orientation toward escape and reaction against authority
and established conventions. Lack of plot organization
permits an author to feel that he is creatively free, and
improvising with great virtuosity; but it also has a

limiting effect upon the development of characters, who

29

seem not to move from inner direction along definite lines
of action as maturely conceived characters should, but
because the omnipotent author sends them. These powers

of control Lewis seemingly could not surrender.

The problem of Lewis's confused point of View,
noted by Whipple and Schorer, which appears sometimes to
support his protagonists and causes, then inexplicably to
patronize or ridicule them, may also have an explanation.
Such ambiguity or irony is a device for avoiding full
responsibility for one's ideas, i.e., by withholding full
approval; it is also a defense against anticipated criti-
cism that the author was too patently sympathetic with his
characters, or idealized them. Finally, the blurring
properties of ambiguous point of view can be interpreted
as a self-limiting factor, a built-in flaw in the artist's
creativity.

The awkward handling or avoidance of sex in
Lewis's novels is another interesting mode of self-
limitation. If the novelist's embarrassment seems rooted
in a quasi-Dickensian primness and propriety in deference
to public tastes, it must also be remembered that the works
of Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, Sherwood Anderson and Dreiser
discovered robust aspects of fiction which Lewis never
explored. For Lewis's characters sex is either platoni-
cally' titillating cm'savagely disagreeable. Lewis denied

them mature, fulfilling male and female sexual roles,

3O

curtailing their success and enjoyment of love as he seemed
to ruin his own satisfaction.

Sinclair Lewis's creative shortcomings in plot
deficiency, fragmented point of view, and sexual aphasia
may easily be attributable to needs for self-limitation
and escape from self through fantasy-role playing. There
remains the problem of his method in creating and develop-
ing characters. It seems inconsistent that a novelist who
prided himself on his researches for authentic detail--and
who demonstrated remarkable abilities to observe and
remember minutiae--did not conceive of lifelike, fleshed-
out characters comparable, say, to Dreiser's Carrie
Meeber, Clyde Griffiths or Frank Cowperwood. The expla-
nation is that, although Lewis could have created such
characters with his considerable inventive powers, he was
not inclined to do so. He had too much hostility toward

these representations of himself, and not enough compassion.

Perhaps Lewis's undue emphasis on "characters"
as phenomena rather than "character" as human quality
contributes to the lingering moods of superficiality and
imbalance in his novels. Apparently Lewis thought it
sufficient to wind up his actors, give them parts, and
propel them through a series of routines. Critics have
protested that Lewis's characters are caricatures, that

they are "flat," "hollow," or "soulless." The truth is

31

that they are not permitted to evince any inner resources,
lest they become independent and escape the author's con-
trol. It must be conceded, as Mary Colum pointed out, that

Lewis develops his characters by tagging: "He labels the

material instead of transforming it."28

Evidently Lewis's
conception of personality, both for himself and for his
characters, was that it consisted of a largely fortuitous
aggregation of facets, guises, and attitudes. One might
relish the knowledge that one contained several selves,
some secretly hidden and waiting for dramatic discovery
or revelation, through some accident or significant sym-
bolic act. Thus, Hike is really a capable aircraft pilot
and adventurer as well as a football hero; Mr. Wrenn is
really a poet and actor and traveler underneath his occu-
pation of novelty-store clerk; Carl Ericson is a business
executive who is really a pioneer aviator, and so forth.
Like one who decorates an empty winebottle with varicolored
candle drippings, Sinclair Lewis builds his characters by
attribution, never allowing them an Opportunity to dis-
cover themselves, but always insisting on discovering fgg
them; suddenly contriving new characteristics to suit the
anticipated needs of the next episode. It is, in the last
analysis, an adolescent view of the Self.

The care with which Lewis selects occupational

roles for his characters indicates another set of

 

28"A Critical Credo," Scribner's Magazine, LXXIX
(April, 1926), 392.

32

prerequisites. Lewisian characters are essentially per-
formers, not producers. They are seldom shown at tasks
where the love of a man for his work gives him satisfaction
for having created objects of beauty and quality; rather,
they are providers of services--managers, salesmen, lucky
bright-idea men--with endless occasions for monologue and
dialogue, especially for acts of aggression-by-talking.
Suitable clothes they also must have, which Lewis drapes
over his effigies like signs: a bowtie, tweeds, white
flannels, voile dresses. His choices are particularly
interesting in view of Marshall McLuhan's recent obser-
vations that clothing, as an extension of the skin, is in
effect a costume which a person chooses to assume during
the performance of a role; and that the automobile, with
its seemingly infinite varieties of style and color, can
be thought of as an item of wearing apparel.29 This calls
further attention to Lewis's use of objects in role defi-
nition. Possessions and gadgets are not regarded as im-
personal objects, but as adjuncts of the Self, to which
some emotional residue must accrue. All the facets of a
fully dramatized character cannot be shown unless he is
carefully fixed in a setting of lesser brilliants that
reflect his tastes. Fearful or cheerful qualities are
even projected upon houses or other buildings with an

impressionism characteristic of Lewis's technique. These

 

29Marshall McLuhan, "Fashion: A 'Bore War,'"
Saturdaijvening Post, CCXLI (July 27, 1968), 29.

 

33

and other devices--the Significant Detail, the Dramatic
Gesture, and Capital Letters--especially the novelist's
celebrated fussiness about names for their denotative and
connotative effects in characterization, culminate in
masses of circumstantial detail which urge the assumption
that Lewis's people are carefully thought out and con-
structed. Nevertheless, despite the barrages of talk which
mask their loneliness and lack of purpose, these characters
are limited by two of the author's faults: his lack of
distance from them, and his tendency to press them into
four basic types.

Sinclair Lewis's prime characters are evolved from
four prototypes, each with its obverse: (1) the authority
figure, or "parent"; (2) the brother-friend, or foil; (3)
the mother-wife; and (4) some representation, either hero
or heroine, of Lewis's own personality. These four charac-
ter modes are treated either quite sympathetically or as
fear portraits--sometimes with an ambiguity which, curi-
ously, admits no middle ground. For example, sometimes
the authority-type will be conciliated and idealized, as
in Lewis's later characters of Max Gottlieb and Bruno
Zechlin, and at other times the "parent" roles will be
weakened and belittled, as for Mr. and Mrs. Golden in TEe

Job or the Applebys in The Innocents. Sometimes the

 

brother-friend is a boon companion, whom the hero can
excel in the most obvious ways; then again he may be

selfish and treacherous as a rival unworthy of the hero's

34

trust. The women are usually depicted as wives or poten-
tial wives, either passive and self-effacing or unstable
and threatening to the male. The heroic roles which
suggest Lewis himself--Wrenn, Hawk, Walter Babson, even
Carol Kennicott--betray a shifting viewpoint, from glorifi-
cation to deprecation, on the part of the author. These
four basic personality patterns can be traced to Lewis's
own self-limiting attitudes toward his social relationships
and his work, welling out of his conflicting needs to
punish himself and to escape the anguish of his existence
through fantasies and role playing. Lewis's critical con-
temporaries often remarked that he never fulfilled his
early promise of writing the truly definitive Great Ameri-
can Novel; that perhaps he lacked the necessary insight.

If these criticisms are valid, perhaps now it is possible

to suggest why.

CHAPTER II

HIKE AND THE AEROPLANE: FLIGHTS

 

OF FANTASY

It seems somehow quite fitting that Sinclair
Lewis, the notable chronicler of such American superboys
as Babbitt, Arrowsmith, and Cass Timberlane, should have
written a juvenile adventure as his first book for publi-
cation. The Frederick A. Stokes Company brought out Hike

and the Aergpiane in August, 1912, concealing the author's

 

 

identity with a fictitious "Tom Graham." Mark Schorer
notes from accumulated evidence that Lewis had written
Hike in three weeks during the summer of 1911, on an
assignment by the publisher, while he vacationed at
Provincetown, Massachusetts. In Schorer's view, the little
book was an amusement which paid for Lewis's more serious
preoccupation with early drafts of Qe£_H£. erge, and it
"appears to be a perfectly conventional adventure story

1

for boys, in the manner of Tom Swift." Conventional it

may be, but Hike and the Aeroplane is hardly a book which

 

 

 

1Sinclair Lewis: He American Life, pp. 189,

 

203-204.

35

36

should be brushed aside solely because it lacks literary
finesse. On the contrary, this hastily written volume
seems to spread out in plain view the basic emotional
patterns and motivating forces of the would-be Lewis hero:
the inordinate self-destructive tendencies implicit in risk
taking, the hysterical compulsion to perform melodra-
matically before a gaping audience, utter triumph over
rivals and comrades, the yearning for approval from father
and brother figures, and above all, the assumption of
assorted roles, carefully planned to exhibit the virtuosity
or facets of the central character. Lewis's attitude to-
ward the book seems to have been ambiguous, for although
he wrote that the transaction with Stokes "was deplorable
on all sides," he added, with a touch of pride in a letter
to Chauncey B. Tinker, "I believe the book is now worth a
lot of money."2 The dedication to his parents of an in-
ferior book like Hike may be interpreted as a gesture of
defiant sarcasm ("Here is your unpromising son's first
book") as well as a conciliatory appeal ("See, I offer my
first one to you"). Whether or not Lewis took pride in
the book is not, however, the point; the tacked-on quality
of the episodes in Hike suggests that Lewis was more con-
cerned with volume than superior writing. What matters is

that Lewis saw in the airplane a literary mechanism which

 

2Quoted in Sinclair Lewis: Hg American Life,

 

 

p. 189.

37

enabled a young man to act out heroic fantasies and to
become the spectacular focus of the groundlings' attention.
It must be emphasized that in the context of Hike

and the Aeroplane the theme of flying has an identifiable

 

emotional connotation. Flying is not treated primarily as
a scientific triumph or ultimately as a mode of speedy
transport as much as it is assumed to be a powerful property
of the self. For Hike flying is self-fulfillment, the
dramatization of a childish fantasy of omnipotence which
enables him to be utterly masterful, above all others. For
the author, whose breathless involvement is evidenced by
the shortness of his puppet-strings, Hike's flights seem a
form of retroactive triumph over unbeatable childhood com-
panions--schemes for evening up old inequities and for
making the humbled spirit soar, untouchable, over tiny and
ineffectual rivals. While he is flying, the hero is com-
pletely unrestricted: physically he is capable of any
maneuver, he needs few instructions, he improvises beauti-
fully, he scarcely ever runs out of fuel, and seldom needs
to pay for anything. On the ground, however, Hike is a
schoolboy subject to adult authority and harrassed by
self-doubt and fear of rejection by his peers. Even then,
the adults bend rules to accommodate this exceptional boy
and speak to him as an equal; his classmates, generally
subdued with awe and admiration, feel that they must per-
form some traditional hazing, half apologetically, and when

upperclass jealousy looms, Hike receives it gallantly as a

38

misdirected compliment. Hike is a Sir Galahad of the sky
on a (borrowed) flying steed, who teaches manners to the
peasantry, confronts villainy with fortitude, greets his
superiors with a mixture of deference and disarming fa-
miliarity, and shows himself as a good Sport and man of
unimpeachable integrity among his equals. When one has
been made unassailable, when one is the person to whom the
usual rules do not apply, a show of magnanimity costs
nothing.

The twenty-eight chapters of Hike and the Aero-

 

pieee recount approximately six months of hectic adventure,
from July to the end of football season at a boys' mili-
tary academy near Monterey, California. Each chapter is

a separate scene, or facet in Hike Griffin's energetic
young life, with only as much continuity between episodes
as is necessary to show the several sides of the hero,
without having to watch him grow appreciably. The mood
throughout the book is one of a youth playing perpetual
hookey, because the national interest of the United States
requires it. Generally, the episodes are exploited for
their wealth of melodrama, and are not employed as modes
of depicting character maturation. Lewis's assumption
seems to be that adventures are events which happen to a
hero, who remains essentially static; he does not bring
his unique resources to bear upon events and become fused
with them or change them. He is the picked man, the

selected victim of circumstances, sometimes the lucky guy,

39

sometimes the sacrificial goat about whom an author can
write extended feature articles. Because his chararacter
is totally attributed, rather than distinctly formed from
within, the Lewis hero always seems well rehearsed in his
roles, instead of motivated by the special dynamics of his
personality. In the unfolding of his story, then, the
hero's character is not revealed, it is accumulated.

It should not be surprising that the central
character of this boy's book is little more than a stereo-
type. But in an analysis of Lewis's motive and method, it
is difficult to see many differences between Hike and Carl

Ericson in The Trail ei the Hawk, except in intensity and

 

circumstantial detail.

In building up his concept of a principal character
or hero, Lewis customarily uses a montage method, showing
the same person in a cluster of tiny but typical attitudes,
with plausible props, and suitably framed with some per-
functory sticks of plot. Thus, one has glimpses of Gerald
("Hike") Griffin as youthful explorer, rescuer of a loyal
friend in danger, former captain of the freshman football
team at Santa Benicia Military Academy, and phenomenal boy
aviator who foils horse-thieves, moonshiners, industrial
profiteers, newspapermen, Mexican revolutionaries, and the
sinister Captain Willoughby Welch. It is as though the
reader were being subjected to a snapshot album of Hike's
summer and fall activities. In each episode Hike plays a

slightly different role, with a suitable costume for each:

40

khakis for exploring, nudity for swimming in the Potomac,
pajamas for romping in a Washington hotel, helmet and shin-
guards for football, a Balaclava aviator's helmet, overalls
and aluminoid-silk Flying Jacket for air travel, and
puttees and breeches for riding horseback. Clothing
changes are convincing external signs of the character's
alteration of role and mood, as well as evidences of the
diverse facets which somehow unite to form the mosaic of
himself.

The best physical description of Hike comes early

in the book:

Hike Griffin . . . was a boy of sixteen, with
straight shoulders that were going to become very
broad. He had a shock of the blackest hair that ever
grew, and quiet, gray eyes that never seemed to worry.
His mouth was strong, yet with little laughter-wrinkles
at the side, as though he saw life as an interesting
joke.3

The boy's friend, General Thorne of the Army Signal Corps,
remembers "his lean strong young body and his courteous
seriousness," but these are more attributions. Hike
Griffin never rises above the class of what might be
called a complimentary character.

The book's villains, P. J. Jolls, the aircraft

manufacturer, and Captain Welch, corrupt military adviser

to the Signal Corps on aeronautical affairs, are obliged

to play the roles of hypocrites. They are characterized,

 

3Tom Graham [Sinclair Lewis], Hike and the Aero-
plane (New York, 1912), pp. 1-2.

 

41

in part, by the occupations they had formerly held. The
devious Welch was a teacher of physics, electricity, light,
and heat at West Point before he became an "expert" on fly-
ing, and he had obtained a pilot's license in France during
the early days of aviation. Despite his beautiful manners
and impressive reputation, "Captain Welch was a man who
always seemed to be sneering--and usually was" (p. 22).
Mr. Jolls, with whom Welch is in collusion to secure a
lucrative military airplane contract, had made millions
"by selling patent medicines, shaving-soap, and fake mine-
stock" (p. 24) before buying up most of the aircraft market.
Later events expose Jolls as little more than a gangster,
while Welch is revealed as a gambler and embezzler who
flees to Mexico to become a mercenary leader of irregular
revolutionists.

Hike's faithful friend, Torrington ("Poodle")
Darby, is permitted a few roles as well. Although he lacks
young Griffin's physical assets and much of his impetuous
courage, Poodle is cheerful, witty, and "quick at the
books." He shows unsuspected talent as both poet and
detective, and as a campus intriguer at the academy.

The resourceful and friendly Lieutenant Jack
Adeler, Hike's idol, exhibits versatility. Not only the
inventor of a "hydroaeroplane" and a flight-record holder,
Adeler is rich, owns a ranch in Mexico, and had graduated
from Yale before joining the Signal Corps; he becomes a

military instructor at the boys' academy, and eventually

42

the leader of a troop of Boy Scouts. He possesses "the
kindliest disposition that a man ever had," and was "solidly
built and quick and quiet, and he liked to have Hike and
Poodle with him, and never was tired of answering their
questions" (p. 27).

Even the eccentric inventor of the tetrahedral
aeroplane, Martin Priest, must have his hidden dimension.
When the boys discover him at a secret aerodrome, Priest
is clothed in a white robe and sandals; his shoulder-
length hair is wild and dark, his beard long, his eyes
shining. A later description of the inventor suggests a
romanticized projection of Lewis himself, in the days be-
fore he met Grace Hegger. The boys return to Priest's
hideaway with the skeptical Lieutenant Adeler:

When they reached the secret valley . . . the
crank aviator was sitting on a soap-box, waiting for
them. He had cut his hair, in a rough way, and had
changed his crazy-looking white gown for overalls, a
blue flannel shirt, and a greasy sweater-jacket.
Poodle's opinion was that he had changed himself from
a crazy prophet into a tramp, a hobo mechanic; but
both Hike and Lieutenant Adeler said that he looked
like an Edison, with his broad forehead, slender
hands, and bright eyes (p. 28).

In a passionate confession to his new friends, Martin Priest
discloses that he was a graduate of "Massachusetts Tech."
who had been employed by a marine engine company; he had
embezzled funds to finance "aeroplane material" and his
wife's medical bills; had been convicted and sent to prison.

Upon his release, the inventor spent an inheritance on

world travel to witness developments in the emerging

43

aircraft industry, and at last retired to California to
construct the unique tetrahedral. There is also a sug-
gestion of paranoia in this creative man's personality:
when the unscrupulous Welch and Jolls capture Hike in a
plot to destroy the competitive Priest invention, they
press the youth to write a damaging letter forsaking the
inventor and his aircraft. Hike rufuses, predicting that
to Priest, such news would "break his heart--just when he's
getting over the feeling that the whole world is conspir-
ing against him. He's pretty fond of me. All that note
will do will be to send him out into the mountains again,
and probably make him give up the game entirely" (p. 138).
As they pursue a plan to discredit Martin Priest, Welch

and Jolls hope to release information of his criminal past
to the newspapers "to make [Priest] think he's disgraced
and he'll just disappear . . . he's pretty sensitive . . . "
(p. 159).

These are the principal characters whom Lewis
draws by the device of role-accretion--by assigning to them
the personality-building components of definite emotional
pattern, suitable clothes, a variety of occupations,
travel to widely separated points, and distinctive speech
habits. Remaining for consideration are some of the
dramatic roles which the people in Hike elect to play, or
are obliged to assume: the person who is stared at, the
player to the grandstand, the bluffer, the man in disguise,

and the actor of fantasies.

44

Gerald ("Hike") Griffin is properly the focus of
this juvenile adventure, and yet there are moments of
particular intensity when the atmosphere becomes electric,
and the excited hero becomes the fascinating object of
everyone's eyes. These peaks of intensity usually occur
while Hike is flying, and his awareness of being a star
attraction seems to have the palpable effect of changing
him into an hysterical, self-destructive performer, having
crossed the threshold from efficient, keen execution of
his duties into irrational recklessness. The historic
first flight of the tetrahedral (now christened in the
boy's honor Hike's Hustle i) sets the pattern. While
Martin Priest, Lieutenant Adeler and the boy soared aloft,
"Hike yelled with joy, for never had he felt more com-
fortable, more like some big eagle, than then" (p. 38).

He shouts and laughs, and is too interested to be afraid.

Then the craft passes over a city of mere earth-dwellers.

As they flew over Monterey, the people rushed from

the streets and gardens up to the tops of their Spanish
adobe houses. They were used to ordinary Jolls bi-
planes, but this great bird was different. On the
fashionable drives and tennis courts of the Del Monte
hotel, rich Eastern tourists gazed up till their
necks ached.

Hike yelled in Martin Priest's ear, "Let me try

her!" (p. 41).
The impulse to perform this sensational act of mastery,
linked as it is to the boy's knowledge of his acute con-
spicuousness in the public eye, is as irresistible as a

conquest. Furthermore, the gratuitous dividend of being

able to look down upon the fashionable and rich spectators

45

Monterey seems to afford Hike Griffin no little satis-
faction.

Similar "grandstand plays" accompany Hike's other
flights. In Chapter V Hike and Poodle resolve to save the
Passengers and crew of a "rich guy's" yacht, which is
smashing to pieces on the coast. Naturally, they will
have to use the Hustle, which possesses marvelous gliding
and soaring properties. After flying over the disabled
ship, Hike allows the Hustle to "hover over the wreck,
looking curiously down at the white faces that peered up
at him from amid spray" (p. 48). Casually, the young pilot
shuts off the aircraft's motor, while he studies the prob-
lem of rescue. In a preposterous sequence, Hike snatches
away seventeen of the thirty helpless people in a dangling
rOpe sling, then lands the plane on a makeshift platform
constructed of planks from the wreckage, before flying the
rest to safety.

In an effort to present a fair case for the Priest
tetrahedral before the Army's Aviation Board, the boys fly
the Hustle to Washington. They seem conscious of the
spectacle they present as they speed across the country:

. . . they passed over some thousands of people, who
stared up at their strange machine . . . " (p. 82). Land-
ing in a field near the capital, the youths camp for the

night. After five hours' sleep Hike awoke,

. . . and rushed down to the Potomac River, near which
they were landed. A crowd of farmers had gathered,

46

staring at the boys as though they had dropped from
Mars. Hike paid no attention to them, but, slipping
behind a big plane tree, pulled off his clothes and
dashed into the river (p. 83).
Again, there is occasion for performing an exhibitionistic
act while one is the target of amazed glances from one's
inferiors, especially when one feels that the usual social
rules and restraints do not apply in his case. This
assumption is further illustrated when, after flying the
tetrahedral over the city, Hike lands the aircraft on the
White House grounds.
During a demonstration flight for the benefit of
General Thorne, commander of the Signal Corps, Hike takes
his amazing craft up over Washington in a mounting cork-
screw pattern to twelve thousand feet.
Once up at that magnificent height, from which he could
see, through a slight mist, the capital city spread out
like a dim map, he stopped the motor, and came vol-
planing down like a lazy butterfly, till he was within
five hundred feet of the crowd atop the State, War,
and Navy Building (p. 88).
Then conscious that General Thorne was "watching through

a fieldglass up there on the War Building," Hike "shot her

up again, shut off the motor, and took his hands off the

 

 

levers" (p. 89). Flying while using no hands, while the
nation's capital gapes below, must unquestionably be the
apex of dramatized fantasy, a supreme act of fulfillment
for the adolescent ego which craves attention and thirsts
for celebrity. Still, Hike must continue to play the part

of a modest young citizen who is merely doing his duty.

47

Hike derives a different sort of satisfaction from
his virtuosity with a borrowed "Paulhin-Tatin monoplane"
with which the boy appears at the academy's campus to im-
press his peers by taking them up for rides. Especially
gratifying is the way Hike subdues his old critic, Sea
Lion Rogers, by flying him through a series of suicidal
stunts, while "the crowd below howled with terror" (p. 209).
Hike's pleasure at seeing the Class Tease humiliated is
almost sadistic:

This was quite too much triumph for Hike. He

felt very sorry for Sea Lion as he circled again, and

landed. He felt still sorrier as Sea Lion was lifted

out, and staggered off, silent. . . .
As Hike prepared to return the borrowed plane, "He knew
that there would be no more 'kidding,‘ and mighty little
more jealousy, the rest of the year" (p. 209). Rivals can
be neutralized, enemies slienced, doubters convinced by a
judicious demonstration of one's superior powers and
privileges; one's own rage can be cooled under cover of
an altruistic afternoon treat. In any case, it is an
exhibition of fantastic power.

In the final chapter of the book, Hike makes
another conspicuous gesture before the eyes of a cheering
crowd, at the Big Game against San Dinero Prep. The teams
had not scored during the first half, and at last Hike
Griffin got around end carrying the ball, with "practically

a clear field before him. The Santa Benicians were ready

to spring up and yell their 'hike, Hike, hike!'" (p. 271).

48

It is at such a moment when a boy sees his opportunity, and
a vision of his destiny unfolds. But Hike hands the ball
off, unnecessarily, to Left-Eared Dongan, Poodle's old
enemy, who makes a touchdown to win the game. On the sur-
face it is a highminded and generous sacrifice to permit an
old rival to win the credit, and it makes thrilling copy
for a boy's book. But in Hike's case the needless lateral
is another indication of hysterical risk-taking, a de-
structive and self-threatening impulse triggered by an
awareness of the crowd with countless eyes, watching, eager
for spectacle, demanding performance of a role.

Thus the person who is stared at, and the player
to the grandstand seem to be metamorphoses of the same
person, acting in a stimulus-response process. Only Hike
in the book plays these roles, and it is mainly he who
plays the part of bluffer, and always as a defense against
a threatening situation. Never do his bluffs fail. The
experienced bluffer is an actor, a creator of plausible
(but false) impressions that he is, or has, more than
Visible evidence would indicate. To win at bluffing, the
hero needs an agile imagination, courage which approaches
desperation, the willingness to take inordinate risks, a
knowledge of human behavior based on experience and obser-
vation, and irresolute opponents. Beyond these requisites,
habitual bluffing is as spectacularly self-destructive and
threatening as Russian roulette: it suggests that the

actor is not only careless of the consequences of failure,

49

but even hopes irrationally to lose. This background is
essential for understanding the surprisingly complex be-
havior of Hike Griffin, and the boy's startling resemblance
to the living Sinclair Lewis.

When challengers are confronted by the bluff,
opposition collapses, as in a victory-in-fantasy. From
the time Poodle and Hike bluff Martin Priest into dropping
his dangerous iron club in Chapter II, to the occasion when
Hike and Adeler frighten off a band of Mexican rebels in
Chapter XXVI, Hike has single-handedly outbluffed his
opponents at least a half-dozen times. In the dramatic
yacht-rescue episode, Hike coaches Poodle on a method to
bluff the survivors into building an emergency landing
stage. Using peremptory telegraphese, the boy commands:

"Going to land on yacht. You drop off first time I

circle. Here, take revolver--my back pocket. If

people scared, threaten 'em. Make 'em pile planks

so I can land. Make 'em get in--all of 'em--when I

land. Make 'em stay quiet when I start" (pp. 51-52).
Empowered by nothing more than his friend's effrontery,
Poodle takes charge, dominating even the rich owner and
the skipper.

The sailing-master was a commanding figure, even
in his drenched uniform. He was large and dignified
and used to ordering people about. But he came up to
Poodle as though that youth owned the yacht and the
sea (p. 53).

Hike looks down patronizingly from on high in the Hustle:

"Lean, sinewy Hike grinned--tired though he was from the

struggle with the winds--to see his chum taking command."

50

With initiative and a working plan, one can control adults,
even rich and experienced ones, and after manipulating them
can accept their effusive thanks, ordering them arbitrarily
to "Keep this out of the papers--don't say how you got
rescued" (p. 55).
During the sensational first flight to Washington
(Chapters VII-IX), Hike frightens away a determined band
of cattle rustlers in Kansas with a ruse.
Suddenly the bandits turned and galloped away,
as an infernal crackling, like a Gatling gun, came
from the Hustle. Hike had started the engine (p. 68).
Later, over the Tennessee mountains, the boys
decide to land for minor repairs. A gang of moonshiners
surrounds them, but Hike stiffens their leader with an
electric paralyzing wave, then bluffs the mountaineers
into loading him aboard the tetrahedral, while the youth
pretends to administer first aid. The mixture which they
fed the stunned leader was of "lubricating oil and liquid

wing-sheathing,’ but the act is enough to throw the moon-

shiners off guard, and the boys fly up aloft with their
passenger. Reviving in flight, the mountaineer tries to
overpower Hike. The young aviator, though armed with a
revolver, outmaneuvers his adversary with words:

"My dear sir, you're perfectly correct in thinking
I am bluffing, with this revolver. Don't care to
shoot you. But also, you're bluffing. You know if
you threw me overboard you'd never get to earth alive.
Look down there. If you make one single move, I'll

. . . the mountaineer, seeing the earth rapidly
swooping up at them . . . lost his steely nerve, and

51
begged for mercy. Never had he met a boy of sixteen
who played thus with life and death.
The boys put the plane down in a pasture, and
with a very courtly gesture, Hike motioned the
mountaineer to step out. With his revolver covering
him all the time, Hike bade him good-by.

The man crawled out and ran, never looking back.
Watching him, Hike said, "Well, I'm ashamed of

myself, now it's over . . . (pp. 78-79).
Significantly, Hike does not allow himself to relish his
triumph, although two consecutive bluffs have worked
against the mountaineers, and the enemy is utterly routed.
This reaction of shame instead of jubilation is to be
expected in a behavioral pattern of self-defeat, like the
giveaway touchdown to Left Ear during the crucial game,
which is a self-effacing ploy designed to win the highest
degree of acceptance and admiration.

During his captivity in Virginia by the forces of
Jolls, Hike bluffs an escape through the nearby marshes in
the dark. Though the attempt is doomed, the youth earns
the admiration of a sympathetic guard, Bat, and scores an
important psychological advantage. Bat later turns against
his fellow crooks, saves Jack Adeler's life, and makes a
confession implicating Jolls and his gang.

On one occasion when Hike is forced to defend
himself, bluffing does not suffice, but the satisfaction
of defeating the champion school wrestler more than com-
pensates for quick victory in a showdown. At a ceremonial
academy hazing, the jealous Taffy Bingham slaps Hike

publicly.

52

Hike stood up, very quick but very quiet. "You'll
fight me for that, Taffy," he said, "and you'll get
good and plenty licked. . . . I'll punch you now or
afterwards, whichever you want" (p. 189).

One would expect a bruising conflict; but no, Hike the
agile sophomore subdues the senior wrestler with three
tricky punches, much in the same fashion that frail Mr.
Wrenn was to overwhelm the shipboard bully on a cattle
boat to England. The apparently insuperable opponents
topple like clumsy Goliaths; confrontation by the sincere
and highminded Lewis hero, and their own vulnerability
show these straw villains to have been bluffers who have
little character or substance to support them. They are
vanquished totally, like the hated enemies in adolescent
fantasies.

Hike's encounters with the Welch-led insur-
rectionists during his foray into Mexico offer two more
occasions for dramatic displays of assurance. Having
landed the tetrahedral mistakenly among the revolutionists,
Hike reports to the officer in command that he is "under
Colonel Welch's orders," creating the impression of being
on the rebels' side. The trick works long enough for Jack
Adeler to prepare the plane's machine gun for action, and,
of course, the enemy are scattered (pp. 233-234). Subse-
<quently, Hike is able to bluff a reluctant Texan into

IProviding gasoline for the Hustle on credit, saying that

Adeler will pay later.

53

"He'll pay for it right now, or he won't get it;
not at this gara-jee," began the Texan, and stopped
short, for Hike was looking at him across the sight
of a leveled revolver.

The Texan threw up his hands and whined . . .
(p. 247).

In compensation for outbluffing the Texan's bluster, Hike
receives not only aviation fuel, but also the more volatile
vapors of flattery:
When the loading was finished, the Texan suddenly

smiled. "I thought you was a boy," he stated, "but I

take it back. You're crazy, all right--airyplanes!

But they grow nerve, where you come from . . . (p. 248).
Chided and treated like a boy even in his twenties, young

Harry Lewis never received such words of commendation from

his parents, to whom he dedicated Hike and the Aeroplane.

 

A variation of the theme of bluffing is the use
of disguises, either deliberately intended, or attributed
by error. Perhaps the most curious episode in the book is
a grand tour of role playing which combines bluffing,
switched identities, a disguise, an invented history of
many job occupations, slang dialect, and the implication
that biographical facts become outrageously garbled in the
newspaper reports a celebrity reads about himself--the
last, a sort of fun-house mirror image. This scene is the
bizarre fake interview by the Washington reporter when the
boys are recovering from their transcontinental flight.

A grinning bell-boy appears at their hotel room to warn
them of a persistent reporter, saying, "He t'inks he's a
winner 'cause he can put down on a paper wot a guy ain't

said and draw him like he don't look, both to once" (p. 99).

54

Hike asks Poodle to fend off the reporter by telling him
that "Mr. G. J. H. [Gerald Jerry Hike] Griffin begs will

he please beat it." But the boys think of a better prank
to play on the obnoxious newsman: they will disguise the
bell-boy in Hike's pajamas, and let the reporter interview
him, to the amusement of them all. The bell-boy proves to
be a liar of great virtuosity. Inventing various roles for
himself, he informs the interviewer that his father was a
colonel with family roots in English nobility, that he
himself had been a miner, cabin-boy at sea, a hobo, a

New York newsboy, a Denver bellhop, and a machinist before
aspiring to be an aviator. When the reporter becomes angry
at the bell-boy's impertinence, Hike appears from his
hiding place under the bed to set the situation right and
to promise the reporter a "real interview" later in the
lobby, concluding in the English idiom with which he
usually puts on his manners, "Really, I'm awf'ly sorry,

old man" (p. 104). The scene is as full of counterfeit
identities as a wax museum.

‘Lewis cannot resist using the disguise device
again in Chapter XIII, when Poodle Darby turns detective
in a search for Hike's abductors. Having learned from
General Thorne's operatives that Mr. Jolls is at a
Washington hotel, Poodle orders "a suit of clothes 50's
I can make up as a kind of a tough kid" (p. 129). His
plan is to follow Jolls when the industrialist drives to

the gang's hideaway. A "rough coat, trousers and shirt"

55

together with a touring car, steamer rug and motoring
goggles complete the costume. When Jolls proceeds out
into the countryside, Poodle directs his own chauffeur to
overtake the other car and let him off beyond a hill. Then
the youth "looked like a jolly country-boy, certainly not
like a motorist who followed other people's cars" (p. 132).
This masquerade, with further refinements of an unsaddled
horse, a large straw hat and bare feet, enables Poodle to
shadow Jolls to the cabin where Hike is held prisoner.
A variant technique, by which a disguise and a
role of authority are attributed to Hike, occurs in
Chapter XXV. Hike has flown the Hustle to Torreas, Mexico,
to summon help from government troops in defending Jack
Adeler's ranch at Aguas Grandes. A Lieutenant Duros and
twelve soldiers are dispatched by the local commandant;
Hike flies them back just in time to save the ranch from
an attack by Welch's insurrectionists. After victory,
Duros congratulates Adeler on "the brilliant help you get
from this other officer. . . . He is perhaps a lieutenant
of the Signal Corps?"
"Me? An officer?" blushed Hike. "Why, I'm a kid--
a youngster; that's all just a muchacho!"
The Mexican officer smiled at what he considered
a jest and bowed, with his hand on his breast. "As
you weesh, sir. You shall keep your disguise! . . .
. . . and suddenly Hike realized with a shock
that the Mexican officer meant it--that he, Hike,
really had been and was commander of this expedition,

and that Lieutenant Duros could do nothing without
his permission! (pp. 255-256)

56

Disguises, seemingly, make men bold, and conversely bold
actions imply a disguise, so that when exposed, a man may
realize more glory from a double victory: by fooling the
enemy with an unassuming appearance and by thrashing him in
combat. In Hike's case, the attributed disguise is accompa-
nied by a glorious sense of power and control over men's
lives.

A similar mode of ego projection for his charac-
ters is Lewis's use of "making believe" or "pretending."
There is even one instance of pretending to pretend, when
Hike and Poodle retire to the Willard Hotel in Washington
after their appearance before the aviation board; in a
clowning mood Poodle suggests, " . . . Say, Hike, let's
pretend we're Boy Aviators, and that we've just come from
the Pacific Coast in an aeroplane, and that a Brigadier
General has been kow—towing to us" (p. 98). Lewis's most
extensive staging of these play-acting scenes, however,
comes in connection with the boys' activities at Santa
Benicia Academy, as when the boy heroes are humorously
mocked in a satirical Charade, complete with fake airplane
and "a fat boy with a false mustache, bearing the sign
'President Taft'" (pp. 178-179). Much of Chapter XVIII
is devoted to similar schoolboy clowning during the "Great
Hazing" of Hike and Poodle, a pretended roasting of these
worthies in an extraordinary and honorific session. The
ceremony is a mock trial at which the flyers are charged

with "criminal conspiracy against the peace and

57

class-feeling" of the academy. After assigning the
appropriate parts, Lewis records the proceedings in the
manner of a play (pp. 190-191). Before they can secure
pardon from their schoolmates for "having the cheek to get
notorious," Hike and Poodle must construct an imaginary
aircraft out of chairs, sheets, and assorted junk--the
same kind of impromptu stunt which delighted Lewis himself.

It is interesting that what seemed to fascinate
Lewis about football were the tricky plays and deceptions.
During the memorable game against the Berkeley Etonian
School, Santa Benicia scored a touchdown following recovery
of an onside kick; the Etonians scored after they had
"tossed on a trick"; and Hike Griffin "got around left end
on a fake kick, and made a forty-yard run, while the whole
school gasped, afraid to breathe." Hike found the stamina
to shake off a pursuer and tally the winning goal by the
most obvious strategy: "he made b'lieve--just plain made
b'lieve--that he was driving the Hustle before Congress
and the President; gritted his teeth, and fled toward the
Etonian goar'(p. 213). Scenes of imaginary grandeur impel
him toward a real victory.

The boy heroes are not the only ones permitted to
pretend. The villainous Captain Welch feigns suicide by

drinking liquid from a bottle marked "prussic acid, which
proves merely to have contained water. The insensitive
Left Eared Dongan was capable of pretending to be, con-

secutively, an "Updegraff monoplane," then "Colonel Church,

58

leading a brilliant night attack on the Yaqui Indians,"
and at last "Sherlock Holmes" before surprising Poodle in
the latter's role of secret poet (pp. 216-218). Lewis's
startlingly frequent use of these shams and fantasies--role
playing, bluffing, masquerading and pretending--would ap-
pear especially calculated to please an audience of boy
readers, who would relish their cheap theatricality. It
becomes evident, though, that the author carried these same
tricks over into his adult fiction, and used them repeatedly
because of their convenience as literary technique. He
could seem to discover unanticipated dimensions of per-
sonality in his created characters simply by exhibiting
them fatuously posing, pretending, or projecting themselves
into fantasies of heroism or escape. But these secret
facets, as they purport to be, are too gratuitously be-
stowed to be convincing as serious character delineations;
hence the critics' frequent complaint that Lewis created
caricatures.

An analysis of the functional roles which the

characters in Hike and the Aeroplane fulfill affords some

 

 

surprising discoveries. Aside from the roles he puts on,
Hike Griffin is the main hero-representation in the book.
In his heroic capacity Hike shows himself quick-thinking
and intelligent, courageous and enterprising. But one
senses a histrionic compulsiveness in Hike's desire to be
the one who is stared at, who takes outrageous risks--the

schemer, the invincible winner. When he is immobilized,

59

and no longer the subject of general admiration, as during
his capture by Jolls in Chapter XII, Hike must recapture
his audience by making a reckless escape attempt. From
nowhere Lewis thoughtfully produces a small vial of nitric
acid, which the youth happened to be carrying, useful for
burning away the rope around his wrists. When Hike's
absence is noticed, and a search has begun, the hero re-
gains the spotlight (in this case literally a portable
automobile headlight "with strong reflectors") when the
kidnapers find him floundering through the marsh. This
immoderate desire for attention impels the hero to take
such unusual risks that they appear to be gratuitous and
self-destructive. Striking examples of this mode of
punishment occur often enough to suggest a pattern: after
an extraordinary achievement or public acknowledgement of
his fame, the champion expresses a death wish. In Chap-
ter IX, following the boys' sensational flight east from
California, Poodle faints from a wound encountered in
battle with the moonshiners. Hike, who has earned immense
glory by beating their leader during a showdown in the sky,
now humiliates himself with solicitude for his friend.
Gee, Poodle--I want to kill myself. I didn't

know you were hurt. It was a crime, my keeping the

game up. I wanted to get our warlike friend good and

frightened before we dropped him, so he wouldn't

fight afterwards. But lots of it was fool fun. . . .

Gee, I'm awf'ly sorry. . . .

"I got you going now, all right!" chuckled Poodle.

I'll keep you nice--and--humb1e, now, Cap'n . . .
(p. 81).

60

For his part, Poodle seems to take momentary satisfaction
at bringing his friend down to earth.

Again, following their successful demonstrations
in defense of the Priest tetrahedral at the Army hearings,
the boys are energetically sought after by newspapermen.
The hotel bell-boy warns of the great number of reporters
they may expect, concluding, "Oh, dere'll be a hot time for
youse!" "'Oh, let me die,‘ mourned Hike, and stood on his
head on a pillow, as though he were trying to choke him-
self"(p. 100). The boys suffer unusual anxiety worrying
about reprisals from their schoolmates at Santa Benicia,
caused by jealousy at their presumptions to national fame.
In an interesting passage which over-explains these subtle
consequences of celebrity, Lewis writes,

There is something about school honors that make
them mean more than anything else. A fellow has been
working for them ever since the day he got out of the
kindergarten and put on knickers. Perhaps that's the
reason. Anyway, Hike and Poodle, after having played
the game hard all Freshman year, and having made good,
were broken-hearted at starting the Sophomore year
queered.

"Queered" they seemed to be. Every one was ready
to "jolly" them. Partly, it was envy and jealousy on
the part of the fellows; partly it was a feeling that
these two Sophomores had broken every unwritten law
of the school by making themselves so conspicuous in
the newspapers. But mostly it was the joy of being
able to torment such famous people (p. 176).

Envy and persecution, then, are among the consequences of
fame for the hero. Whether the punishment is exacted by
oneself or by one's peers, the hero must not be permitted

to savor his successes unalloyed with mortification. A

further illustration of this pattern crops out in

61

Chapter XIX, when resentment against Hike's fame has caused
friction on the football team. The coach's diagnosis:
"Looks to me as if they are still jealous of you for your
aviating, and trying to show they're as good as you are.
Breaks up the team-play pretty badly," he remarks to Hike,
and asks solicitously, "What have you got to suggest?"

"I don't know. I've been worrying over it. I'll
see what I can do," said Hike gloomily.

It was two weeks after the Great Hazing and now,
though all the open "kidding" had stopped, there was
still trouble. Hike was afraid that he might have to
resign from the team, although he would rather have
cut off his head (p. 196).

Alienation from the group, even if it be due to no fault

of one's own, but to excess of virtue, seems to be more
fearsome than death itself. Not content with these school-
boy demonstrations of grudging admiration, Hike will be
appeased only by their unqualified acceptance and love.

His solution to these difficulties is a curious mixture of
appeasement and self-abasement, amounting to a pathetic
plea for acceptance. He decides to borrow an airplane

and take each boy for a ride. He flies the monoplane to
Santa Benicia.

"Say, fellows," pleaded Hike, " . . . I brought
up this machine for you. Won't you ride with me. I
know just as well as you do that the only reason I've
ever done any aviating is just because I've had the
chance, and I want to get you in on it."

Over the faces of the crowd spread a look of great
love for Hike, as they heard him and privately assured

themselves that undoubtedly they would be great avia-
tors, too, if they had the chance (p. 203).

62

What Hike says is not wholly true, but he is in the com-
promising position of being good at doing practically any—
thing, yet having to declare publicly that his national
fame came about by accident, and was not due to any special
merit of his. Now this is a costly way to purchase ap-
proval, unless the hero's neurotic appetite for affection
has made him insatiable, to the point of threatening
symbolic self-destruction. Furthermore, it is ironic that
Hike uses his flying experience, the original cause of his
peers' jealousy and disaffection, to win them over, as if
to underscore his unique abilities and superiority. Thus
it seemed to be with Sinclair Lewis himself; after attain-
ing the pinnacle of literary reputation, he appeared to
invite jealousy from less fortunate writers, and his re-
action was invariably to write another book.

Hike Griffin's fantastic flights exhibit his con-
flicting desires to dominate and control all others as if
by power from above, and still to turn aside hostility and
win love from those who symbolize his brother-friends and
rivals. Poodly Darby represents the trusted confidant, as
if in a younger-brother status next to that of Hike. Al-
though more scholarly and ingenious than Griffin, he is
smaller, less courageous and aggressive, and therefore
easily dominated by Hike. His almost canine loyalty is
indicated by his suitable doglike nickname. The case of
Lieutenant Jack Adeler, on the other hand, is an inter-

esting representation of Hike's surrogate father or older

63

brother. There is no secret of Hike's unaffected love for
Adeler or his desire to imitate him. The boy's ambition
is to become the lieutenant's equal. He, too, wants to be
an engineer, "to know wireless and aeroplanes and steel."
Hike senses gratification of these wishes during the
expedition to save Adeler's ranch in Mexico, where the
youth's increased familiarity with the officer puts the
two on an even, first-name basis. Adeler even concedes

a feeling of kinship for his young admirer, after compli-
menting him for risking death to find fuel for the tetra-
hedral.

"Oh, well," said Jack Adeler, resignedly, "I

suppose there's no keeping you from getting killed.
. . . Old man, I won't put it that way. If you've
got the nerve to ride out and get gasoline, I'll
just cut out the older brother air, and say, 'Great
work, old Hike'" (PP. 248-249).
One wonders if in Harry Lewis's imagination, Adeler spoke
with the voice of Claude.

Further, when Hike is erroneously identified by
the Mexican as a young American lieutenant in disguise,
suggesting that he carried the same rank as Adeler, the
boy's ego, fully nourished, should have been satisfied.
Typically, however, Hike feels compelled to deride this
flattering notion with a theatrical exhibition, rolling on
the ground, shouting with laughter and howling, "Say,

Jack, did you get that? Me, A Santa Benician, a kid--and

he thought I was an American Signal Corps officer. Say,

64

wouldn't that jar you?" (p. 256) Showing his maturity,
the lieutenant is not impressed by this backhand modesty.
Two characters who represent authority figures

play paternal roles in Hike and the Aeroplane. One is

 

General Thorne, who is merry, kindly and humane, and dines
with the British military attaché "at the most gorgeous
restaurant in Washington"; the other is Major Griffin,
Hike's father--a shadow in the background--cool, reserved,
and distant. The Major is described as "tall, slender,
gentle" and "the most polite of all men." But Hike must
learn to fly without his father's knowledge or permission,
because, as the boy explains it,
"the Lieutenant thinks I'm too young . . . and Father'd
be scared blue if he knew I was doing it. I don't want
to frighten him, and so I want to be a good, safe,
crackerjack aviator before he knows" (p. 47).
When, indeed, the Major learned of the secret flights,
he "had been frightened, at first, then a little angry at
Hike" (p. 95). Gradually, though, as news of his son's
successes arrives, the father softens and admits, "Good
boy, Jerry is." At last when he was informed of the
dramatic mission to Washington, " . . . why, all Major
Griffin could do was to pound his son affectionately on
the back and say, 'Go ahead--and don't break your neck,
if it's convenient . . . '" (p. 95) and he referred to
Hike as "this crazy son of mine." After this the father

fades from attention, and is scarcely mentioned again. To

be an absolute hero, Hike must apparently answer only to

65

himself; he must match his idol, subdue his rivals with
violence or favors, and never be challenged by a father.
Since this is a boy's book, directed probably at
twelve- to sixteen-year-olds, one would expect it to be
thick with active adventure, and spare in scenes of ro-

mantic flirtation. In the latter category Hike and the

 

Aeroplane is conspicuously ascetic. It is virtually a

 

book without women. There is no mention of Gerald Griffin's
mother, only one faint allusion to Poodle's "pretty sister,"
and merely anonymous women aboard the wrecked yacht or
fleeing from kidnapers on the Kansas prairie. The emphasis
is upon military maleness at home in the Monterey Presidio,
and hearty comradeship at the Santa Benicia Academy for
boys. Hike Griffin is presumably too busy struggling to
grow up in a man's world to be distracted by the inscrutable
stratagems of women as well. Success with women was not yet
a component in Hike's heroic flights of fantasy, nor yet had
it been realized by the young "Tom Graham," apparently, in
1911-1912.

Perhaps Hike is Sinclair Lewis's first unhappy
hero, who yearns for the fame which floats him aloft above
his peers, isolated and splendid, but who is not strong
enough to dispense with their love and approval. And so
he hurries back to the place where he started, begging to
rejoin the group, to feel the warmth of the herd. The

rescue of the passengers from the yacht, the flights to

66

Washington, capture by Jolls, the filibuster to Mexico are
all travel-escapes, offering the hero a chance to play a
different role. They are sorties--wild, daring dashes
offered as proofs of manhood. A lucky chance and some
well-timed bluffing can bring unexpected fame and power to
control the lives of many, if one knows how to use it.
Meanwhile, being a celebrity is a lonely business, and the
prudent hero heads back for home again after swinging out
wide. These are the consequences of success, even in one's
fantasies: after flights into the chilling ether of per-
sonal eminence, one comes back to his point of origin.
Symbolically this is part of the Lewis hero's pattern of
self-defeat, and it is as true of Willie Wrenn in the

author's next book as it is of Carol Kennicott.

CHAPTER I II

OUR He. WRENN: ESCAPE INTO ANONYMITY

If Hike Griffin is the precocious adolescent who
promises to become an enterprising executive in the air-
craft industry or a military engineer, the opposite is true
of Mr. Wrenn, the subject of Sinclair Lewis's first novel
for adult readers, who seems to represent a case of arrested
emotional development. Published in February, 1914, by
Harper and Brothers, 925 Hi. Wrenn is a sentimental romance
which examines three crucial years in the history of a
novelty-company clerk, who at the outset earns nineteen
dollars a week, and in the final chapter is making thirty-
two. What happens in between to make Mr. Wrenn worth
thirteen dollars a week more to his employer is the burden
of Lewis's tale; the author undertakes his task with a
combination of techniques which have already become fa-

ndliar in Hike and the Aeroplane as variations of the role-

 

playing repertoire--fantasy-bui1ding, projecting, travel-
ing, name-changing, to recall a few. Still, it is doubtful
at the novel's end whether the central character, William

Wrenn, has sustained any substantive growth and development

67

68

or whether (like the novelty "Dixieland" inkwells he pro-
motes for the "Southern trade") he is a basic commodity
updated and reworked to suit a particular need.

Sheldon Grebstein identifies Our Hi. Wrenn and
other early novels by Lewis as "novels of and about edu-
cation" describing the rise of the "self-made man . . . an
American folk hero."

The heroes and heroines are put through a learning
process in which book learning has a strictly subordi-
nate role. In this process they inevitably grow more
sophisticated in their manners, improve their appear-
ances and personal attractiveness, increase their vo-
cational skills, become keener observers of human
nature and more adept at handling people, and develop
a broader world-view. In short, Lewis's characters
undergo the same experiences, with the same results,
that the average reader could visualize for himself.
. . . [But] romantic as Lewis's early books are, they
rarely reach above the limits of easy possibility.
To reach too high would not permit the reader's per-
sonal projection into the hero's role.l
To an extent this is quite true, but it is interesting now
to discern whether Mr. Wrenn's cloth was cut to suit the
reader, or perhaps better, the author. Grebstein's defi-
nition of the educating process represents it essentially
as an enhancement of the character's role versatility; it
does not, however, account for any meaningful metamorphosis
of the larval hero to the adult phase, a transformation

which would seem desirable if it were to "permit the

reader's personal projection" into Mr. Wrenn's role. A

 

1Sinclair Lewis (New York, 1962), pp. 40-41.

69

more likely interpretation of Our Hi. Wrenn is that Lewis
was dramatizing a crisis in his own life.

On September 12, 1912, he had met Grace Livingstone

Hegger in a freight elevator at 443 Fourth Avenue, the
building which housed both his employer, the Stokes Com-
pany, publishers, and the Offices of Vogue, where Miss
Hegger worked. Lewis was already laboring on his novel,
and some nine months later Our Hi. Wrenn was accepted for
publication by Harper and Brothers. The following Septem-
ber Lewis, in great excitement, showed Miss Hegger page
proofs of the novel, and she first learned that he had
dedicated the book to her.

He placed a timid hand on my shoulder. "You
don't mind, do you?"

I took his hand and held it against my cheek, and
told him that this was the greatest compliment which he
had ever paid me. He was kissing me then and suddenly
everything seemed to have changed: he was a man, not a
laughing companion. For the first time I felt more than
a fondness for him. He saw the change in me as I broke
away to look at him, and cried: "My darling, you are
in love with me! Oh, the wonder of it, my book and my
love together!"

My book and my love. But not together. The book
came first and it always would.2

In the same month that the book was published, the couple
announced their engagement, and on April 15, 1914, Sinclair
Lewis and Grace Hegger were married. They moved to Port
‘Washington, Long Island, to live in "the Little Brown

.Bungalow" which Lewis had called "the Wrenn House!"3

 

2With Love From Gracie, p. 46.

3Ibid., p. 52.

70

Later Lewis composed some happy verses entitled "The First
Song of the Wren House" to celebrate the beatitude of
married life, including:

We--we can't be married, dear!
Why, we laugh and plot and play;
While the grown-ups toil and fear
We, like children, run away

And go dancing down the road
With blue bowls for all our load.

We who still are lad and lass,

We who still are queen and king,

We who dream in sunny grass

And watch the swallows f1ittering--
WE of that dull married class?
Dear, I don't know WHAT to singl--

(Dearheart, are you happy? I
Am so happy I could cry!)4

On the surface it is clear that the publication
of Our Hi. Wrenn enabled Lewis to offer his wife some
prospects for financial security. The close linking of
the novel's evolution with the Lewises' courtship and
marriage, moreover, indicate what the book meant to Lewis.
Symbolically, it was his proof of manhood, a labor for the
love of his Rachel, and its theme is Success.
Mark Schorer has noted that
the novel was composed of such straws as Lewis could
most readily gather from the harsh fields of his recent
past: cattle boat trips to England, rather disappoint-
ing tramps in that country, steerage, the grubby life
of boarding houses in lower Manhattan, poverty, his
uneasy feelings about Bohemia, loneliness, friendless-

ness. Yet for all the oblique resemblances in charac-
ter and the direct resemblances in experiences, the

 

4With Love From Gracie, p. 61.

 

71
central figure of the novel is drawn not so much from
life as from the fiction of H. G. Wells.5
The extent of Lewis's debt to Wells may be clearly seen,
and even Grace Lewis acknowledged, upon re-reading the book,
that "I saw its many faults. The influence of H. G. Wells's
HE. Heiiy was obvious, but it was sentimental, callow, over-

written."6

What is significant, however, is not the simi-
larity between the Wells and Lewis works, but the fact that
reading the Englishman's fiction awakened sympathetic
vibrations in the American which urged him to express
latent ideas and emotions of his own in an artistic pattern
that was to become stylized: frustration, upheaval, ex-
cursion, disenchantment, reconciliation, and acquiescence.
Like a frightened bird who deserts his branch to fly about,
only to return fatalistically to another limb of the same
tree, Mr. Wrenn at last accepts the odd paradox (which the
young Lewis must have discovered) that Success does not
depend upon one's being well-known, but rather on his re-
maining unknown--1ike any one of thousands of men wedded

to Wife and Job in the hustling metropolis. Fleeing the
city and his clerk's employment to act out a fantasy of
travel by making an actual voyage to England, Mr. Wrenn

finds only that he has stepped out of character, and he

 

5Sinclair Lewis: He American Life, p. 210.

 

 

6With Love From Gracie, p. 34.

 

72

hastens to remedy the threat of lost identity in a thankful
trip home and an escape into anonymity.

Mark Schorer has identified this theme of escape,
and has noted the accompanying refrains of loneliness and
"the need of a male friend," but he sees the basic con-
flict as that "between the appeal, the impossible temp-
tations of the exotic (Europe, Istra Nash, vagabondage) and
the real satisfactions of the ordinary (America, Nelly
Croubel, the job)."7 The conflict may be more fundamental
than that, however. Beyond the obvious Odyssean inter-
pretation, Mr. Wrenn's journey is a search for self, dur-
ing a temporary condition of "freedom" while he tries on
new roles as if they were hats or ties. But this quest
for an identity is foredoomed, primarily because Wrenn
cannot leave his old self behind, and secondly because the
new activities he undertakes are designed for self-defeat:
it is fun to play many parts when the risks are small, but
what if success will freeze a man into a role that is not
naturally his? That is the real threat--that while a man
goes adventuring to find a greater self, he may lose what
little identity he has, and become a stranger even to
himself .

Outwardly concerned with themes of success, then,

Sflflg Hg. Wrenn is actually a book about failure, or at best,

7Sinclair Lewis: HH_American Life, pp. 211-212.

73

compromise. The consequent ambivalence of mood Lewis
betrays toward his hero results in the "patronizing tone"
which Schorer has remarked upon, a tone which the author
uses to keep his characters at a distance when they come
dangerously close to self-revelation. An author must not
discover himself either, it seems, and end his charade too
soon.

Specifically, the three aspects of the success
theme which Mr. Wrenn must investigate lie in his self-
concept, his occupation, and in romantic love. Sheldon
Grebstein enumerates the parallels between the lives of
Lewis and Mr. Wrenn, and observes,

Qe£_H£. Wrenn is the expression of Lewis's simultaneous
restlessness (a dissatisfaction with the status quo)
and optimism, a conviction that going to new places
somehow makes a better man, who, when he returns--as
Lewis's heroes usually do--is wise and strong enough
to overcome the forces which had earlier suppressed
him.8
The assumption of a process which lies behind the "somehow"
must stand up to critical scrutiny if it is to substantiate
meaningful character development, but Lewis never shows
exactly how that transformation is accomplished, short of
enabling Mr. Wrenn to adopt new poses and meet a few
poseurs. For all the revitalizing contacts that England
might offer the traveler, Mr. Wrenn meets only ordinary

English people: a waitress, a carter, a "bloated Cockney,"

a "stodgy North Countryman," a landlady, a porter, another

 

8Sinclair Lewis, p. 39.

74

waitress, a Salvation Army evangelist, an Essex farm wife,
a bellboy--and exchanges a few perfunctory sentences with
each. With other traveling Americans like himself he con-
verses much more extensively: Harry Morton, Dr. Mittyford,
Istra Nash, the poet Carson Haggerty, the Intellectuals,
and even with a hardware salesman from Sleepy Eye, Minne-
sota, who "wouldn't take this fool country for a gift."
After an absence of one month and seventeen days, Mr. Wrenn
leaves Liverpool for his return to New York. Another month
after his arrival home, Wrenn is re-established in the room-
ing house of the abusive Mrs. Zapp, and "he was at work as
though he had never in his life been farther from the
Souvenir Company than Newark."9 So much for his daring
excursion. What metamorphosis has been wrought, or is
impending? Mr. Wrenn still estimates his own worth in
dollars per week. The only perceptible change in his be-
havior is that he has learned how to use his temper, and
permits himself to become angry occasionally--a remarkably
late discovery for a man approaching forty. Thus for Mr.
Wrenn successful development of an improved self-concept
depends on a release of his underlying hostility, toward
his landlady, his employer, toward real and imagined
rivals. This tendency also shows itself in the clerk's new

aggressiveness when making friends, or while he is at his

 

9Our Hg. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures ei|H
Gentle Man (New York, 1914), p. 163.

75

job. Still, Mr. Wrenn is not allowed to exhibit any degree
of wrath without the support of thoughtful pretexts from
the author. He must feel cranky from lack of sleep; he
must be slandered by Mrs. Zapp; he must save his friend
Charles Carpenter from drunkenness; he must think reso-
lutely of Nelly Croubel during the crucial showdown with
Mortimer R. Guilfogle; he must protect his proprietary
interest in Nelly from threats, seen in the sudden visit of
Istra Nash or the gallantries of a cigar salesman at a
Christmas dance. In a larger context, then, it is diffi-
cult to see how QE£.§£f eree can be interpreted as a novel
of education; if it is, the design is remedial rather than
liberal.

The theme of occupational success Lewis develops
in a mechanical way. "Our" Mr. Wrenn means the company's
man, the sales-entry clerk and sometime correspondent for
the Souvenir and Art Novelty Company on Twenty-eighth
Street, New York City. His weekly wage, in April, 1910,
was nineteen dollars. Wrenn is competent at his work, al-
though he trembles before the hectoring of "old Goglefogle,"
the manager. Meekly he regards his forthright explanation
of an erroneous order as "defiance," though the manager
"hadn't seemed much impressed by his revolt."

. . . he began to dread what the manager might do to
him. Suppose he lost his job; The Job! He worked
unnecessarily late, hoping that the manager would
learn of it. As he wavered home, drunk with weari-

ness, his fear of losing The Job was almost equal to
his desire to resign from The Job (p. 7).

76

These mixed feelings are only emotional defense maneuvers
to counter the paralyzing routine in a small business
office, where every detail of the job assumes gigantic
significance, and the ego in consequence must shrivel as
its dependence on employment security increases with ad-
vancing age. There are no prospects for promotiOn, even
though the assistant bookkeeper, Charlie Carpenter, assures
Wrenn that "They bank on you at the Souvenir Company.
Darn' sight more than you realize, lemme tell you. Why,
you do about half the stock-keeper's work 'sides your own"
(p. 14). But Wrenn moves about his work cautiously, fear-
ing plots and reprisals that any misstep might bring from
"the dread Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle." The only escapes
from astringent anxiety that a poor clerk can resort to
are the moving pictures, dining on foreign food at a cheap
restaurant, collecting a vast assortment of travel folders
depicting exotic places, and riding the ferry to Staten
Island.

Abruptly, deliverance comes in the form of a wind-
fall. Mr. Wrenn receives nine hundred and forty dollars
from the sale of "the flinty farm" at Parthenon, New York
(left to him by his father), to the local Chautauqua
Association. Freedom looms; Mr. Wrenn hesitates. Timidly
he takes the landlady's daughter to a play, "The Gold
Brick"--"a glorification of Yankee smartness. . . . Every
one made millions, victims and all, in the last act, as a

Proof of the social value of being a live American business

77

man." Wrenn reconsiders: "He would do that Great Travel-
ing of his in the land of Big Business!" (pp. 28-28).
But circumstances force his break from the Souvenir Com-
pany. This evening's diversion causes him to be late for
work; Guilfogle, already grumpy owing to unsatisfactory
eggs at breakfast, threatens to let Wrenn go. Mr. Wrenn,
who had "seemed weary, and not so intimidated as usual,"
flirts with the hazard of outbluffing the manager, and
announces, "I'm real glad you can get along without me.
I've just inherited a big wad of money! I think I'll
resign! Right now!" (p. 31). Ignoring the startled
Guilfogle's pleas to reconsider, Wrenn gives notice. In
mid-June, during an elaborate farewell scene, the clerk
looks upon his boss with compassion.

Mr. Guilfogle was essentially an honest fellow,

harshened by The Job; a well-satisfied victim, with

the imagination clean gone out of him, so that he

took follow-up letters and the celerity of office-

boys as the only serious things in the world. He

was strong, alive, not at all a bad chap, merely

efficient (p. 33).
Guifogle offers to keep a position open for Wrenn until
his return. The little man declines. His departure from
his office comrades is tearful.

Lewis makes it clear that Wrenn's separation from

Iris job is quite traumatic. Lacking friendly support or
ii precipitating incident, Mr. Wrenn cannot decide what to

Ch)- Two weeks after his resignation he still does not

filud security by lying abed in the morning. He feels

"erlormously depressed in the soul."

78

He would have got up had there been anything to get up
for. There was nothing, yet he felt uneasily guilty.
For two weeks he had been afraid of losing, by neglect,
the job he had already voluntarily given up. So there
are men whom the fear of death has driven to suicide

(p. 35).

Lewis's abrupt transition to the last sentence is startling.
Relinquishing one's customary job is comparable to an act
of self-destruction. Inured to fantasies, Wrenn does not
know how to accept the reality of his chance to travel,
and is unable to settle on a destination. He makes excuses
to himself: the expense is too great; he pictures himself
in all kinds of roles and costumes; apparently, he even
tries to have himself shanghaied by skulking about the
waterfront (p. 36), to avoid having to decide for himself.
In an effort to shed the role of "Our Mr. Wrenn," he
attends an afternoon movie, but guilt and anxiety pursue
him; the actors on the screen appear distorted and unreal,
and the air in the theater is stifling. Mr. Wrenn is
close to hysteria. Indecision, and his shame at not being
employed, are contributing toward his self-defeat.

Random chance dictates a decision. Idly scanning
a newspaper, Wrenn spies an advertisement for "Free pass-
age on cattle-boats to Liverpool feeding cattle. Low fee.
Easy work. Fast boats." Mr. Wrenn's response is immedi-
ate: "Gee!" he cried, "I guess Providence has picked out
my first hike for me" (p. 37). A substitute job will

rinse away guilt. Some days later, Wrenn leaves Portland

79

aboard the Merian, employed as a cattleman and bound for
England, murmuring, "Free, free, out to sea. Free, free,
that's ES!" (p. 48).

It is safe to say that up to this point Mr. Wrenn
has shown little likelihood for achieving success in busi-
ness. Obviously, he is too self-effacing, too timorous,
not having formed a successful concept of himself which
would lend confidence and authority to his actions. Nor
does his travel through England appreciably change these
conditions. Abroad, Mr. Wrenn exhibits the same symptoms
of defeat and defensive withdrawal that he had during his
idleness at home. When he thankfully returns to New York
and applies for his old job at the Souvenir Company, Wrenn
feels "like the prodigal son, with no calf in sight" (p.
149). Guilfogle scolds him for "Hiking off to Europe,
leaving a good job!" putting the clerk off for a whole
month before engaging him at "seventeen dollars and fifty
cents a week instead of his former nineteen dollars" (p.
163).

Lewis makes Wrenn's climb to success possible
only by sending down a gratuitous bright idea, almost as
an afterthought.

The Souvenir Company salesmen had not been able
to get from the South the business which the company
deserved if right and justice were to prevail. On
the steamer from England Mr. Wrenn had conceived the
idea that a Dixieland Ink-well, with the Confederate
and Union flags draped in graceful cast iron, would

make an admirable present with which to draw the
attention of the Southern trade (p. 165).

80

So began Mr. Wrenn's successful campaign to "bring the
South into line," built around the common-sense notion of
paying personal attention to the Southern representatives.
A month later, Wrenn demands a raise; Guilfogle restores
the nineteen dollar wage. Over a year later, when he
applies for the position of assistant manager, Wrenn is
earning twenty-three dollars, and merits a raise to twenty-
nine fifty--"more'n enough to marry on now!" Two years
later still, in October, 1913, although not yet assistant
manager, Wrenn is making thirty-two dollars a week, and
he has married Nelly Croubel (pp. 252-253). Persistence
and attention to details presage success in business. Is
love another dividend?

The modest hero's success in romantic love is
probably the most gratifying theme in 923 Hi. Wrenn. He
has had some tentative encounters with Lee Theresa Zapp,
forewoman in a factory, described as "a large young lady
with a bust, much black hair, and a handsome disdainful
discontented face" (p. 22). Dinner at an Armenian restau-
rant they had shared together, followed by attendance at a
play and a late snack. After returning her home, Wrenn's
"parting with Miss Theresa was intimate; he shook her
hand warmly" (p. 29). Wrenn forsakes any advantage he may
have had, however, in his desire to go traveling. In
London he asked an "ignorant and vulgar" waitress from the
St. Brasten Cocoa House to walk with him after she had

been suitably aggressive:

81

She let him know that he was a man and she a
woman, young and kindly, clear-skinned and joyous-
eyed. She touched him with warm elbow and plump hip,
leaning against his chair as he gave his order. To
that he looked forward from meal to meal, though he
never ceased harrowing over what he considered a
shameful intrigue (p. 76).

But the woman failed to appear at the rendezvous:

When he finally fled home he was glad to have
escaped the great mystery of life, then distressingly
angry at the waitress, and desolate in the desert
stillness of his room (p. 77).

No woman had yet come forward to relieve him of his inno-
cence. The conflicting feelings of gladness and anger seem
to mask an underlying fear of inadequacy--fear that when
put to the test, he could not play out the bold role he
had acted at the restaurant. That was all the preparation
Mr. Wrenn had for the advent of Istra Nash.

Because shame does not permit his return to the

St. Brasten, Wrenn takes his meals at Mrs. Cattermole's
Tea House, where the next day a theatrical, slender,
flaming-haired girl sits at a table opposite to his. Mr.
Wrenn inspects her person with the avidity of a voyeur,
noting how her gown clings to her, "showing the long
beautiful sweep of her fragile thighs and long-curving
breast," and realizing with horror that "the freak girl
wasn't wearing corsets!" (pp. 81-82). For two days he
spins fantasies about her, casting her into highborn roles
and himself as a writer who "made up a whole novel about

her" (p. 84). Wrenn discovers that she occupies the room

next to his in the same house, observes her changes of

82

costume and various properties as they pass in the hall
(silver toilet articles, Turkish towel), and is sensitive

to sounds of her comings and goings through his wall. He
contrives a meeting by asking her impulsively for directions
to "a good play or something" in London, but she remains
inscrutable until Wrenn confesses how his imagination had
invented stories about her--she was English, or perhaps
French--

"What made you think I was French? Tell me; I'm

interested."

"Oh, I guess I was just--well, it was almost make-

b'lieve--how you had a castle in France--just a kind
of fool game" (p. 86).
This, it develops, is exactly the way to appeal to the
fascinating lady, an unsuccessful art student from Cali-
fornia named Istra Nash.

Mr. Wrenn's romantic imagination, limited as it
is, forms the main bond in this odd friendship. He thinks
of her as a "superior quizzical women"; she regards him as
a salesman, compares him to a butler, describing Wrenn as
a "phe-nomenon--little man of 35 or 40 with embryonic
imagination & a virgin soul" (p. 95), calls him "caveman,"
and at last dubs him "Mouse." Managerially, she decides
to take on Mr. Wrenn as a project.

"My dear man, I see I shall have to educate you.

Shall I? I've been taken in hand by so many people--
it would be a pleasure to pass on the implied slur.
Shall I?"

"Please do" (p. 94).

They have tiffin together; they share tea; they visit the

Tate Gallery. Miss Nash introduces him to Carson Haggerty

83

and the Intellectuals, and the two of them resolve to make
a walking trip to Suffolk, to visit an artists' colony.
Mr. Wrenn is not without inhibitions over this last plan:
"I just don't want to do anything that would get people to
talking about you," he protests evasively, at the prospect
of passing an entire night with Istra, even on foot. He
needs her reassurance that "I don't regard it as exactly
wicked to walk decently along a country road" (p. 122),
and he permits himself to be bullied into going immediately.
The ensuing adventure with Istra Nash, comprising Chapters
X and XI, supplies probably the most absorbing section of
923.!E3 eree, even though it ends with shattering defeat
for the little hero (at the very point when he is becoming
the aggressor), after the whimsical girl departs suddenly
for Paris.

Lewis never really shows how Mr. Wrenn becomes
successful in love. After the traveler's return to New
York, he writes to Miss Nash that he has

. . . been reading quite a few books since I got back

& think now I shall get on better with my reading.

You told me so many things about books & so on & I

do appreciate it (p. 164).
It is interesting that Lewis should show love of literature
superseding Wrenn's former palpable passion. His experi-
ences with Miss Nash, however, have taught him no lessons
in courtship. The author must send him Nelly Croubel al-

ImDst as a sacrificial maiden, and Wrenn wins her practically

Without wooing .

84

Following his new-found acquaintance with Tom

Poppins, cigar-store salesman, and a tiff with Mrs. Zapp,
Wrenn moves to Poppin's boarding house operated by Mrs.
R. T. ("Arty") Ferrard. Dining at Mrs. Arty's table, the
clerk discovers Nelly, whom he assesses "not unusually
pretty."

Her skin was perfect; her features fine, rather Greek;

her smile, quick yet sensitive, She was several inches

shorter than Mr. Wrenn, and all curves. . . . she

seemed indestructibly gentle, indestructibly good and

believing, and just a bit shy (p. 182).
She is about twenty-five, has come to the city from a small
Pennsylvania town, and works as a salesgirl at Wanamacy's.
In brief, Nelly is a girl that Mr. Wrenn can dominate, if
he wishes: he is taller, ten years her senior, a seasoned
traveler, and only slightly less innocent than she.
Furthermore, she is easily impressed by his recitation of
adventures abroad; Wrenn wears the fact of his English tour
like an ornament, even though it has contributed nothing of
substance to his experience.

Mr. Wrenn knew that there was just one thing in
the world that he wanted to do; to persuade Miss Nelly
Croubel that (though he was a solid business man,
indeed yes, and honorable) he was a cool one, who had
chosen, in wandering o'er this world so wide, the most
perilous and cattle-boaty places. He tried to think of
something modest yet striking to say . . . (p. 184).

Mr. Wrenn has found a captive audience at the dinner table,
and he is showing off. Lacking confidence that Nelly will
accept him as he is, he hopes that an exaggerated repre-

sentation will attract her. His serviceable "imagination"

supports him well in further conversations with Nelly. He

85

even composes a playlet, "The Millionaire's Daughter"
(named Nelly), which receives curt rejection from an
agency, but endears him to Miss Croubel, who waits patiently
for Mr. Wrenn to make up his mind.

By contriving to have Istra Nash, California-
bound, share Mrs. Arty's roof with Mr. Wrenn and Nelly for
a few hectic days, Lewis proposes that his hero make a
choice between the two women. Wrenn wavers, but it is no
contest. Again, Istra decides.

. . . You go and forget me and enjoy yourself and

be good to your pink-face--Nelly, isn't it? She seems

to be terribly nice . . . You must forget me" (p. 240).
Melodramatically, she rejoins her artistic friends in
Washington Square. One last visit to the red-haired god-
dess in her bohemian surroundings persuades Our Mr. Wrenn
that Istra is beyond reach, "and that now he could offer
to Nelly Croubel everything" (p. 247).

Mr. Wrenn's successes, in building a viable self-
concept, in his occupation and in his own asexual kind of
love are accomplished as if by mirrors, since Lewis in-
stalls these triumphs through accident or by hindsight:
thus, as Nelly observes nearly a year after meeting Wrenn,
"I remember when you came here you were sort of shy. But
now you're 'most the star boarder!" (p. 250). But if the
hero now can speak

with a quiet graciousness that was almost courtly, with
a note of weariness and spiritual experience such as

seldom comes into the boardinghouses to slay joy and
bring wisdom and give words shyness (p. 244),

86

it is only because the author says so, not because the
change is plausible.

One of the obstacles to an orderly continuity of
theme development is the episodic structure of this novel.
Each chapter must have its central incident, it is true,
but each significant event has an emotional nucleus and is
staged separately as a scene or set piece. Thus, Mr. Wrenn
is like the cowboys he sees in cheap movies, who rock on
stationary horses, while the scenery rolls by on canvas.
For example, Chapter XV relates Wrenn's immense satis-
faction at playing cards successfully while Nelly watches
with approval. Chapter XVI concerns his delight at writing
"The Millionaire's Daughter" and having it acted out, and
his dismay that "At nearly forty he was just learning the
drab sulkiness and churlishness and black jealousy of the
lover"(p. 218). The next chapter details his distraction
over the return of Istra; it is as though the two women
were contending for his loyalty, and Wrenn has two separate
worlds to choose between. In Chapter XVIII, still pre-
occupied with Istra, Wrenn tries to discuss her with Nelly,
but "the shame of having emotions" prevents it; his subse-
quent farewell to the red-haired beauty is crowned by her
impulsive hug and kiss. The final section is devoted to
the success of Success, especially in the department of
marriage, with coy hints of a future home in New Jersey
and kiddies to play under the trees. The point is, that

Mr. Wrenn is a character whom things happen to, not one who

87

makes things happen. A structure of sequential episodes,
like a row of cherry-centered chocolates, these chapters
offer only a cloying sameness--a convenience for telling
tales, but an inadequate design for developing a novel.
Similarly, Lewis fails to show that a trip to
England has had any more effect on his little clerk than a
short stay in prison, which, in some respects, his journey
resembles. Heieg in England is, truthfully, a gloomy

business, but having been to England (when one is again

 

safely home) is another proposition altogether; it is
another facet added to one's public image, and it rarely
fails to impress the local folks. For all his romantic
fantasy-making about foreign places, Wrenn is a common
fraud when direct experience intrudes. His hungry soul
yearns for a feast of emotions and impressions, which it
can relish without end, but it shrinks before the exi-
gencies of decisive action.

Thus, any sense of development one may divine in
Wrenn's character beyond that of aging three years is
largely illusory. Mr. Wrenn is not only a milksop, but an
emotional adolescent as well. There is no other expla-
nation for his boyish behavior. Perhaps Lewis's early
preference for writing about "little people" had the added
convenience of enabling him to simplify their traits,
scaling them down, as it were, in intelligence and emotional
diversity, in the assumption that if they were obscure, they

must somehow be defective. Added to the simplicity of

88

conception is relative ease of control: to the basic idea
of one meek clerk may be attributed a few distinguishing
features--"a small unsuccessful mustache," a landlady who
plays martyr and hypochondriac roles, and a Job--but the
remaining characterization may be accomplished by giving
Mr. Wrenn a repertoire of roles to perform. Accordingly,
Lewis twirls this basic character slowly on an axis, like
a polished icosahedron, showing off all his diverting
facets, and bringing him full circle back to his original
position.

Systematic investigation shows how Lewis cuts
these surfaces for Mr. Wrenn. Roughly, the little man
plays three occupational roles--clerk, traveler, and clerk
again--but within these three divisions of the book, Wrenn's
activities are varied, not to show him reflecting, becoming
wiser or developing internally, but to feed him bit parts
to act. He intrigues for an appreciative greeting from a
uniformed theater ticket-taker. At work he imagines that
his confirmation of a duplicated order is an act of te-
merity. He invents imaginary conversations with sailors
near the wharves, as if he, too, were a seaman. This
technique Lewis uses repeatedly, even in Wrenn's fantasies.
At the movies, for example, he "was really seeing, not
cow-punchers and sage-brush, but himself, defying the
office manager's surliness and revolting against the ticket-

man's rudeness" (pp. 2-3). He is a traveler in Java, a

89

Pinkerton shooting at train robbers, an explorer of the
Arctic; he dreams of being the manager of the Souvenir
Company. Wrenn frets about earning more money to pay for
his travels:

He would learn some Kiplingy trade that would teach him

the use of astonishingly technical tools, also daring

and the location of smugglers' haunts, copra islands,

and whaling-stations with curious names.

He pictured himself shipping as third engineer

at the Manihiki Islands or engaged for taking moving

pictures of an aeroplane flight in Algiers (p. 36).
These dreams depict two concurrent role changes, in occu-
pation and in alien location; in fantasies, it is double
escape. On board ship, elated by the sight of England,
Wrenn pretends he is "Colonel Armour," owner of the cattle
the men have been feeding. Alone in London, he imagines
himself falling in love with "the brown-eyed sweetheart he
was going to meet somewhere, sometime" (p. 77). After
meeting Istra Nash, he dreams "that he was a rabbit making
enormously amusing jests" (p. 90). White foraging for
their picnic breakfast (which he prepares camping-style
near a stream), the clerk becomes Bill Wrenn the Great,
and at last in a quaint note inviting Istra to a "high
tea," Wrenn assumes the role of "Duke Vere de Vere."

Different names Wrenn bears also signify vari-

ations in roles. At the office, of course, he is "Our
Mr. Wrenn." To Charlie Carpenter he is "Wrennski"; to the

ticket-taker, "Mr. Uh." The shipping employment agent

writes his name as "Ren." On the Merian he is "Wrennie"

90

to his enemies, "Bill Wrenn" to his friends. Istra nick-
names him "Mouse," but Nelly Croubel refers to him inti-
mately as "Billy."
Occasionally, as Wrenn slides in and out of his
varied fantasies and poses, there is a suggestion of a
dissociation of personality--a sense of standing rooted
while watching oneself walk away, or turn out to be some-
one else. During a period of intense anxiety and in-
decision before resolving to go to England, Wrenn spends
a Monday morning reading travel literature. His divergent
emotions (fear of forsaking the familiar for the unknown
versus desire for escape) are manifest in the following
curious passage:
Midway in a paragraph he rose, threw One Hundred
Heye'Ee See California on the tumbled bed, and ran
away from Our Mr. Wrenn. But Our Mr. Wrenn pursued

him along the wharves, where the sun glared on oily
water (p. 36).

 

Oily water, too, progresses through its prismatic spectrum
of diverse character. Later, as the little hero again
slips into a different shading of personality, it is al-
most as though he greets himself with a Hail and Farewell:
the Merian has reached Liverpool.

As the cattlemen passed Bill Wrenn and Morton,
shouting affectionate good-bys in English or courteous
Yiddish, Bill commented profanely to Morton on the fact
that the solid stone floor on the great shed seemed to
have enough sea-motion to "make a guy sick." It was
nearly his last utterance as Bill Wrenn. He became
Mr. Wrenn, absolute Mr. Wrenn, on the street, as he
saw a real English bobby, a real English carter, and
the sign, "Cocoa House. Tea 1 e." (p. 59).

91

Again, when nettled by Mr. Gutch's insinuation that there
might have been impropriety in Wrenn's travels with Istra
on the road to Aengusmere, the little man flares angrily,
threatening his adversary with a fist and deriving satis-
faction from the flurry of reactions among the onlookers,
who instantly identify Wrenn as an injured party.

Bill Wrenn, watching the dramatization of himself

as hero, was enjoying the drama. "You apologize, then?"
"Why certainly, Mr. Wrenn. Let me explain--"

Do you see them?--Mr. Wrenn, self-conscious and
ready to turn into a blind belligerent Bill Wrenn at
the first disrespect; the talkers Sitting about and
assassinating all the princes and proprieties . . .

(p. 137).
Lewis seems to signal Wrenn's detached observation of him-
self with a parallel detachment from his authorial role as
narrator to a new guise as a commentator and social analyst,
who addresses the reader with confidential directness.
However brief Lewis's maneuver, it changes the focus of
the scene, enabling Wrenn to escape for a final conver-
sation with Istra Nash. More interesting, though, is the
close personal identification with his main character that
Lewis seems to betray in the double-dissociation device,
showing such a lack of distance from his effigy, Wrenn,
that he must break the mood by an interpolation to the
reader. Furthermore, Wrenn's rage at Mr. Gutch does not
seem to be all his own. Why should the little clerk be

so incensed at the suggestion that he had had "quite a

ro-mantic little journey" with Istra? Surely that young

92

lady cared not for a reputation of unspotted virtue, even
if her adventure with Wrenn Hee been innocuous. Wrenn's
indignation comes at an odd time; another man might have
shrugged and smiled, and said nothing. No, the startling
truth appears to be that Wrenn is defending his own virtu-
ous reputation, quixotically, among these strangers; his
rage, perversely, is akin to the anger he directed toward
the flirtatious waitress from the cocoa house--rage which
is actually a rebuke to himself for not having dared a
moment or two of intimate passion while traveling alone
with a beautiful woman. There is no real necessity for
Wrenn's over-reaction among these artists and intellectuals,
unless the frustrated fury was Lewis's, also.

A general pattern seems to emerge from among Mr.
Wrenn's innumerable roles and ploys which indicates that
Wrenn is in fact a fear-portrait of the author himself.
The delights and antipathies of both Lewis and Wrenn were
virtually the same. Both dreaded stifling extinction in
a box of an office; both dramatized many kinds of escape,
in thought and act. From the way his co-workers remember
Lewis in New York during the Hike and Wrenn days, awkward,
impulsive, appealing to women for emotional support, it
is easy to suggest that he drew Wrenn small because he
himself felt inadequate and helpless, despite his great
ambition to succeed as an author, and regardless of his
physical height. It is worth stating that Wrenn is little

not in stature alone, but in aggressiveness, sexual vigor,

93

occupational horizons, and in emotional development as well.
His acclaimed imagination, Wrenn's only redeeming donnée in
the book, is really only an artificial bridge, conjured up
by Lewis, between what is, and what might be in the clerk's
wildest dreams. The dreams come true, of course, only when
the author provides an unexpected inheritance or a revolu-
tionary idea from on high. Lewis arranged as much wish
fulfillment for Wrenn as he felt would satisfy his reader's
appetite for romance, and his own desire for vicarious
success through his fellow creature-clerk. His ambiguous
handling of Wrenn, sometimes patronizing and superior,

then anxiously solicitous or even defensive, seems to
spring directly from Lewis's own ambivalent feelings to-
ward himself.

Wrenn and Lewis exhibit a similar ambivalence
toward Istra Nash, who fills a role as a potential mother-
wife. There is little doubt that Wrenn found the girl
extremely exciting, and at one time desired her above all
others:

"Oh, Istra," he cried, grasping her arm, "I don't

want any girl in the world--I mean--oh, I just want to
be let go 'round with you when you'll let me--" (p.
138).
During an evening they had spent together while traveling,
drying out before a small fire in an abandoned stable,

Wrenn supported the sleeping Istra, while he ruminated,

unable to decide whether he loved or feared this impetuous

94

woman. When she woke and judged that their "pilgrimage"
hadn't been much of a success, Wrenn

. . . hated her, with her smooth politeness, after a
night when she had been unbearable and human by turns.
He hated her bedraggled hair and tired face. Then he
could have wept, so deeply did he desire to pull her
head down on his shoulder and smooth the wrinkles of
weariness out of her dear face, the dearer because
they had endured the weariness together (p. 133).

One cannot help noticing that Lewis created Miss Nash in

his own image: she is tall and slim, has flaming red hair
and "blue-gray eyes," "long hands, colored like ivory"
with "quick delicate fingers"; she is capricious, moody,

and easily bored. Is this another manifestation of Lewis's
narcissism, to stage a flirtation between Wrenn, his
dwarfed psychological and spiritual self, and Istra, his
physical and temperamental representation? Is it coinci-
dence that her name, arranged backwards, suggests the words
"artsy sham?" It might be expedient to dismiss Istra Nash
as one of Lewis's exotic women, but there is a melancholy
fatalism about her, linked to a sense of irretrievably
lost childhood when she "played" as an innocent "kiddy"--
an aura of failure and resignation which makes her a dis-
tinct and sympathetic personality. Istra is, after all,
the first mistress of that fantasy-boudoir later so
poignantly occupied by her eventual successor, Babbitt's
Fairy Child, that figment of unfulfilled desire. Let Mr.
Wrenn utter the words, in the "tale of his longing""
"--but Istra, oh, gee! you're like poetry--like

all them things a feller can't get but he tries to when
he reads Shakespeare and all those poets" (p. 235).

95

To Wrenn, and apparently to Lewis, she embodied all the
unattainable marks of caste, taste, and experience; she
possessed the gifts for eloquence and compassionate insight
into men's hearts that make a woman tantalizing in the role
of a potential wife for a dreamer from the clerkly classes.
Curiously, though, it is not Istra's individualism or her
temperament which render her unsuitable for the novelty
clerk, but Wrenn's own limitations, and, one suspects, his
fear of inadequacy. Realizing the hopelessness of further
pursuit, Wrenn admits during their last interview,

"I don't know about none of the things you're interested

in. . . . Lord, I've missed you so! But when I try to

train with your bunch, or when you spring Matisse" (he

seemed peculiarly to resent the unfortunate French
artist) "on me I sort of get onto myself--and now it

ain't like it was in England . . . (p. 246).
Wrenn's inadequacy is further underscored by his stumbling
delivery and ungrammatical speech, which Lewis always uses
to designate the loser or underdog in a confrontation where
there is great emotional stress. After these mismatched
companions parted at last,
He slowly clumped down the wooden treads, boiling with
the amazing discoveries that he had said good-by to
Istra, that he was not sorry, and that now he could
offer to Nelly Croubel everything (p. 247).

Nelly Croubel, clearly, is the "deserved" wife,
the decent homemaker. She is perhaps ten or twelve years
younger than Wrenn, and presumably could be easily impressed
and dominated by him, although her preference for calling

him "Billy," in a diminutive mode, suggests her acceptance

of a mother-child alignment with the little clerk. Nelly

96

is as dull and steadfast as only ideal virtue can be. She
typifies the small town (Upton's Grove, Pennsylvania) girl
removed to the commercial city, who has won promotions at
Wanamacy's after unflagging application of the old pro-
vincial values--patience, fortitude, cleanliness, and
modesty. As Lewis describes her physical features, they
resemble those of Grace Hegger in photographs. Nelly's
history anticipates in embryo the career of Una Golden in
EHe gee. There is little else remarkable about Nelly ex-
cept that she and Mr. Wrenn so inevitably deserve each
other. His roots were in the hinterland as well (Parthenon,
New York), and though he had traveled abroad in body and
in fantasy, these adventures have made little difference
upon an essentially small-town man like Wrenn. When these
two love and marry, it is with a sense of relief that they
seem to escape into their romance of anonymity.

Wrenn's quest for a man to fill the role of
brother-friend was only less intense than his search for
a mother-wife. Lewis supplies a historical chain of male
associations, largely employed for ego support, to account
for Mr. Wrenn's friendships through a lifetime. First
there was Cousin John in Parthenon, who stayed behind when
Wrenn moved to the city. At the novelty company his
particular friend was Charley Carpenter, with whom he could
grouse about Guilfogle's tyrannies while they lunched at
Drfibel's Eating House. Charley is a sketch of the tin-

horn dissident and office pessimist. While Wrenn visits

97

England, Charley's excessive drinking lands him in trouble
with Guilfogle, who fires the assistant bookkeeper. Wrenn
finds his old friend in a trash-strewn apartment, gives him
a bath, a drink, breakfast and ten dollars to start Charley
hunting for a new job, but after the conclusion of Chapter
XII, there is no further trace of Mr. Carpenter. The

scene in Charley's flat is designed to show how some men,
like Mr. Wrenn, grow self-confident and compassionate

after daring to do the extraordinary thing, while others
like the bookkeeper break into ruins on a heap of empty
bottles, because they are essentially haters. The episode

is useful to show how much Wrenn has "changed,' because he
has been on a cattle-boat to "Europe," has met Harry Morton,
and has tramped England with Istra Nash, and he now is in

a position to bestow favors on the less fortunate Charley;
it further suggests that Wrenn, now on his way to success,
has no more use for his old friend than for the wake of the
ship which returned him to New York.

Similar treatment is accorded Harry Morton. Wrenn
had met Morton on the steamer bound for Portland to catch
the Merian. His new friend was a railroad office clerk in
New York who believed that "This socialism, and maybe even
these here International Workers of the World, may pan out
as a new kind of religion. . . . this comrade business--

good stunt. Brotherhood of man--real brotherhood” (pp.

45-46). But despite his affirmations of an international

98

fraternity of workingmen, Morton insists on heading off
alone, leaving Wrenn asleep in a haymow on the other side
of Liverpool. The departure of this brother-friend casts
Wrenn into a marked depression; he feels lonely and aban-
doned, as Lewis relates in Chapter VI, titled "He Is An
Orphan." Suddenly the narrative distance between author
and character vanishes in the intimacy of revelation:
Of that loneliness one could make many books;
how it sat down with him; how he crouched in his chair,
bespelled by it, till he violently rose and fled, with
loneliness for companion in his flight. He was lonely.
He sighed that he was "lonely as fits." Lonely--the
word obsessed him. Doubtless he was a bit mad, as are
all the isolated men who sit in distant lands longing
for the voices of friendship (p. 69).
The reunion of these two men at Miggleton's in New York
was a lugubrious occasion. Morton had never really left
Liverpool after parting from Wrenn; he had merely worked
in a restaurant. In spite of his high resolutions and
dreams of traveling to Constantinople or St. Petersburg,
Morton reveals himself as an impoverished introvert who
talks a brave game, but who is afraid to leave his brother-
in-law's home in Jersey City. The evening over, Wrenn
escorted Morton to the ferry dock. He was "parting with
his first friend."
At the ferry-house Morton pronounced his "Well,
so long, old fellow" with an affection that meant
finality.
Mr. Wrenn fled back. . . . On the way he was

shocked to find himself relieved at having parted with
Morton (p. 178).

99

By representing Morton as essentially a bluffer, Lewis is
able to imply, by contrast, that Wrenn has grown strong
enough to dispense with any support his friend could offer
now.

Mr. Wrenn's need for friendship had been stanched
briefly by an acquaintance with Dr. Mittyford, "the cul-
tured American," a professor of rhetoric at Stanford Uni-
versity, who was touring Oxford. Amused by Wrenn's use of
"West Sixteenth Street slang," Mittyford took him to a
country inn, where, through a comfortably alcoholic mist,
the clerk comes to see the pedant as "His dear friend, the
Doc!" "You really have a very fine imagination of a sort,
you know, but of course you're lacking in certain factual
bases," the professor had conceded, adding that instead of
scanning Oxford, Wrenn should "go back, master the world
you understand." So, at length, Wrenn does, as far as he
is able, but not before his encounter with Istra Nash, for

whom the scenes with Mittyford have rehearsed him.

Tom Poppins is another player of the brother—friend

role who eases several transitional situations for Wrenn
after his return to New York. Tom is present at the fare-
well scene with Morton, the introductions to Mrs. Arty
JFerrard and Nelly, the confrontation and break with the
imperious Mrs. Zapp, and at the Cigar-Makers' Ball, where
“Wrenn first realized the proprietary feeling he had for
Miss Croubel. Poppins fulfills all the function of an

Oklliging older brother who is gregarious and full of

100

advice; however, once Wrenn is sure of Nelly's devotion,
for which Tom's thoughtfulness has paved the way, the plump
cigar salesman fades into the background conversation, his
usefulness to author and character ended.

If Tom Poppins wears the aspect of a kindly older
brother, Mr. Guilfogle may be represented as the fierce
father, or authority figure. Before him Wrenn reacts with
fear, as in the first scene where the manager appears, when
the clerk "was shot out of his chair and four feet along
the corridor, in reflex response to the surly "Bur-r-r-r-'
of the buzzer. Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle, the manager,
desired to see him" (pp. 5-6). His superior is gruff,
stingy, opinionated and arbitrary in his decisions, much in
the manner of Dr. E. J. Lewis. Guilfogle's desk, like the
old doctor's desk Grace Lewis remembered so well, was
decorated with souvenirs and other glittering objects.

Like the elder Lewis's, his manner is also accusatory,
hectoring; a demonstration of these brow-beating qualities,
in fact, spurred Wrenn's decision to quit the novelty com-
pany. Lewis recounts this "electrical interview" with
Guilfogle
who spent a few minutes, which he happened to have
free, in roaring "I want to know why" at Mr. Wrenn.
There was no particular "why" that he wanted to know;
he was merely getting scientific efficiency out of
employers, a phrase which Mr. Guilfogle had taken from

a business magazine that dilutes efficiency theories
for inefficient employers (p. 16).

101

After another similar episode, Wrenn resolves to leave and
gives notice. He is unmoved by Guilfogle's pleas to re-
main. This transitional scene, and the leave-taking se-
quence which follows it, have perceptible psychological
overtones: for his repeated unwarranted criticisms and for
presuming upon the loyalty of the hero, the father figure
must be "punished," and made to regret the departure of
this key member of his office family. Three factors sup-
port this interpretation of these ritual scenes--Guil-
fogle's abrupt changes of attitude from overbearing to
entreating and solicitous; the manager's more than occu-
pational concern for the departing Wrenn, suggested in the
phrases
"I was joking about firing you. . . . You can't be
thinking of leaving us! There's no end of possi-
bilities here. . . . It strikes me you're a fool to
leave a good job. . . . We like you, and when you get
tired of being just a bum, why, come back. . . . Mean-
while I hope you'll have a mighty good time, old man,"
and, "Drop me a line now and then and let me know how

your're getting along,‘ which sound avuncular if not pa-
ternal; and finally, Wrenn's flash of anger and cool
determination to carry off his plan, despite Guilfogle's
appeals to his emotions and sense of responsibility. In
short, these scenes reflect Wrenn's need to relish his
employer's discomfiture, as a measure of how much the clerk
‘mas really needed and appreciated; they do not give support

in: Wrenn's supposed appetite for world travel, the reason

he gives for leaving the novelty company.

102

After he rejoins the souvenir company, however,
Wrenn's climb in the direction of an assistant managership
coincides with his moves to subdue the authoritarian Guil-
fogle by seizing the initiative for the "Southern market,"
demanding a stenographer and other improvements, and by
bluffing the manager into a series of salary increases.
For his brashness, Wrenn wrings praise from his superior:
"You're doing good work, old man. It's fine" (p. 167).
"But you're a good man--" (p. 251). When the clerk presses
for the raise that will permit him to marry Nelly (as Lewis
was contemplating marriage to Miss Hegger), Guilfogle
addresses him familiarly, protesting, "Now, now, now, now!
Calm down; hold your horses, my boy. This ain't a melo-
drama, you know" (p. 251). Perhaps not. But the story
could pass as a farce.

In review, an analysis of the functional roles
filled by Wrenn, Istra and Nelly, the friends Carpenter,
Morton and Poppins, and finally the stern-but-relenting
Guilfogle, uncovers a fundamentally weak and boyish hero
alone in the insensitive city. He surrounds himself with
a minor galaxy of supportive characters doing service
as idealized members of a family. It must be emphasized,
however, that character development has little to do with
the progress of gee HE. Hieee; the little man's rise in
the novelty company may be attributed to accidents and
Pressures outside himself. It is not enough that Wrenn

has ambition; he must also find a convincing way to direct

103

his yearnings, and it is the author's responsibility to
show that his hero has the inner resources of character

to make his advance toward success believable. This Lewis
fails to do. On the contrary, he permits Wrenn to bluff
and to play countless bit roles, always reacting to the
stimulus provided by other players, never generating any
counter-current of reaction in others by his own dynamics.
Behind the disguises, William Wrenn is perhaps as colorful
as an x-ray print.

A brief discussion of high-intensity passages in
the novel will lend authority to these charges of pas-
sivity and fortuitous success in the career of Mr. Wrenn.
First, the quasi-sexual episodes with Istra Nash are re-
markable for the scarcely-suppressed passion which they
excite in the hero: his first glimpse of the flaming beauty
at Mrs. Cattermole's was enough to arouse ardor unsuspected
in a man so mild. But three subsequent scenes of intimacy
with Istra find Wrenn frozen, passive, and crouching de-
fensively behind a thick wall of scrupulous propriety.

In Chapter VIII alone, for example, she invites Wrenn into
her bedroom on the flimsiest of pretexts, inducing him to
set next to her on the floor:

"Come sit by me. You with your sense of the ro-
mantic, ought to appreciate sitting by the fire. You
know it's always done."

He slumped down by her, clasping his knees and
trying to appear the dignified American business man

in his country-house.
She smiled at him intimately . . . (p. 100).

104

One senses Wrenn's struggle for rigid self-control, his
retreat from the direct acceptance of reality into an
imagined role at a fabricated setting. When he does ven-
ture to "explore with his thumb-tip the fine lines of the
side of her hand," his heart palpitates, and he finds it
difficult to believe what is happening.
. . . It actually was he, sitting here with a princess,
and he actually did feel the softness of her hand, he
pantingly assured himself (p. 101).
It follows that the woman must be removed to a lofty and
romanticized state, insulated from reality as well. A
similar pattern of intimacy-without-contact recurs in
Chapter X, when during their bold foot-journey to Aengus-
mere, Istra and Wrenn sleep primly on opposite sides of a
secluded straw stack. Waking first, Wrenn sublimates any
possible submission to passion into an elaborately busy
search for the ingredients of breakfast. He looks down
at Istra still asleep, and invents reasons to rationalize
his feelings of inadequacy.
. . . He looked at the auburn-framed paleness of her
face, its lines of thought and ambition, unmasked, un-
protected by the swift changes of expression which
defended her while she was awake. He sobbed. If only
he could make her happy! But he was afraid of her
moods (p. 127).
What the unconventional Istra needed to defend herself
against, or to what lengths Wrenn was prepared to go in an
attempt to "make her happy," or why he should be "afraid"

of her moods, even if they are capricious, remains in-

explicable. This ominous moodiness surfaces again as a

105

deterrent to sexual intimacy during the scene at the
ruined stable, when, rain-drenched, Wrenn and the girl
find shelter and dry themselves before a fire. Again, she
sleeps, with her head on his shoulder
. . . while his mind ran round in circles, considering
that he loved Istra, and that he would not be entirely
sorry when he was no longer the slave to her moods;
that this adventure was the strangest and most ro-
mantic, also the most idiotic and useless, in history
(p. 133).
The rugged outdoor meal, cooked hobo-fashion, and the
ritual building of a fire are themes Lewis often used to
signify proofs of virility and creativity in his heroes,
especially during some stage of a courtship campaign.
Having scored these marks of manhood, why does Wrenn fear
Istra's humors, and why does he erect barriers to defeat
himself? Why does he torture himself with yearning sen-
sations, yet fail to make the slightest commitment which
might result in a conquest, though occasions are more than
opportune? There does not seem to be any hesitation
attributable to moral or scruple. Then the best inter-
pretation of Wrenn's behavior is that he fears Istra's
rejection if he should commit himself (as, supposedly, the
waitress at the cocoa house had scorned him), but barring
a refusal, he would have to pursue his course, and this
clearly Wrenn is not prepared to do. Instead, he has only
contrived a self-defeating predicament for himself, a

prOpitious opportunity undermined in advance by his dread

of inadequacy and his terror of success. Istra's moods are

106

offered as the "reason" why Wrenn demurs; actually it is
himself he seems to fear, and the anger he feels at frus-
tration Wrenn transfers to Istra, blaming her temperament
for his disaffection.
A second group of high-intensity scenes relates to
Wrenn's courtship of Nelly Croubel, an innocent whom Wrenn
can win virtually without opposition. Any token rivals,
like Horatio Hood Teddem the "actor," or the black-
mustached salesman at the Cigar-Makers' Ball, provoke
Wrenn's deep, hostile jealousy. Istra Nash's arrival from
Europe, and her temporary residence at Mr. Wrenn's boarding
house, pose an apparent dilemma for the little clerk; there
is one more bedroom scene with Istra--
Her long strong arms reached up and drew him down.

It was his head that rested on her shoulder. It seemed

to both of them that it was he who was to be petted,

not she. He pressed his cheek against the comforting

hollow of her curving shoulder and rested there . . .

(p. 239)
and one more dinner alfresco, on the Hudson Palisades,
while Wrenn resumes his courtship of Nelly, but there is
little doubt of the issue. Among her raffish bohemian
friends in Washington Square, Istra is too alien, too
flamboyant and mercurial a personality for compatibility
with a novelty clerk. Wrenn reconciles himself grate-
fully to a life of stable domesticity with Nelly, who
mothers him, and assures him of prospects for becoming

manager of the souvenir company one day. The emotional

intensity of these scenes with Nelly does not compare with

107

the episodes involving Istra. Wrenn's passionate instincts
are almost overpowering, but the hero is so signally lack-

ing in assurance, savoir faire, or a sense of timing, that

 

Lewis must arrange to let him capture Nelly practically by
forfeit.

Confrontations with Guilfogle form a third pattern
of high-tension scenes in 92E Hi. Wrenn. It is enough to
point out that Wrenn winns concessions and raises from the
manager by threatening and bluffing, tactics which depend
on his playing a role or losing his temper dramatically.

In review, it is important to emphasize that
Lewis's technique for drawing character in Qe£_H£. Wrenn
consists in aggregating a variety of roles, poses, and
emotional reflexes around a deliberately blank hero. The
central theme of Success in self-concept, in occupation,
and in romantic love provides Wrenn with three functional,
external roles to perform. On another level, his reactions
to other characters impel him to assume other parts, to
impress them, or pretend to himself; these roles may be
designated "personality disguises." A third kind of role-
playing Wrenn permits himself crops out in his fantasies;
these are idealized, escapist charades, in which he dreams
of successes in adventure and love, or rehearses for him-
self the fulfillment of a wish. Istra Nash, Charley
Carpenter, and Harry Morton are the only other characters
who may be suspected of possessing commonplace, if not

pathetic, personalities beneath a brave exterior. Lewis

108

is fond of insinuating that behind most confident and care-
free public performances, the perceptive author may peer
to discover the "real" individual--often a bluffer, a
self-doubter or an ignoramus. Technically, this is one of
his strongest appeals to the reader, and one of his great-
est weaknesses, smacking of a journalistic, expose-style
orientation in his view of life. Probably it is also be-
cause Lewis was himself a compulsive role player, inventing
plots and mimicking people with great facility, that he
could not concede that anyone could simply be a real person
without requiring the support of costumes, props, and masks
to hide behind.

Thus, one searches throughout QE£.H£° Wrenn for
a "real" hero, and finds next to nothing. Or is it Lewis
who lies exposed? The difficulty is that Lewis does not
maintain a uniform, objective distance from his creatures,
and at times he becomes over-managerial, and inhabits them.
The reason for this is that, rather than being primarily
a creator of fiction, Lewis is a relater of experiences;
the distinction is an important one, because the latter
is narrower in scope. Success was naturally the theme
which preoccupied Lewis's own mind in 1913-1914, and it
is hard to resist reading biographical interpretations
into QE£.H£3 Wrenn. But even without identifying Lewis's
personal emotional patterns which permeate the tale, one

can detect a strong counter-theme of fear of success, and

109

a self-defeating refusal by the hero to grow significantly
toward full manhood. William Wrenn does not come off, in
the last analysis, as an emancipated person. The exercise
of his freedom has merely bought him an escape into

anonymity.

CHAPTER IV

THE TRAIL OF THE HAWK: THREE

 

 

FACES OF DANGER

Sinclair Lewis's second novel for adult readers,

The Trail ei the Hawk, was published by Harper and Brothers

 

 

in September, 1915. Subtitled H Comedy ei the Seriousness

 

ei Hiie, the book bears a dedication "To the optimistic
rebels through whose talk the author watches the many-
colored spectacle of 1ife--George Soule, Harrison Smith,
Allan Updegraff, F. K. Noyes, Alfred Harcourt, B. W.
Huebsch." The story develops around the life of young

Carl Ericson, a second-generation Norwegian-American, from
his eighth year in 1892 (the same age as Lewis, Mark Schorer
Observes) to his thirtieth in 1915, and treats three aspects
of his experience in roughly chronological order: "The Ad-
venture of Youth," "The Adventure of Adventuring," and "The
Adventure of Love." In these divisions, Schorer notes,

"The necessary ingredient of the first is rebellion; of

the second, freedom; of the third, a playmate. The threat

to all of them is the compliance with routine; the

110

111

alternative to the third is loneliness."l But beneath the
surface familiarity of these favorite Lewis themes may be
seen the depths of the seriousness to which the subtitle
draws attention. Apparently, the three divisions of iHe

Trail ei the Hawk represent the author's dramatization of

 

three faces of danger to the ego of Hawk Ericson, his
protagonist: the threat of anonymity, or living death,
posed by life in a small town like Joralemon, Minnesota;
the risk of violent death while flying flimsy aircraft
during the early days of aviation; and the menace of
failure, or success, in job and marriage.

In support of the thesis that Sinclair Lewis
dramatized his own fears and emotional conflicts by trying
on the roles of his fictional creatures, it is interesting
to mark similarities between the lives of Carl Ericson and
Lewis. Both experienced the pettiness and isolation of
existence in a Minnesota village; both attended schools
where formal religious atmosphere bore down heavily on
student life and thought; both wandered about the country,
and took sudden excursions to Panama; they are both
inveterate walkers and campers; flirt with socialistic
political beliefs; find office work stultifying; and fall
in love with soft-fleshed, brown-haired New York girls
from the Upper Middle Class who give their husbands lessons

in taste and manners. Beyond these, there are further

 

1Sinclair Lewis: He American Life, p. 221.

 

 

112

similarities in the behavioral patterns of the two:
restlessness, feelings of persecution, protective gestures
toward unpopular friends; lack of assurance in sexual
matters and courtship on a childlike, sentimental basis;
and especially tendencies toward escapism by travel or
fantasy role playing, and some suggestions of a death wish.

Elizabeth Jordan, Lewis's editor at Harper's, has

 

written that The Trail ei the Hawk "was in a way autobi-

 

ographical. Hal himself was at heart a hawk, wild and un-
tamed."2 Grace Lewis conceded that the novel was

autobiographical in so far as the hero, Hawk Ericson,
was born in a small Minnesota town, came to New York
and found success there, and married a girl whose
social background had been different from his own.

. . . But the Hawk was primarily the story of the
pioneer days of aviation, the suicidal fly-by-night
training schools, the aero meets [and] the daring
prize-competing races . . . 3

Mrs. Lewis also confessed that she was "the chief female
character" (i.e., Ruth Winslow) in this book, as well as

in the later Free Air (Claire Boltwood) and Main Street

 

 

(the "good part" of Carol Kennicott, according to Lewis's

inscription). In her copy of The Trail ei the Hawk, her

 

 

husband wrote:

To Grace from Hal. "Youth bubbles in every line,"
says the blurb on the jacket. It is true, in the
sense that you are in every line, & you are youth.
This is not so much a novel, dear, as a record of our

games & talks & thoughts and journeys. Without you,

 

2Three Rousing Cheers (New York, 1938), p. 342.

3With Love From Gracie, pp. 73-74.

 

113

none of it could have been written--if it is good, it

is your merit; if bad, it is my faulty effort to

express us.4

Mark Schorer traces the parallels between author

and character with thoroughness, perceptively pointing out
that "the novelist splits himself up among a number of
characters," and that where the scenes between Carl and
Ruth are concerned, "the novel contains biographical
detail beyond the significant revelation that lies in the
apparent necessity to make the sexual relationship an in-
fantile thing."5 Sheldon Grebstein concurs in detecting
the autobiographical overtone of the book, identifying it
as primarily a novel of education, and stating that "Carl
Ericson is an idealized projection of the young Lewis,

. . . . . . 6
and hlS 'education' is a vehicle for LeWis's ideas."

Ideas, however, are few in The Trail ei_the Hawk, except

 

for Carl's earnest but vaguely defined social egalitarian-
ism, which tallies well with the bonhomie among pioneer
flyers, but is displaced in his relationship to Ruth.

The "Touricar" on which Carl works for the Van Zile com-
pany is another Revolutionary Idea sent express from the
author to give his hero some justifiable continuing em-
ployment, as in the case of Mr. Wrenn's special inkwells

for the "southern trade."

 

4With Love From Gracie, pp. 152-153.

 

5Sinclair Lewis: He American Life, pp. 221-223.

 

 

6Sinclair Lewis, pp. 44-45.

114

The theme of danger, as implied in the risks of

the three "adventures" of Carl Ericson, gives The Trail ei

 

EHe Hegk its psychological and emotional continuity, rather
than ideas. The novel is far more visceral than cerebral.
Schorer's observation regarding the threat to adventure
posed by "compliance with routine" and Grebstein's asser-
tion that Lewis used a basic "search for identity" formula
in his early novels7 are apt criticisms; they do not, how-
ever, shed light on the motives for rebellion against com-
pliance, or the methods employed in the search for self,
either in the lives of Lewis or Hawk Ericson. An illumi-
nating clue to Carl's motivation is evident in his yearning
to be worthy, especially of women he admires. Insight into
his quest for an agreeable identity is accessible through
an examination of Carl's role playing on several levels.
There is danger, of course, in finally becoming worthy, for
then the hero faces a commitment to the woman he has
struggled to deserve, and there is also the risk of success
in finding oneself, of ending the romantic charade of pre-
tending to be still a youth with dozens of role options,
and having to accept oneself as he really is. That none

of these problems is satisfactorily resolved at the con-

clusion of The Trail ei the Hawk suggests the Hawk's

 

neurotic need to continue facing danger, rather than permit

 

7Sinclair Lewis, p. 39.

 

115

success to overtake him, either in sexual relationships
in in a final ego role definition.

The first aspect of danger which Carl Ericson
confronts is the threat of anonymity through a planless
life in rural Joralemon, Minnesota. Lewis's bias against
small-town customs and social life is as obvious as his
delight in the sun-flooded countryside. On the one hand,
Joralemon is a "wholesome, democratic and stuffy village,"
whose society is patrolled by supercilious matrons like
Mrs. Cowles, Gertie's mother, and whose economics is sup-
ported by the local farmers, the flour mill, the Minnesota
and Dakota railroad, and by flinty skilled workmen like
Carl's carpenter father.

Oscar Ericson radiated intolerance and a belief in
unimaginative, unresting labor. Every evening, collar-
less and carpet-slippered, ruffling his broom-colored
hair or stroking his large, long chin, . . . he read
a Norwegian newspaper.
On the other hand, Lewis's joyful appreciation of the land-
scape glows in the passages
The surface of the water was smooth, and tinted like
a bluebell, save for one patch in the current where
wavelets leaped with October madness in sparkles of
diamond fire. Across the lake, woods sprinkled with
gold-dust and paprika broke the sweep of sparse yellow
stubble, and a red barn was softly brilliant in the
caressing sunlight and lively air of the Minnesota
prairie (p. 4).
The sun rolled splendidly through the dry air, over
miles of wheat stubble, whose gray-yellow prickles

were transmuted by distance into tawny velvet, seem-
ing only the more spacious because of the straight,

 

8The Trail ei the Hawk (New York, 1915), p. 27.

 

116

thin lines of barbed-wire fences lined with goldenrod,
and solitary houses in willow groves. The dips and
curves of the rolling plain drew him on; the distances
satisfied his eyes (p. 30).
Both the town's social establishment, which half-excludes
Carl because his father is not a professional and because
the boy's vocational plans are vague, and his preference
for the solitary outdoor life tend to set him apart, if
not isolate him. But Carl is not in the truest sense a
rebel. Normal childhood disobedience to parents does not
brand a boy as a rebel, unless inordinate fear of their
disapproval makes him interpret rooster-chasing or walking
out of his own yard as enormous gestures of defiance.
Taking pleasure in the beauty of woods and fields is not
in itself characteristic of rebellion, nor does Carl's un-
critical acceptance of Bone Stillman's humanitarian advice
and Professor Frazer's social doctrines at Plato College
convincingly bestow on him a rebel's credentials. Lewis
seems ambivalent about the need for attributing this non-
conformity to Carl as a motive force for his adventuring;
he wishes to sketch his protagonist with a few distinctive
characteristics, yet he does not wish to lose control of
him. Thus, Carl earns the label of "rebel" through a few
token acts of stubbornness, for example, by defending
Eugene Linderbeck and Frazer in a demand for fair treat-

ment; but Lewis accentuates this progressiveness mainly

by the device of casting the remaining lump of society as

117

crooked, hypocritical and conformist, so that his hero
who has made the morally correct choice may seem liberal.

Throughout the "Adventure of Youth" section Lewis

raises the bogeys of the Middlewestern small-town value
system as threats to the free and natural development of
his central character.

Life at Plato was suspicious, prejudiced, pro-
vincial, as it affected the ambitious students; and
for the weaker brethren it was philandering and vague.
The class work was largely pure rot. . . . Few of the
students realized the futility of it all . . .

The life habit justifies itself. One comes to
take anything as a matter of course. . . . The
Platonians raced toward their various goals of high-
school teaching, or law, or marriage, or permanently
escaping their parents. . . . They played out their
game. But it was so tiny a game, so played to the
exclusion of all other games, that it tended to dwarf
its victims--and the restless children, such as Carl,
instinctively resent this dwarfing. They seek to
associate themselves with other rebels. Carl's un-
conscious rebel band was the group of rowdyish fresh-
men who called themselves "the Gang," and loafed about
the room of their unofficial captain . . . (pp. 62-63).

Opposing academic incompetence with boredom and inactivity
is scarcely the patent of a true rebel, however. Carl
adopts a defiant stance only after his meeting with Pro-
fessor Frazer. The effect of this friendship is remarkable
in that Carl does not develop intellectually or politically
in any appreciable measure, but he is impressed by the
professor's manners and tastes in household decor, reading
matter, conversation, music. As is often the case with
Lewis heroes, an escalation in the quality of his bourgeois

tastes is offered as an equivalent to character development.

Carl's loyalty to the professor is that of a devoted

118

admirer and imitator, not of a kindred mind, who labori-
ously read Pre-Raphaelite poetry "by crawling from word
to word as though they were ice-cakes in a cataract of
emotion," during his "violent pursuit of the beautiful"
(p. 69). His decision to stand publicly for "Frazer and
freedom" while his teacher was denounced for socialistic
views resulted in Carl's departure from Plato College.
Having dramatically purified himself in ritual fasting
from his noon meal and hiking moodily in the woods, Carl
justifies his escape from the school after a glimpse of
sunset clouds shaped like the Grand Canyon.

He had to see the Grand Canyon! He would! . . . He

was slowly coming to understand that he was actually

free to take youth's freedom.

He saw the vision of the America through which
he might follow the trail like the pioneers whose
spiritual descendant he was. How noble was the
panorama that thrilled this one-generation American
can be understood only by those who have smelled our
brown soil . . . (pp. 121-122).

Swept along by the effusiveness of this vision, Carl bursts
the confines of the Joralemon-Plato ethic and evades the
menace of anonymous conformity by running away, perhaps

to Europe, with $92.75, "enough to make a mighty good

start seeing the world, anyway." Behind him is the ad-
venture of youth.

The anonymity he finds in the opening chapters

of Part II, "The Adventure of Adventuring," is still more
threatening, however. Depression and futility are the

dominant moods of Carl's next four years of wandering--

roughly from November, 1905, to November, 1909.

119

This period of unorganized drifting affords the author
opportunities for depicting his hero in a wide variety of
occupational roles, some of them almost deliberately de-
grading, in a number of different geographical locations.
Carl is able, consequently, to react to a small spectrum
of personality types whom he encounters in his travels,
including the inevitable mechanic, waiter, hobo and actor,
as well as an actress who rehearses him in the arts of
imitation love. These random adventures are a convenient
excuse for structural looseness in the center section of

The Trail ei the Hawk, where the author can rely on the

 

 

technique of highlighting selectively the most brilliant
facets of his hero's experience. Nevertheless, Chapters
XVII-XXI, which detail Carl's rise from student in the
Bagby School of Aviation to national hero as winner of the
$10,000 New Haven Meet, provide the most sustained reader
interest in the novel. The reason is that these pages are
comparatively free of the self-consciousness and moody
introspection which have overshadowed Lewis's protagonist
in earlier chapters; in permitting Carl to be active,
mastering new technical skills and making strong friend-
ships, the author allows him to gain autonomy and confi-
dence.

Alas, not for long. In the last chapters of
Part II, Lewis resorts to a sketchy device, while assuming

the guise of "Editor" of Ericson's notes.

120

(Editor's Note: The following pages are extracts
from a diary kept by Mr. C. O. Ericson in a desultory
fashion from January, 1911, to the end of April, 1912.
They are reprinted quite literally. Apparently Mr.
Ericson had no very precise purpose in keeping his
journal. . . . ) (p. 202).

 

The emotional range narrows again, the "entries" are frag-
mented, introspective, analytical, and frequently gloomy.
"The Adventure of Adventuring" closes with reports of
Carl's injury in a crash while flying to St. Louis, his
shock at the sudden death of his friend Forrest Haviland,
and the Hawk's escape to Europe after giving up flying.
Carl had courted death long enough.

"The Adventure of Love," Part III, begins by way
of a venture in business, as William Wrenn has discovered,
and Carl Ericson was to learn. He returns to New York in
the fall of 1912 with a mustache and a thin glaze of
European sophistication--evidence of further refinement
in his tastes. Carl will oversee development of his new
invention

the "Touricar"--an automobile with all camping
accessories, which should enable motorists to travel
independent of inns, add the joy of camping to the
joy of touring, and . . . add money to the purse of
the inventor.

. . . Carl had got the idea of the Touricar

while wandering by motor-cycle through Scandinavia
and Russia (p. 225).
As head of the Touricar Company, a subsidiary of the Van
Zile Corporation, Carl finds Office life boring. Per-

sonally, he feels isolated, neglected; he imagines that

he lacks the appeal to sustain old friendships.

121

Carl was a dethroned prince. . . . He was for-
gotten. He did not seek out the many people he had
met when he was an aviator and a somebody. He be-
lieved, perhaps foolishly, that they liked him only
as a personage, not as a person (p. 228).

Without his reassuring facade as the celebrated pilot, the
Hawk sinks into depression. His substitute role, the
"hustling, optimistic young businessman," does not con-
sole him. The national audience for his performances as

a flyer has vanished; he no longer reads his name in the
newspapers.

Miraculously, Lewis arranges the appearance in

New York of an old Joralemon acquaintance who promises a
soul-satisfying poultice of home-town love and friendship.
Gertrude Cowles now lives on West 157th Street with her
mother and brother Ray. But Carl requires only a short
reacquaintance to realize that, as a managing woman whose
tastes now seem affected and provincial, Gertie represents
a threat to his freedom and to his heroic self-image. She
is too forward, too desperately eager to have him. In her
presence he is wooden, bored. They quarrel; he stubbornly
refuses to apologize, stalks away to dine in martyrdom,
alone. Almost vindictively, he contemplates flying again:
"He suddenly determined to go off some place and fly an
aeroplane; as suddenly knew that he was not yet ready to
return to the game" (p. 253). Returning to the air would
represent punishing Gertie for her man-eating attitudes,

but it also suggests in this context Carl's irrational

wish to scourge himself, by taking an unnecessary and

122

suicidal risk, for being afraid of her. But happily, an
author-sent object for the immediate transfer of Carl's
affections rides into view. Gazing through the restaurant
window, Carl studies a stalled street-car, on which the
lovely Olive Dunleavy and Ruth Winslow are seated. Hastily
he shadows the girls to a party, singles out Ruth to ful-
fill the role of his playmate, pursues her, woos her, weds
her, quarrels with her, and at last--as Argentine repre-
sentative for the Van Zile Corporation--he steams with her
off to Buenos Aires.

In Part III the dangers of commerce and of love
are intertwined. The onset of the World War threatens to
curtail demand for the Touricar. Van Zile considers with-
drawing support from the company. The camping automobile
is never a large success, although it attracts steady
interest on the market. Carl and Ruth's marriage also
Sputters unevenly along, more an accommodation than a
success. The novel ends inconclusively, through an escape
on a liner to South America. It is as though neither Carl
Ericson nor Sinclair Lewis could face resolutely the de-
mands which success in love and business make upon the
individual, without fearing exposure as a boy masquerading
in a man's clothing.

Lewis's three-part organization for The Trail ei

 

the Hawk follows with a more sharply defined structure

the main lines of story continuity treated in Our HE. Wrenn,

123

and later applied to the narrative of Una Golden in 222
£22. Success in developing a self-concept, successes in
business and in romantic love are hinted at, even con-
vincingly visualized, but never conclusively demonstrated
in the central character's experience. Lewis prefers to
radiate impressions of success, rather than furnish proofs.

In The Trail ei the Hawk, the three aspects of adventure

 

reflect sides of the hero like a vanity-mirror, or like
three scenes in a tryptych of the life of Lewis's martyr-
hero, often referred to as a "Galahad."

At times Lewis seems undecided whether to repre-
sent Carl Ericson as a hero or not. Despite allusions to
his resemblance to Galahad, Jason, Ulysses or Lochinvar,
the author occasionally insists that "this is a serious
study of an average young American" (p. 6), or, "Yet he was
no extraordinary person" (p. 294). After having spied
daringly on the Plato faculty meeting which debated Pro-
fessor Frazer's liberal ideas, Carl evades capture and
assumes a casual air "not at all like a melodramatic hero
of a slide-by-night, but like a matter-of-fact young man
going to see some one about business." The next morning,
when Carl stands in support of Frazer at the chapel ser-
vice, Lewis points out that

Carl was not a hero. He was frightened. In a moment

now all the eyes in the room would be unwinkingly
focused on him (p. 107).

124

In a later passage strained modesty seems to force Carl to
write in his diary:

October EH; I wonder how far I'll get as an
aviator? The newspapers all praise me as a hero.
Hero, hell! I'm a pretty steady flier but so would
plenty of chauffeurs be. This hero business is mostly
bunk, it was chance my starting to fly at all (p. 216).

Even at the height of his fame, the victor dares not enjoy
his meed, but feels obliged to efface himself, staving off
pride like a Puritan. Finally, when Carl looks toward
reconciliation with Ruth following their most bitter dis-
agreement, Lewis apostrophizes in a most interesting
passage:

During a few moments of their lives, ordinary real
people, people real as a tooth-brush, do actually
transcend the coarsely physical aspects of sex and
feeding, and do approximate to the unwavering glow

of romantic heroes. Carl was no more a romantic
hero-lover than, as a celebrated aviator, he had been
a hero-adventurer. He was a human being. He was not
even admirable, except as all people are admirable,
from the ash-man to the king. . . . Yet . . . he de-
sired happiness for [Ruth] with a devotion great as
the passion in Galahad's heart when all night he
knelt before the high altar (PP. 404-405).

On this same theme, Lewis permits Ruth to dabble in some
tentative role exchanging while she speaks to Carl of her
social theory.
" . . . I've been reading; and I've made--to you it
may seem silly to call it a discovery, but to me it's
the greatest discovery I've ever made: that people
are just people, all of them--that the little mousey
clerk may be a hero, and the hero may be a nobody
. . . " (p. 286).
Speaking from his varied experience, Carl agrees that she

is right. Here is book-learned theory supported by practi-

cal observation. Then, oddly, Lewis backs away from these

125

affirmations with the comment, "So they talked, boy and
girl, wondering together what the world really is like."
"Really" suggests that neigher of the characters knows,
despite their agreement in idea and experience. Lewis
repeatedly uses the words "real," "really," "serious,"

and "seriously" to imply that there is always another,
hidden side to a person or idea than the aspect the reader

sees. Thus, in this Comedy ei the Seriousness ei Life

 

 

Lewis can play the emphasis both ways, hiding both the
ambiguity of Carl's heroism and any forthright statement
of the book's theme behind a paradox” His use of the
enigmatic word "adventure" to label the novel's three
parts further occludes Lewis's intended point of view to-
ward his main character; whatever else one could say about
Hawk Ericson's trail, heroic or not, it was an adventure.
Much of Lewis's indecisiveness over Carl's heroism

derives from the character's inveterate role-playing and
projecting, as in the numerous "he saw himself" passages,
which also reflect a remarkable degree of personality
dissociation. For example, while Carl endures the tyran-
nies of Latin, knowing that he must study it if he hopes
to attend college, he contemplates escape into a natural
setting.

He let the lines of his Cicero fade into a gray blur

that confounded Cicero's blatant virtue and Catiline's

treachery, while he pictured himself tramping with

snow-shoes and mackinaw coat into the snowy solemnities
of the northern Minnesota tamarack swamps (p. 31).

126

In the summer after his first year of college, Carl returns
to Joralemon with some reputation as a track star at Plato
College. He senses that he has "come home a hero," but
declines to follow up any advantage he may have in his
friendship with Gertie, until he is on the train, clacking
toward his summer job. With her he had been restrained;
now he could enjoy the safety of fantasy.
He mourned that he had not been more tender with her
that week. He pictured himself kissing Gertie on the
shore of Tamarack Lake, enfolded by afternoon and the
mystery of sex and a protecting reverence for Gertie's
loneliness. He wanted to go back--back for one more
day, one more ride with Gertie. But . . .
and here Lewis contrives an important transitional coinci-
dence, where Carl's first interest in flying, at which he
will be quite successful, appears as a substitute for his
confident behavior with women,
. . . he picked up a mechanics magazine, glanced at an
article on gliders, read in the first paragraph a
prophecy about aviation, slid down in his seat with
his head bent over the magazine--and the idyl of
Gertie and afternoon was gone (p. 73).
Later while impulsively spying on the secret faculty meet-
ing at Plato during the Frazer affair, Carl recalls a
similar, earlier incident which had shaped his youth.
" . . . Say! Where'd I do just this before? Oh yes!"
He saw himself as little Carl, lost with Gertie in
the woods, caught by Bone Stillman at the window
(p. 103).
Indignant that no one has courage enough to support Frazer

publicly, Carl rises in protest at chapel, as if watching

himself perform an incredible act.

127

Then Carl was agitated to find that Carl Ericson,
a back-yard boy, was going to rise and disturb all
these learned people (p. 112).

During his years of wandering, Carl works for a time as
assistant barkeep in a Bowery saloon, resolving to work
himself up out of the social "mire." He reads a chance
Sunday newspaper article on the Panama Canal's "marvels
of engineering and jungle."
He saw himself in Panama, with a clean man's job,
talking to cosmopolitan engineers against a back-
ground of green-and-scarlet jungle (p. 154).
A further vision of his rise in the social scale unrolls
before Carl in a fantasy suggested by "The Blue Danube"
waltz during a dance in his days at the Bagby School of
Aviation.
The name brought back the novels of General Charles
King,9 as he had read them in high school days; . . .
a rude ballroom, a young Officer dancing to the "Blue
Danube's" intoxication; a hot-riding, dusty courier,
hurling in with news of an Apache outbreak; a few
minutes later a troop of cavalry slanting out . . . a
farewell burning on the young officer's lips. . . .
He was in just such an army story now!

The scent of royal climbing-roses enveloped Carl
as that picture changed into others. . . . For the
first time Hawk Ericson realized that he might be a
Personage instead of a back-yard boy (pp. 177-178).

In his dream of success, Carl's imagined "girl with twi-

light eyes" smiles at him.

 

9Charles King (1844-1933) was an American Army
Officer and professor of military science at the University
of Wisconsin. King wrote many novels and stories based on
his experiences in the Reconstruction South, in the Indian
wars in the West, in the Spanish-American War, and the
Philippine Insurrection. One of his novels is H_Trooper
Galahad (Philadelphia, 1899).

128

In later self-dramatizations, Carl imagines him-
self as a "Dethroned Prince" (p. 310), rehearses a possible
telephoned apology to Ruth after a disagreement (p. 328),
then refuses to apologize: "He was dramatizing himself
as hero in a melodrama. He did not know how the play
would end" (p. 329). He sees himself "as a lout cast out
of heaven" (p. 330), imagines quitting his job to "join
Bagby, Jr., in his hydroaeroplane experiments. He pictured
the crowd that would worship him" (p. 331). Again this
impulse to resume flying exposes itself as a threatening,
self-destructive form of punishment, intended to make Ruth
regret her sneers at his manners and breeding.

Carl's role projections all occur when he is
alone. In most of them he assumes a heroic posture, and
in many of these fantasies Carl rehearses acts which will
win the attention of spectators, especially women. It
seems inconsistent of Lewis to characterize Hawk Ericson
as a daring hero in the early days of aviation, as an
active, vigorous inventor of machinery, then to show him
indulging in so many compensatory daydreams, indicative of
a passive, bookish and adolescent behavior pattern. One
suspects that Carl's roles and fantasies are simulations
of Lewis's own emotional patterns, scarcely masked at all,
projected on to the hero, who is a representation of
Lewis's ego substitute. The active Carl, the outdoorsman,
track star and football player, the wire-stringer, mechanic

and particularly the flyer, represent a male-success

129

repertoire superimposed upon, and inconsistent with, the
anxious and narcissistic personality which Hawk Ericson

is at bottom. The other possibility, that Lewis conceived
Carl as a subtle and complex character who enjoys a life

of remarkable richness and diversity, does not survive more
than passing scrutiny. The Hawk is tethered by the narrow
scope of Lewis's insight into human personality, which
viewed men principally as possessors of occupational roles,
and in their interrelationships essentially as bluffers
behind the barricades of social status. In the end, Lewis
is unwilling to give up his special kind of control over
his protagonists. His novels are much more about the roles
men perform than about the men themselves, to make a dis-
tinction. This explains how characters like Carl Ericson
can age in a chronological sequence without growing; as
mutations of the same basic emotion-based value system of
Lewis's loves and antipathies, they cannot develOp enough
independence to leave their progenitor.

Beyond Carl's dissociative fantasies, he acts
parts in other ways, mainly in different vocational capaci-
ties. In his childhood games he pretended to be a "soldier
of fortune," a general, a trapper or railroad brakeman;
"Carl had never made b'lieve fairies or princes," Lewis
records. At sixteen he had trimmed street lamps for the
local power company, frequented the billiard hall and
hunted prairie chickens. Arrival of the first "horseless

carriage" in Joralemon inspires Carl's resolve to go to

130

college to "study mechanical engineering." But following
Gertie Cowles's party in Chapter IV, Carl is impressed
enough by her opinion of his abilities to dream of studying
law and running for public office. When he enrolls at
Plato College, Carl "was convinced that he was going to
become a lawyer, for her sake, but he knew that some day
he would be tempted by the desire to become a civil or a
mechanical engineer" (pp. 64-65). Between years at college
Carl strings wire, climbing poles for a telephone company.
Later, relinquishing his students' occupation, Carl tries
many sorts of jobs. "For more than a year he went down,
down the social scale, down to dirt and poverty and associ-
ation with the utterly tough and reckless" (p. 127). He
is a tutor, time-keeper for a window-cleaning company, re-
porter, cab driver, bookkeeper, department store packer,
mechanic, chauffeur, hobo, waiter, actor, motor boat
tender, saloon porter, engineer in Panama, factotum at a
mine in Mexico, garage owner in Oakland, and at last, an
aviator. In linking these occupational changes with a
descent in social status, Lewis exposes his basic value
assumption that a man's identity and worth depend almost
exclusively upon his vocational standing, apart from the
mass, as the following passage suggests.
Though he did not suppose that he was going to continue
dwelling in a hall bedroom, yet never did he regard
himself as a collegian Haroun-al-Raschid on an amusing
masquerade, pretending to be no better than the men

with whom he worked. Carl was no romantic hero incog.
He was a workman, and he knew it. Was not his father

131

a carpenter? his father's best friend a tailor? Had
he not been a waiter at Plato?

But not always a workman. Carl had no conception
of world-wide class-consciousness; he had no pride in
being a proletarian. . . . he took it for granted that
he was going to be rich as soon as he could (p. 130).

Ultimately, it is this monolithic motive, which seems on
some evidence to have been Lewis's also, which limits the
development of Carl's character.

Sometimes Carl enacts a role within a role. In
his occupation as an actor for the Great Riley tent Show,
he is able to try on many parts. Lewis writes, half
ironically, that Carl "like every human being since Eden,
with the possible exceptions of Calvin and Richard Mans-

field,10

had a secret belief that he could be a powerful
actor" (p. 136). He plays the "second juvenile," then more
important bits, like that of the "young millionaire."
Another place which suggests the hero's concentric
roles is the diary entry where Carl reflects on the work-
ings of his imagination. This passage seems to illustrate
Lewis's emotional patterns even more than the Hawk's.
Stimulus for Carl's speculation generates from Istra
Nash's complaint that his refusal to name his new air-
craft "Babette" showed lack of imagination; one remembers

the link between this provocative girl and Mr. Wrenn, an

association based mainly on the strength of his celebrated

 

10Richard Mansfield (1857-1907) was an American
actor who tried several occupations before becoming a
celebrated star. He was the first producer of a G. B.
Shaw play in the United States (Arms EE§.EEE.HEE' 1894).

132

power of imagination. (Lewis seems to reintroduce Istra

in The Trail ei the Hawk for her usefulness as a personi-

 

fied value system and also as an echo cue to remind the
reader of his earlier novel.) Carl's response:

People especially reporters are always asking me
this question, do aviators have imagination? I'm not
sure I know what imagination is. . . . A few years ago
when I was running a car I would make believe I was
different people, like a king driving through his king-
dom . . . And I do like to go different places; possibly
I take the imagination out that way--I guess imagination
is partly wanting to be places where you aren't--we11,

I go when I want to, and I like that better (pp. 206-
207).

It is fascinating to note the sequence of female presence-
imagination-roles-"different places," laid out almost like
a plan for evasive action. Lewis confessed to a restless-
ness similar to the Hawk's years later, when he wrote an
editorial "Foreword" for a Readers Club selection. After

speaking of the realistic characters in The Fortunes ei

 

Richard Mahony, Lewis digresses.

 

It is the story, in a different coat, of all of
us. We may feel that the author has been spying on
us, sharing our secret thoughts and weaknesses and
hidden generosities. Dr. Mahony's trick of suddenly
wanting to leave a decent home, for no intellectually
defensible reason, at whatever cost of rent or con-
tacts or esteem of friends, that emotional compulsion
that can be quieted only by up and going, at once--I
have known it more times than I would ever confess.ll

These are candid admissions; the "emotional compulsion"
to leave home "for no intellectually defensible reason"

afflicted many of his characters as well as Sinclair Lewis

 

llHenry Handel Richardson [Henrietta R. Robertson],
The Fortunes ei Richard Mahony (New York, 1941), p. vi.

 

133

himself. In Carl Ericson's case, wandering about, even
flying, seems to be a sublimation of his imagination; it
is obviously escapist in its purpose, not primarily edu-
cational. Travel is a role-substitute, a flight from the
danger of facing oneself, a self-destructive fraud to
thwart the ego.

Supplementing the hero's constellation of occu-
pational roles is his list of aliases. At home in Jora-
lemon, he is only "Carl," except to Bone Stillman, who,
significantly, calls him "son." While he attends Plato,
Mae Thurston at the boarding house calls him "Eric," and
his friend, John ("Turk") Terry refers to him as "young
Kerl." His room-mate, Albert ("Plain") Smith calls him
simply "bub." To the patronizing dean he is "Ericson."

In New York the Bowery bully, Petey McGuff, dubs Carl
derisively "tissy-cat," "Sunday-school Harry," "Mamma's
little rosy-cheeked boy," "Lizzie," and "Agnes." As a
hobo, he had been "Slim" Ericson. Bluffing his way un-
invited to the party where he has followed Ruth and Olive,
Carl represents himself as "Oscar Ericson"--his father's
name--and pretends to be, severally, a dramatist, a doctor,
sculptor, and dentist. Miss Winslow addresses him as "0
Man of Mystery." Carl's most enduring nickname, of course,
is "Hawk," conferred on him by a reporter on the San Mateo
Courier, who witnessed the aviator's first reckless solo.
Under a picture accompanying the newspaper article was the

legend, "Ericson, the New Hawk of the Birdmen."

134

This heroic appellation has been foreshadowed in

Chapter X, during Carl's surveillance of the secret faculty
meeting at Plato.

He was lone as a mateless hawk, there on the ledge,

against the wall whose stones were pinchingly cold

to the small of his back and his spread-eagled arms

(p. 103).
The hawk image also connotes a disguise, as well as a lofty
spirit and sexual aggressiveness. Carl attends a lavish
costume party at Newport:

All the Newport swells came to party dressed as birds,

and I had to dress as a hawk, they had the costume

all ready, wonder how they got my measurements (p.

215).
Following Carl's impulsive demand to "Come for a long
tramp with me, on the Palisades," Ruth frets apprehensively
about the propriety of being alone with a man in the wilder-
ness:

"I wonder if a hawk out of the windy skies can
understand how daring a dove out of Ninety-second
Street feels at going walking on the Palisades?"

(p. 289).
Realization of his love for Ruth works a "change" in Carl
that seems like a release, an escape from a trivial exist-

ence. "His soul soared, lark and hawk in one, triumphant

over the matter-of-factness of daily life" (p. 308).

Paradoxes like the lark-hawk comparison and reference to
Carl as a "Scotchlike Norwegian" do not clarify the focus
of Lewis's intention toward his hero. Carl continues to
accumulate attributes, descriptive metaphors and epithets

throughout the novel. Lewis utilizes other familiar

135

facet-reflecting techniques in The Trail ei the Hawk,

 

where the hero reads about himself in a newspaper, attends
plays and shows indicative of his cultural tastes, and per-
forms a charade-"stunt." But the side Of Carl which seems
most incongruous with his heroic pretensions is the way he
conducts himself with women. If Hawk Ericson is truly a
fictional proxy for Sinclair Lewis, one could learn much
from a study of Carl's instincts and reflexes in matters
of love.

Gertie Cowles occupies the role of potential wife.
Indeed, Carl's affection for Gertie seems to have glowed
from the day they met in Joralemon, and wandered together
in the woods. As narrator, Lewis fusses over the fact that
she is two years older than Carl, a detail doubtless de-
signed to make him seem precocious, or more mature than
the ordinary boy: he is eight, she ten. He introduces
this city girl to the outdoor life, and when they lose
their way, Carl performs the manly ritual of building a
fire, lighting it with a single match, in a grassy patch
near a stream. In Lewis's early novels there are almost
obligatory firelighting and camping scenes, with expres-
sions of love and intimacy vouchsafed near creeks, rivers,
or lakes. These scenes seem staged to reinforce the hero's
ego concept as a male who has mastery over nature, knows
the lore Of the woods, and is not afraid. Gertie, for her

part, introduces Carl to the functions of society in

136

Joralemon. -He realizes painfully that he is not her equal
in social status, and that his second cousin, Lena, is the
Cowleses' maid. However, Carl's amatory experiences with
Gertie do not develop beyond a clumsy kiss at a party game
of post-office, or his fantasy of being with her at Tama-
rack Lake. Even so, his determination to go to college
has been fueled by his yearning to be "worthy" of Gertie's
admiration.

When Gertie reappears, improbably, in New York,
the difference in their ages tells against her. She has
become "a bland, plump woman of thirty." Carl reflects
that "Gertie was set aside from the number of women who
could appeal physically."

Gertie's solid flesh, the monotony of her voice, the
unimaginative fixity of her round cheeks, a certain
increasing slackness about her waist, even the faint,
stuffy domestic scent of her--they all expressed to
him her lack of humor and fancy and venturesomeness.
She was crystallized in his mind as a good friend
with a plain soul and sisterly tendencies (pp. 306-
307).
These sentences, loaded with pejoratives, anticipate the
style which was later to distinguish Lewis as the "social
critic" and "caricaturist." But one may detect an under-
current of hysteria and ferocity in this stripping away
of Gertie's pretensions; the hero sniffs danger in the
aggressions of this fleshly mantrap, and he recoils.

Carl stared at her, praying for a chance to escape.

Then he felt an instinct prompting him to sob with her.
Pity, embarrassment, disgust, mingled with his alarm.
He became amazed that Gertie, easy-going Gertie Cowles,

had any passion at all; and indignant that it was
visited upon himself (p. 304).

137

Carl's harrowing confrontation with Gertie is disconcerting
because he has discovered the intensity of his feelings for
Ruth Winslow, whom he was slow to win, as her surname sug-
gests. With the kind of brutality that masquerades as
friendly confidence, Carl tells Gertie of his longings for
Ruth, concluding, "She's sister and chum and wife and every-
thing." Some six months later, Gertie and Mrs. Cowles re-
turn to Joralemon, their plan to snatch Carl having mis-
carried.
Gertie was either a chance for simple sweetness which
he failed to take, or she was a peril which he had
escaped, . . . but in any case he had missed-~or es-
caped-—her as a romantic hero escapes fire, flood, and
plot. She meant nothing to him, never could again.
Life had flowed past her as, except in novels with
plots, most lives do flow past temporary and fortuitous
points of interest (p. 365).
Like Mr. Wrenn, Carl has the option of "choosing" between
two women. Lewis dispatches Gertie in the same manner as
he had disposed of Istra Nash in his earlier novel, by
dredging up damaging objections to the woman from hind-
sight, to reduce the luster of her original appeal to the
hero. Thus, in retrospect, Istra is too moody, Gertie too
frumpy, for serious consideration as a wife; Lewis makes
it appear that his heroes have outgrown these women by
shifting his point of view enough to describe the potential
wives unflatteringly. But it is no secret that Wrenn and

Hawk fear their former loves as predators.

Aggressive women people the pages of The Trail of

 

the Hawk. Mrs. Cowles of the Joralemon days was an

138

imperious snob. Ruth's Aunt Emma Truegate Winslow, majestic
as an iceberg, is an "electric person" who was "the general-
commanding in whatsoever group she was placed by Providence
(with which she had strong influence)." Carl's encounter
with the actress Eve L'Ewysse, née Lena Ludwig of Newport
News, was palpably terrifying, and precipitated his depar-
ture from the Great Riley Show. Alone on a hot night and
thinly dressed, Eve and Carl kiss passionately. She half
encourages him to proceed, but "Suddenly he could not, would
not, go on."

Perhaps he was checked by provincial prejudices
about chivalry. But perhaps he had learned a little
self-control. In any case, he had stopped for a second
to think . . . He stroked her hair and begged: "Please
go, Eve. I guess I haven't got very good control over
myself. Please. You make me--"

"Oh yes, yes, sure! Blame it on me! Sure! I

made you let me put on a kimono! I'm leading your
pure white shriveled peanut of a soul into temptation!

Eve places his hand upon her breast.
He pulled his hand free and fled to his tent.

Perhaps his fiercest gibe at himself was that he
had had to play the role of virgin Galahad rejecting
love, which is praised in books and ridiculed in clubs
(pp. 143-144).

Carl's fear can be transmuted into rage directed at him-
self, once he has fled from the danger, in the same pattern
William Wrenn displayed after the cocoa house waitress
jilted him.

Carl's successful courtship of Ruth grows from

his conviction that she will be an ideal playmate for him.

Of the women in the novel, she is the least aggressive,

139

and she is amenable to Carl's whims and suggestions for
unconventional rambles out-of-doors. By planning these
unusual enterprises, Carl can circumvent Ruth's instinctive
defenses by keeping her off guard and dominating their
activities together. Their tramp over the Palisades, for
example, allows him to have Ruth alone for nostalgic and
intimate conversation, while he enjoys the role of hero
"conquering the miles." So does Carl's carefully staged
skiing-firelighting-and-camping ceremony in Chapter XXXIII
afford him satisfaction in mastery over nature and woman.

Despite their excursions and games and the child-
like roles they play at make-believe housekeeping, the con-
cept of Ruth which develops is one of a hesitating and
essentially sexless playmate. True, there appear accounts
of passionate kisses, but these scenes are always checked
by guilt and indecision, or vitiated by introspective

analysis.

He had not known the kiss of man and woman could be so
long, so stirring. . . . But her lips grew more in-
tense against his, returning and taking the kiss; both
of them giving and receiving at once.

Wondering at himself for it, Carl thought of
other things. He was amazed that, while their lips
were hot together, he worried as to what train Ruth
ought to take . . .

Then she was drawing back, rending the kiss,
crying, "You're almost smothering me!" (pp. 355-356).

What Carl desires most, however, is a supportive traveling
companion; they will explore the world, and not settle

down permanently. "Seriously I would keep going--if I had

140

the right girl to go with me. . . . I need yon" (PP- 358-
359). They would "be different things. We'd be Connecticut
farmers one year, and run a mine in Mexico the next, and
loaf in Paris the next." When at last Ruth accepts his
marriage proposal, he is satisfied: "Carl knew that life's
real adventure is not adventuring, but finding the playmate
with whom to guest life's meaning" (p. 378).
In marriage Ruth provides most of the initiatives.
The uncertainties of his Touricar venture depress Carl.
She disapproves of Martin Dockerill, a mechanic from his
flying days, who comes to visit often. Carl and Ruth
quarrel vehemently; there has been too much disparity in
their life patterns. The one joy they share, which brings
about their reconciliation, is the preoccupying escape of
travel together. Carl's solution to the problem of their
incompatibility is that
Ruth and he had to be up and away, immediately;
go any place, do anything, so long as they followed
new trails, and followed them together.
. . . Ruth and he . . . had a vocation in keeping
clear of vocations (p. 404).
It is plain that their eventual departure for Buenos Aires

is an escape from the self, rather than a Graustarkian

ending to The Trail of the Hawk.

 

 

In his role of lover, Carl bristles with jealousy
at the presence of rivals. His friend Ben Rusk and Dr.
Doyle, the dentist, had contended for the affection of

Gertie Cowles in Joralemon, to Carl's discomfiture. Carl's

141

attentions to Eve L'Ewysse had to compete with the claims
of actor Parker Heye. Phil Dunleavy represents the
challenger for Ruth's love. Lewis disposes of the Hawk's
rivals mainly by sketching them as ineffectual, straw
antagonists. Token opposition suffices to enhance the
hero's image, and to enlarge his claims for affection and
fame; he must be alone in his glory. It is also noteworthy
that Carl had no siblings at home to compete for parental
attention. Ben ("Fatty") Rusk comes close to playing the
role of brother in the Hawk's early days. Mark Schorer has
perceptively noted Lewis's transfer of many of his own boy-
hood liabilities to Ben, the doctor's son who goes away to
Oberlin to study medicine, while Carl participates in many
activities actually performed by Claude Lewis.

Forrest Haviland fills the older-brother role for
Carl much as Lieutenant Adeler did for Hike Griffin.
Haviland represents the self-assured, disciplined, and
cultivated American gentleman that the Hawk aspires to be,
even though Carl is a "star" and "the coolest flier" at
the Bagby School. It is on a visit to Haviland's home at
San Spirito Presidio that Carl encounters a highly civi-
lized style of living, and has his first romantic vision
of becoming a personage. Carl's plans to take a trip to
Brazil with Forrest are dashed when the lieutenant dies in
an air accident. His spirit continues to hover over Carl
through the rest of the book. Ruth later becomes Hawk's

companion on the voyage to South America.

142

Authority and father figures loom in several roles.
Carl's natural father, Oscar Ericson, is a dour, methodical
man. The son seems to fear him, preferring to keep his
distance. Several allusions to Carl's correspondence with
his father remind one that Sinclair Lewis wrote faithfully
to Dr. E. J. until his sire died. Pride fills Carl's atti-
tude toward his father's pioneering achievements; "His
carpenter father had come from Norway, by way of steerage
and a farm in Wisconsin, changing his name from Ericsen"
(p. 7). The fact that his father had been born in Chris-
tiania beyond the sea gives added weight to the boy's
wanderlust as a sort of pioneering-in-reverse. But a kind
of retributive resentment flashes out early in Carl's
sorties from home. As the boy waits to take Gertie on
their oft-remembered hike through the woods, Carl was
planning the number of parrots and pieces of eight he
would bring back from San Francisco. Then his father
and mother would be sorry they'd talked about him in
their Norwegian! (pp. l3-l4).
"Punishing" one's parents by running away is implicitly a
self-destructive and hostile act, paralleling the Hawk's
later threats to go flying again, after his conflicts with
Ruth. Oscar Ericson does seem to exude criticism and dis-
approval. He accuses Carl of being extravagant at Plato
(p. 60); he complains that his son is not punctual at

supper, that being a track star will earn him no money

(p. 71). During his "adventuring," Carl writes "proudly"

143

to his father when enclosing a "little check," as if in
a reproach.
For the first time since he had deserted college he
had been able to write to his father, to answer the
grim carpenter's unspoken criticisms of the son who
had given up his chance for an "education" (p. 154).
The crisis of his leaving Plato had prompted Carl to write
to Bone Stillman "as a man who had dared," and "to his
mother--his mammy he wistfully called her. To his father
he could not write" (p. 123). Carl feared the opinion of
that practical man. Later, however, after Carl had en-
rolled in the Bagby flying school, he felt vindicated.
Then proudly he wrote to his father that the lost
boy had found himself. For the first time in all
his desultory writing of home-letters he did not
feel impelled to defend himself (p. 166).
This desire to curry his father's good opinion, tied as
it is with Carl's choice of a vocation, indicates a power-
ful longing for acceptance, which should not ordinarily
have afflicted an only child, one without rivals for
affection, as Carl purports to be. Here seems a clear in-
stance of Lewis's transfer of his own anxieties to the
emotional behavior of his protagonist, at a time when these
feelings are not really consistent with the Hawk's heroic
pretensions. In this case it appears that the author is
doing a self-dramatization: Carl Ericson is another one
of the many roles of Harry Lewis.

Rather than appeasing Oscar, Carl finds it more

expedient to appeal for the regard of father-substitutes,

144

simply by aping their opinions and tastes. Bone Stillman
and Henry Frazer are two such surrogates. If the carpenter
is Carl's link to a tradition in blood and bone, Stillman
and Frazer are his preceptors in an intellectual and
humanitarian tradition. As Carl's spiritual father,
Stillman is the first of the Populist-style prairie radi-

cals, like Miles Bjornstam in Main Street, who crop in in

 

Lewis's novels. From the time he first rescued Carl from
wandering in the woods with Gertie, Bone had urged the boy
to question the assumptions and values of a conformist
society, and indoctrinated him with a rough belief in
socialism. It is diverting to note that Carl, like some
of Lewis's other characters, wears this socialism like
another role or heroic accoutrement, a sort of red flag
that he can wave to distinguish himself, apart from the
crowd. But it is hardly ever more than a label; when Carl
enters business and marriage, he becomes a capitalist.
Lewis permits Stillman to exhibit several roles by
attributing a variety of occupations to the "lone old
bachelor farmer": rumor says that Bone has been a "sailor
or a policeman, a college professor or a priest, a forger
or an embezzler," and he assumed the place of "Carl's
Froebel and Montessori" (pp. 22, 25). Later it is said
that Stillman has become "some kind of a forest ranger or
mine inspector" (p. 232). But these role-attributions are
really superfluous. They pretend to furnish Stillman with

qualifications for making oracular statements of the

145

rugged-individualism sort, which could as well have been
uttered by Theodore Roosevelt or Andrew Carnegie.

"Don't forget this, son: nothing outside of you
can ever hurt you. It can chew up your toes, but it
can't reach you. Nobody but you can hurt you" (p. 25)

"Life is just a little old checker game played by
the alfalfa contingent at the country store unless
you've got an ambition that's too big to ever quite
lasso it. . . . And anything or anybody that doesn't
pack any surprises--get that?--surprises for you, is
dead, and you want to keep on remembering that
Chicago's beyond Joralemon, and Paris beyond Chicago
and beyond Paris--well, maybe there's some big peak
in the Himalayas" (p. 50).

 

Lewis suggests that Stillman's treatment of Carl "as a
grown-up friend was one of the most powerful of the in-
tangible influences which were to push him toward the
great world outside of Joralemon" (p. 25). These ha-
rangues are not particularly iconoclastic, but they pro-
vide a plausible rationale for Carl's periodic bursts of
risk-taking, masked as righteous nonconformity and the
joy of wandering.

Carl meets Professor Frazer through the offices
of shy, bookish Eugene Field Linderbeck, who, as Schorer
has remarked, resembles the way Lewis really was as a stu-
dent. Henry Frazer has a master's degree from Yale, and
is inspired "with a consuming love for his work, which was
the saving of souls by teaching Lycidas and Comus. . . .
It was whispered about that he believed in socialism . . . "
(p. 67). Through this cultural missionary Carl is intro-
duced to books, especially to the works of the trinity

Shaw, Wells, and Ibsen. But again the hero's attachment

146

to his idol is far less one of congruent intelligence than
it is an emotional fascination with a man who was perse-
cuted as an outsider, next to whom Carl could appear as a
martyr. Throughout his wanderings that follow Carl's
resignation from Plato in sympathy for the professor, the
degradation of his various occupations represents another
form of pathetic martyrdom for a Cause. Lewis links Carl's
intellectual fathers in a passage which affects to show
that his hero was learning a socialistic type of humility.

If Carl had never stood in the bread-line, if he

had never been compelled to clean a saloon gutter
artistically, in order to keep from standing in that
bread-line, he would surely have gone back to the
commonplaceness for which every one except Bone Still-
man and Henry Frazer had been assiduously training
him all his life. . . . Carl did not at the time feel
that he was debased (p. 152).
Why it is preferable to be commonplace in the Bowery rather
than in Joralemon is not especially clear. §x_machina Lewis
saves both the Hawk and Frazer for further triumphs, how-
ever. The latter earns a doctor's degree and becomes a
professor of English literature at Yale, an endeavor which
Lewis once seriously considered for himself.

Other incidental characters which reflect the
author by name only are "Dr. St. Claire, so refined and
sympathetic," whom Gertie Cowles consults for her nerves,
and the actress "Miss L'Ewysse" with whom Carl learns

melodramatic love. Thus, Lewis's little museum of family

proxies is complete, with ego substitute, a choice of

147

mother-wives, father figures, brother-friends and rivals,
and namesakes.

Key passages of emotional intensity, where Lewis
seems to be breathing over his protagonist's shoulder,
emerge where Carl plays the role of an actor for the tent
show, and in the outdoor camping scenes. Hike Griffin and
Mr. Wrenn were also yeomen actors and campers, as well as
compulsive travelers. Like Hike's also is Carl's almost
manic jubiliation in first flight, and his awareness of
a staring audience.

He exulted at the swiftness with which a distant
group of trees shot at him, under him. . . . The machine
obeyed perfectly. And the foot-bar, for steering to
right and left, responded to such slight motions of
his foot. He grinned exultantly. He wanted to shout.

He glanced at the barometer and discovered that
he was up to two hundred feet. Why not go on?

He sailed out across San Mateo, and the sense of
people below, running and waving their hands, increased
his exultation (pp. 171-172).

This emotional scene is crucial. It shows how the hero,
flooded with euphoria and gratification at mastery of a
highly individual skill, disregards his special instructions
and improvises like a daring innovator. He takes enormous
risks--people are watching--and he almost kills himself:

the plane engine stops, but he pilots the dead aircraft

to a landing with only a minor accident. Yet he has

seized glory before the eyes of his classmates and the
newspaper reporters, and has won love, admiration and a

new name, "an expression of fondness--Hawk Ericson, the

cheeriest man in the school, and the coolest flier."

148

Another scene where death nudges the hero is the
curious account of Carl's illness with typhoid. Structur-
ally, this episode has little value except as a manufactured
crisis to redirect attention to the hero, who has become
bored with his adventure in business, and to intensify the
love interest, which has grown stale. Emotionally, how-
ever, Carl's sickness represents another dramatic death
threat, this time unsought, which allows the protagonist
to be tragic and fussed over and loved, and which gives
him psychological control over Ruth.

During convalescence Carl was so wearily gentle
that she hoped the little boy she loved was coming
back to dwell in him. But the Hawk's wings seemed
broken. For the first time Carl was afraid of life.

One sweet drop was in their cup of iron. As
woodland playmates they could never have known such
intimacy as hovered about them when she rested her
head lightly against his knees and they watched the
Hudson . . .

He took to watching her like a solumn baby, when
she moved about the room; thus she found the little
boy Carl again; laughed full-throated and secretly
cried over him, as his sternness passed into wistful
obedience. He was not quite the same impudent boy
whose naughtiness she had loved. But the good child
who came in his place did trust her so, depend upon
her so . . . (pp. 388-389).

When Ruth finally rejects her role as mother-wife to the
boy hero with
"See here, my friend, you have been taking ad-
vantage for a long time now of the fact that you
were ill. I'm not going to be your nurse indefinitely"
(p. 392).
it is only a short while before Carl cracks another self-

destructive whip over her head. His future in business is

uncertain; the World War has begun.

149

He feverishly confessed that he had for many weeks
wavered between hating the whole war and wanting to
enlist in the British Aero Corps, to get life's
supreme sensation--scouting ten thousand feet in
air, while dozens of batteries fired at him . . .
Ruth fears this new, emergent personality.
The thinking Carl, the playmate Carl that Ruth knew,
was masked as the foolhardy adventurer--and as one who
was not merely talking, but might really do the thing
he pictured (p. 398).
They disagree heatedly over future plans. Following their
bitterest argument, he does not really apologize; Ruth is
the one who yields, and for these distinct reasons:

. . . Hawk, my Hawk, I lay awake nearly all last
night realizing that we are one, not because of a
wedding ceremony, but because we can understand each
other's make-b'lieves and seriousnesses . . . "

(p. 408).
Then reconciliation, and escape to South America for
Galahad and his love aboard the S. S. Sangrael, or "Holy

Grail."

It seems truismatic, of course, to point out that
acts of bravery and heroism are intrinsically self-
abnegating or suicidal. In Hawk Ericson's case, a reading
of self-destructiveness appears consistent with Lewis's
characterization of him as a rebel and a flyer. But such
risk-taking is only part of a broader emotional configur-

ation. The most persistent theme in The Trail g£_the Hawk

 

 

is the stimulus-and-response of pain: escape. Lewis
makes Carl go out of the way to seek pain, so that he may

fashion escapes from responsibility and reality into

150

"adventures" of novelty and fantasy. Carl's motivating
impulse seems not so much a search for identity as a
wish to lose it, to eradicate the image of the back-yard
boy from Joralemon, Minnesota, and to subsume it in a con-
tinuing parade of travels and roles. Role-playing is a
means of disguising the hero while pretending to reveal
him, in many occupations, in different locations, re-
flected in the faces of the men who are his friends and
rivals, and in the eyes of the women who sigh for him.
Carl scores quick triumphs, but he fears the success which
would necessitate settling in one place or having to be
one person.‘ He fears the success of having children:
" . . . Look at all the young fathers of families,
giving up everything they want to do, to support
children who'll do the same thing right over again
with their children. . . . There's nothing that our
dear Civilization punishes as it does begetting
children. . . . if you have children they call it a
miracle--as it is--and then they get busy and condemn
you to a lifetime of being scared by the boss" (p. 407).
Furthermore, a child would be a perpetual rival for the
boy hero's claims for exclusive rights to the mother's
affection. Carl has not really been successful at any-
thing. His triumphs in flying have been by chance or by
default, when his competitors dropped out. His courtship
with Ruth was distinguished mainly by a persistent and
grim intensity. His achievement with the Touricar com-
pany was not spectacular. It seems, in conclusion, that

Sinclair Lewis had no personal vision of success by which

he could guide his hero, except his proficiency in

151

imagining the different roles a hero could portray. Carl's
striving to feel worthy and his persistent cultivation of
the martyr's part undermine his claims to lofty, hawklike
heroism. In 1915, the hues of Lewis's "many-colored
spectacle of life" were obviously somber.

The theme of flying as an ego-compensating fantasy

in domination and power shines in The Trail of the Hawk as

 

it did in Hike and the Aeroplane. Hawk Ericson is Hike

 

Griffin almost grown up--essentially the same young
businessman with one bright idea--and a little less melo-
dramatic. But the author's ill-concealed identification
with the protagonist, the essentially fragmented charac-
terizations, and the inconclusiveness of plot and theme

in The Trail of the Hawk, indicate that the basic fault of

 

the book is Sinclair Lewis's inability to see himself as
a successful, mature man. Confronted with three faces of

danger, he could only think of escape.

CHAPTER V

THE JOB: IMMURED IN THE CITY

Lewis's attitudes toward society and success appear
to have shifted somewhat, if the content of his next novel,
222.129! is a trustworthy vector. His implicit faith in
the nobility of mankind under socialism has receded, and a
new apology for free-enterprise capitalism has supplanted
the old idea. Perhaps it is more accurate to state that
Lewis's views had more widely polarized, for while his
protagonist, Una Golden, pursues success and happiness
through dedication to the true American business spirit,
the romantic charm of a socialist idyll hovers near like a
wistful fantasy. The exigencies of his new, married life,
especially the need for a frank assessment of his wage-
earning future, may have prompted Lewis's relinquishment of
schemes less practical than hard work.

He was already diligently at work on EEE.£2§.bY the

time The Trail of the Hawk reached the public. Lewis had

 

begun his third full-fledged novel in mid-summer, 1915, at
Port Washington, and carried the manuscript with him during

his travels south to Charleston, Savannah and St. Augustine.

152

153

During these months he supported himself by writing short
stories, including "The Innocents,“ which he would later
expand into his fourth novel. He took his early pages to
Chicago while he researched the real estate business,
deveIOped more of the story on a visit to his family at
Sauk Centre, and completed The gob in Duluth, in the early
days of an extended trip west with Grace, a trip which
would furnish many ideas for the future Ergg.éi£. Harper
and Brothers received typescript of 223.122 early in
August, 1916, and published the book on February 23 of the
next year.

Always more a novelist of attitudes and reactions
than one of impressive ideas, Lewis affects a feminist
facade in the handling of themes now familiar in his
earlier work: discontent with the prevailing environment
leads at first to despair, then to experimentation with a
new mode of life, and finally to a revival and rededication
to the old, but on the individual's own terms, with
assurances of a higher income, more cultivated tastes, and
the sense of identity one derives from success in business

and in love. The Job: §3_American Novel is dedicated to

 

"My Wife who has made 'The Job' possible and life itself
quite beautifully improbable." Grace Lewis confessed that
she "had dug back into my mind for all my reactions to my
own job days" while her husband wrote, and that she

deplored the "unreal, unconvincing happy ending" he

154

permitted to stand in the book.1 Mark Schorer records
Lewis's inscription to his wife (though she omits mention
of this dedication in her memoir), representing himself as
the "supposed author" and her as "the real author";2 this
is, of course, mere courtly role-swapping, as equivocal as
his use of the word "improbable" in the dedication.

The fundamental emotional contact points and
organizing principles in the novel are Lewis's, however,
not his wife's. It appears that the author cast his wife
as a resource person, or a repository of authentic detail
seen from a woman's point of view, much in the same way he
was to cultivate friendships later on in his research for

Arrowsmith and Elmer Gantry. She represented a rose-tinted

 

 

mirror in which he could ponder his own experiences. Una
Golden, for example, is another small-town yearner who
suffers cultural shock after immersion in city life. Her
determination to master this environment, and to develOp a
vigorous identity in terms of her job, rather than in
spite of it, reflects Sinclair Lewis's ambition to be
independent in the writing business. In Lewis's fiction it
is a convention that characters become personifications of
their jobs; in the end it seems that the job seeks the
personality, rather than the reverse. Recognition of this

assumption on Lewis's part is significant, because it

 

1With Love from Gracie, p. 109.

 

2Sinclair Lewis: Ag_American Life, p. 245.

 

 

155

accounts for his proclivity toward the stereotyped
character, and the limited sc0pe of the jobs one can see
these peOple actually performing in his fiction. Lewis
prefers to describe occupations which require limited
technical skill, but with just enough expertise and
specialized jargon to confirm an impression of great
individual proficiency. But his most reliable portraits
are of peOple with jobs as talkers, as purveyors of
services, and therefore, ingratiating performers for
audiences--waiters, salesmen, hotel—keepers, real estate
agents, actors, clerks--in short, players of roles. Conse-
quently, to evince plausible character develOpment in a
novel, a protagonist must continue to change his role—
occupation. This Lewis causes Una Golden to do in The
geh. His seeming inability, however, to depict work as
actual physical labor instead of word generating and role
playing, was at the root of his frustration over a novel
about the organized labor movement. That kind of job
orientation, apparently, was not within Lewis's conceptual
repertoire.

If Lewis makes any social statement in The geh, it
is that the worth of a human being derives from the extent
to which he is his own master in an occupation that he can
tolerate. Monotonous jobs threaten loss of identity when
workers accept the politics, fatigue and routine of office
life. Losing one's job, though, is tantamount to

extinction. Marriage as an occupation can be successful

156

only if one finds the proper role to play. Feminism and
socialism are badges the heroine may wear occasionally, but
they are qualities Lewis attributes to Una to provide
ostensible motivating power for her rise in the capital-
istic society, not because she is an activist or a social
philos0pher. Throughout The geh Una's behavior is simply
courageous and pragmatic. Her desires are the same as
Lewis's aspirations in 1916.

The plot of The_geh follows Una Golden's lifetime
from her young womanhood and the death of her father in
Panama, Pennsylvania, until she achieves a responsible
executive position with an expanding hotel chain. David J.
Dooley sees Una as "a feminine Horatio Alger character,"3
but she is really another aspect of Harry Lewis, grOping
for happiness through a search for a suitable identity or
role. "Feminism" is merely a way of explaining why Una
acts more like men than other office girls do, so that
Lewis could identify with his protagonist more easily.
Little that is significant in the novel really depends upon
Una's being female, and in this sense Dooley is correct.
Her marriage with Eddie Schwirtz seems an inconvenient
interlude in her campaign to achieve financial independence,
and hints of her future relationship with Walter Babson
make marriage and baby sound like avocations ancillary to

the main business of life. But corresponding to the Lewis

 

3The Art 2T Sinclair Lewis, p. 41.

 

157

pattern, Una finds an identity and emotional fulfillment in
jobs which require talking--to real estate clients and
hotel men. Lewis also speaks and acts through Walter
Babson, who bears some similarities to Martin Priest and
Charley Carpenter, the novelist's earlier creations. To a
certain extent he also plays the role of Eddie Schwirtz.
These three masks of Lewis, Una-Walter-Eddie, represent him
as aspiring, artistic, and crude, as he was in real life.
The best confirmation of this fact emerges in passages
where Lewis lays aside his role of narrator and glides in
behind the character's eyes and tongue, when there is no
longer any distance between them, and the speech carries
an extra measure of authority and conviction.4 Thus Lewis
is able to play the three major parts, as if staging an
argument with himself, a technique which he refined in his
later novels, to exhibit a character at odds with his
several selves over a decision or attitude to be adOpted.
Structurally, Lewis had divided The_geh_into three
parts: "The City," "The Office," and "Man and Woman." He

had used three similar divisions in The Trail eT the Hawk,

 

but in Una's case the organization is in three concentric
rings of intimacy, rather than three linear-time phases of
"adventure." At the outset of The Job, Una has no clear

individuality. Having been raised and educated in a small

 

4See, for examples, Una's speeches on pp. 300,
306-307; Walter's speech on pp. 104-105; and Eddie's on
pp. 208-209 and 296 of The Job.

158

Pennsylvania town, she knows everyone there, and is known
by them as Captain Golden's daughter. Since she is
unmarried and unemployed, she can have no other identity.
Una had tried schoolteaching and given it up, admitting
that she neither "loved masses of other peOple's children
nor had any ideals of developing the new generation."5
When she was twenty-four, Una's father died, leaving her in
the role of wage earner for her mother and herself. She
could have returned to teaching, or she could have married,
but Una had no serious suitors except "old Henry Carson,
the widower, with catarrh and three children," and so
"crossed blessed matrimony off the list as a commercial
prospect" (p. 11). Lack of success in finding other
employment makes Una desperate, almost hysterical. She can
not bear the prospect of being trapped in the routines of
village life. Lewis injects this animus in a character-
istic transition passage, where a subject's values receive
new focus and assessment:
She was so frightfully bored. She suddenly hated the
town, hated every evening she would have to spend there,
reading newspapers and playing cards with her mother,
and dreading a call from Mr. Henry Carson (p. 13).
A chance letter from acquaintances in New York provides
enough motivation for escape. They will move to a flat in

the great city, where Una will study stenography and "learn

to be a business woman." Perhaps it is stretching

 

5Sinclair Lewis, The Job p. 10.

159

credulity to show a young woman, represented as "not pretty,
not noisy, not particularly articulate" and "pleasant,
inconspicuous, fluffy-haired . . . undramatic as a field
daisy," capable of acting on impulse to choose a new home
and new occupation within minutes. But Una is "naturally
able to size up people and affairs," and she is a "matter—
of-fact idealist." Lewis apparently felt that these
qualities sufficed to carry his heroine forward toward
success, because she does not really develop any others.
Una's battle is not so much against "the job" as it is
against the inertia of humanity and its collective
dwelling, whether town or metropolis. In $33,199 Lewis

has dramatized Una's problem of discovering an acceptable
occupational role identity while she is immured in the city
and threatened with annihilation. Her sex roles are
obviously of secondary importance.

Una's first occupation in New York is that of
student at Whiteside and Schleusner's College of Commerce,
where she pursues her courses with enthusiasm and vigor.
Lewis points out that opportunity has uncovered hidden
potential in his heroine, aptitude which might otherwise
have been unrecognized.

Panama, Pennsylvania, had never regarded Una as a
particularly capable young woman. . . . But she had
been well spoken of as a marketer, a cook, a neighbor.
. . . She was more practical than either Panama or

herself believed. All these years she had, without
knowing that she was philosophizing, without knowing

160

that there was a world-wide inquiry into woman's place,
been trying to find work that needed her (pp. 24-25).

Unconsciously, Lewis argues, Una has become a feminist.
After graduation she finds a position in the offices

of the Motor and Gas Gazette, where she encounters the

 

talented and erratic Walter Babson, a sub—editor, and
becomes his "regular stenographer." His special name for
her is "Goldie," and she falls in love with his boyish
enthusiasm and with his expressive hands. Abruptly,
however, Walter accepts another job in Omaha, saying that
for various reasons he cannot marry her. Una works briefly
for the advertising manager, S. Herbert Ross, then loses
her job in an economizing staff cut.

Una went through all the agony of not being wanted even

in the prison she hated. No matter what the reason,

being discharged is the final insult in an office, and
it made her timid as she began wildly to seek a new

job (p. 109).

Her next situation is that of chief stenographer
for Troy Wilkins, an architect. The tedium and squalor of
his office find symbolic expression in the horrid rag used
to scrub floors, which hung under the wash basin in the
women's room. After more than two years with Wilkins and
'the scrub-rag in the Septimus Building, Una leaves to join
‘the staff of Pemberton's, "the greatest manufactory of
cirugs and toilet articles in the world." Lewis tries to

explain her hatred of the architect's office and her

tunwillingness to stay longer.

161

In this refusal there may have been a trace of
aspiration. Otherwise the whole affair was a hodge-
podge of petty peOple and ignoble motives—-of Una and
Wilkins and 8. Herbert Ross . . .

who is an updated Guilfogle from the days of Mr. Wrenn,

the advertising executive from the Motor and Gas Gazette,

 

soon to be Una's boss at Pemberton's . . .
of fifteen dollars a week, and everybody trying to
deceive everybody else; of vague reasons for going, and
vaguer reasons for letting Una go, and no reason at all
for her remaining . . .

So long as her world was ruled by chance, half—
training and lack of clear purpose, how could it be
other than a hodge-podge? (p. 221)

Before starting work for the drug company, Una
spends a two-week interval assisting with a new filing
system at the Jewish business firm of Herzfeld and Cohn's,
dealers in iron beds. There "Una had a glimpse of the
almost beautiful thing business can be." Lewis's point is
that working conditions were enjoyable under the kindly
administration of these two old patriarchs, because they
found it possible to be humanitarians as well as business-
men.

Pemberton's, in contrast, is a "new-fashioned,
scientific, efficient business institution" housed in a
"modern, glazed-brick palace." Its policies develop from
strict adherence to economic principles, not from com-
passion for mankind, as one might expect of a drug company.

Some of its products are actually harmful. Lewis, whose

own face was badly blemished, writes bitterly:

162

It has been calculated that ninety-three million
women in all parts of the world have ruined their
complexions, and, therefore, their souls, by Pember-
ton's creams and lotions for saving the same . . .
(p. 223).
Ironically Lewis hails Mr. Pemberton as "the Napoleon of
patent medicines" and of "drugs used by physicians to cure
the effects of patent medicine"; the "Shakespeare of ice-
cream sodas, and the Edison of hot-water bags. . . . He is
a modern Allah." In charge of promoting Pemberton's
wares, at a salary of fifteen thousand dollars a year, is
that "gorgeous fraud," S. Herbert Ross. Una Golden, now
twenty-eight years old, becomes Ross's secretary.
Through her eyes, Lewis inspects the petty caste
distinctions, the pressure of fear and hysteria on menial
office workers, the cruelty of efficiency experts, and the
flim-flam psychology of advertising in the Pemberton
company. In an exposé style he derides the hypocrisy
underlying this sort of commerce, but he is equally harsh
with the lonely employees who acquiesce to its arbitrary
management of their lives. Apparently representing Lewis's
View, Una reflects that a better social age will not arrive
so long as the workers accepted the testimony of paid
spokesmen like S. Herbert Ross to the effect that they
were contented and happy, rather than the evidence of
their own wincing nerves to the effect that they lived
in a polite version of hell. . . . She was more and
more certain that the workers weren't discontented
enough; that they were too patient with lives insecure
and tedious (p. 236).

Una feels a desire to "get to the tOp" herself, but

"without unduly kicking the shrieking mass of slaves

163

beneath her, as the bright young men learned to do." But
when faced with Ross's belief that "you can't change human
nature," Una wavers in her resolve, and becomes at heart
"a shawled Irish peasant, or a muzhik lost in the vastness
of the steppes; a creature elemental and despairing"
(p. 236). At last the punishment of the office environment
proves unbearable, and Una glimpses an escape in marriage
to Julius Edward Schwirtz, now a salesman for the Aetna
Automobile Varnish and Wax Company.
As the wife of a traveling salesman, Una is able to
View another facet of the business complex--the job of
retail sales which depends on the competitiveness of the
product and the winning personality of the salesman. Should
either or both of these qualities fail, as they do for Eddie
Schwirtz, there is no security for the salesman's family.
When Una's relationship with Eddie has broken down com-
pletely, she secures another job, through the efforts of
her friend Mamie Magen, with the real estate agency of
Truax and Fein.
Una works diligently as confidential secretary to

Mr. Truax. After the terrors of dependency on Schwirtz,
she has revised her opinion of the Opportunities to be
seized in business.

Here, too, she saw nine hours of daily strain aging

slim girls into skinny females. But now her whole

point of view was changed. Instead of looking for the

evils of the business world, she was desirous of

seeing in it all the blessings she could; and, without
ever losing her belief that it could be made more

164

friendly, she was, nevertheleSs, able to rise above her
own personal weariness and see that the world of jobs,
offices, business, had made itself creditably superior
to those other muddled worlds of politics and amusement
and amorous Schwirtzes (p. 280).
Finding bane or blessing in business depends greatly on
one's predisposition to find it, apparently. Optimistic
though this passage may be, Lewis comes perilously close to
neutralizing the poignancy of his social statements in The
geh, and eXposing himself as a mere manipulator of atti-
tudes, by allowing Una to conclude like Lucifer that after
all, "The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make
a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." Confidently she asks
for a chance to sell some choice real estate to an inde-
cisive client. Success in this venture leads to more
responsibility for Una, first as a consultant with women
buyers, then as a regular salesman, and a salaried
executive with other women under her direction.

Una's last change of occupation, the one that
reunites her with Walter Babson, is the least convincing.
As a pretext for her resignation from Truax and Fein, Lewis
concocts an atmosphere of strain, attributed to "Mr.
Truax's unwillingness to accept women as independent
workers and . . . the growing animosity of Mrs. Truax"

(p. 315). Una discovers a sudden fascination for hotel
management, reads periodicals about the business, and

deve10ps some remarkable revolutionary ideas about

innkeeping in a short time. More astonishing is the

165

assurance with which she bluffs her way into the confidence
of Mr. Bob Sidney, partner in the White Line hotel syndi-
cate. With nothing more than effrontery, a businesslike
appearance and some well—prepared research and statistics,
Una creates a job for herself as a general manager of
Sidney's company, at a salary of four thousand dollars.
Thus, at the end of Chapter XXIII, Una faces the same
dilemma which had confronted her years ago in Panama,
Pennsylvania: will she continue to press for upward
mobility by improving on the Job, or will she surrender to
Love, Marriage (this time to Walter), and possibly a Child?
If Grace Lewis's memoir is accurate, this job-or-family
conflict is remarkably similar to Sinclair Lewis's problem
in the early years of their marriage.6

Throughout her changes in job roles, Una remains
essentially a static character endowed with a conscientious
attitude toward work and a sense of fair play. The main
develOpment is in the size of her salary, submitted as
incontestable proof that women can be successful in
business. But events in the novel seem merely to happen
to Una, a Pilgrim in her progress toward the Celestial City
of Success. The death of her mother, the affection of
‘Walter Babson, even her marriage to Eddie Schwirtz, seem

like melodramatic incidents beside Una's steady push toward

 

6"My book and my love. But not together. The book
came first and it always would." With Love from Gracie,
p. 46.

166

the four thousand dollar salary. It is apparent that
Lewis's close identification with Una's aims, at a time
when he was struggling for financial security, made him
rely heavily on the job—role mode of characterization.
Further, it is surprising to realize that Una survives in
the memory not primarily as a worker, but as an observer
and reporter of the details of office business. In these
capacities Una Golden is a representation of the plodding,
workaday Lewis, far down the ladder of success.

In her roles as a lover, Una has demonstrated
practicality over passion. She will not accept the
widower, Henry Carson, of Panama, and she discourages
J. J. Todd from the commercial school, because neither has
anything to offer her. Without ever proposing, Walter
Babson dismisses the possibility of marrying her because
she is too conservative and too provincial, while he has
not found a job that pays well enough; but from his
elaborate lecturing and apologizing, it is evident that
Babson is terrified by his own passion. Though she is
roused by his kisses and awed by his impulses, Una is
unable to marry a man who runs away to Omaha, while she
must remain in New York to support her mother.

Following Mrs. Golden's sudden death from pneu-
monia, Una moves to a small room on Lexington Avenue, where
one of the boarders, a quack bone-manipulating doctor

named Fillmore J. Benson, pays her some crude attentions.

167

At first Una is "disgusted" by Phil Benson, but gradually
allows herself to be impressed by his recitation of "Snow
Bound": "She fancied that Phil's general pea-weevil aspect
concealed the soul of a poet," although the landlord
considered him a "human phonograph." Phil beguiles Una
with compliments and talk of "higher things."

The absurd part of it was that, at least while he
was talking, Mr. Phil Benson did believe what he was
saying, though he had borrowed all of his sentiments
from a magazine story about hobohemians which he had
read the night before.7

He also spoke of reading good books, seeing good
plays, and the lack of good influences in this wicked
city.

She was finding in his loud impudence a twisted
resemblance to Walter Babson's erratic excitability,
and that won her, for love goes seeking new images of
the god that is dead (pp. 145-146).

If Phil reminds Una of Walter, who already resembles
Sinclair Lewis in some particulars, the little fake doctor
also represents a self-deprecatory sketch of the author, in
his habits and appearance: "an underbred maverick, with
sharp eyes of watery blue, . . . large teeth, and no chin
worth noticing" (p. 143). Phil escorts Una to a Lithuanian
restaurant, presses her to drink some sherry. She had
smiled condescendingly as some tourists "from the Middle
West filed into the restaurant and tried to act as though

they were used to cocktails," and Phil had joined her

conspiratorially in some tough-guy play-acting, to impress

 

7Lewis's short story "Hobohemia" appeared in the
Saturday Evening Post, April 7, 1917.

 

168

the rubbernecks. But now Una recoils uneasily from Benson's
"tactics," and flees hysterically from the table, imagining
his design to make her drunk. Late that evening Phil tries
to capitalize on her loneliness, luring her downstairs to
a couch in the dining room, where he makes some sly
advances. Now Una finds him unbearable. Sneering that he
is a “gutter-rat," she escapes to her room, vowing to
herself,
" . . . I'm through! No one can get me just because of
curiosity about sex again. I'm free. I can fight my
way through in business and still keep clean" (p. 154).
Again, practicality triumphs over the flesh.
Loneliness, and the ferocious atmosphere at
Pemberton's drive Una to desperation, however. She turns
to the available Eddie Schwirtz for rest and refuge in
marriage, and stumbles into a labyrinth of horror. On their
honeymoon, Schwirtz takes possession of her like an insensi—
tive beast. He has no manners, no taste. His conduct is
that of a braying-ass sensualist. Una is terrified.
But she tried to keep the frenzy out of her voice.
The frenzy was dying, as so much of her was dying. She
hadn't realized a woman can die so many times and still
live. Dead had her heart been at Pemberton's, yet it
had secreted enough life to suffer horribly now, when
it was again being mauled to death (p. 247).
Her role as wife she maintains with mute martyrdom,
reproaching herself occasionally for being over-critical
of Eddie's grossness. But she discovers that her own

standards of behavior have deteriorated under the

influence of this man. She views her life "as a ruined

169

thing; her birthright to aspiring cleanness sold for a mess
of quick-lunch pottage" (p. 257).
She thought of suicide, often, but too slow and
sullen was her protest for the climax of suicide.
. . . Oftener she thought of a divorce. Of that she
had begun to think even on the second day of her
married life (p. 258).
As conditions worsen, and Eddie loses his employment, Una
goes back to a job, and begins her career with Truax and
Fein. When she prospers in the real estate business, her
friendship with Mr. Fein moves him to propose marriage.
She had refused him for two reasons—-that she
already had one husband somewhere or other, and the
more cogent reason that . . . she did not love him,
did not want to mother him, as she had always wanted
to mother Walter Babson . . . (p. 313).
Now, at age thirty-four in the autumn of 1915, Una con-
siders adOpting a child, but when Walter Babson reappears
as her subordinate in the hotel company, he seems to be a
most satisfactory substitute. As is the case with William
Wrenn, her sexual obverse in the world of business offices,
Una learns that success in love must be sustained by a
sense of personal worth and confidence derived from
satisfaction with the Job.

Repeating the technique he had used with Mr. Wrenn
and Carl Ericson, Lewis invests Una with bit roles and
fantasies, to add some perspective to her essentially two-
dimensional character. Many of her self—dramatizations

hint of associations with men, as in Una's idealized dream

of business activity in the city.

Una'

170

There would be no dusty winds in New York, but
only mellow breezes over marble palaces of efficient
business. No Henry Carsons, but slim, alert business
men, young of eye and light of tongue (p. 17).

s acting skill, evident in the scene with Phil at the

restaurant, had made her aware of the ease with which old

Henry Carson could have been induced to offer marraige.

He

Una

would propose whenever she encouraged him to. This
she knew scientifically. She had only to sit beside
him on the sofa, let her hand drop down beside his

(p. 11).

does give encouragement to Eddie Schwirtz, on the other

hand, by playing her part faultlessly.

She

She dressed very carefully. She did her hair in a
new way.

When Mr. Schwirtz came she cried that she couldn't
go to a show. She was "clean played out." She didn't
know what she could do. Pemberton's was too big a
threshing—machine for her. She was tired--"absolutely
all in."

"Poor little sister!" he said, and smoothed her
hair. . . .

She was married to Mr. Schwirtz about two weeks
later (pp. 244-245).

uses similar strategy to win over Bob Sidney to her

business prOposition.

she

Una rose at six-thirty next morning, to dress the
part of the great business woman, and before she went
to the office she had her hair waved.

Thanks to rice powder and the pride of a new hat,
she looked cool and adequate. But she was thinking all
the time: "I never could keep up this . . . pose with
Mr. Fein or Mr. Ross. Poor Una,"

adds, imagining her other self, dissociatively,

"with them she'd just have to blurt out that she
wanted a job!" (pp. 319-320)

171

Other dissocations phase in and out of her thoughts, as
when she spends a holiday shopping for a new dress to
brighten up her sense of identity:
There were a score of mild matter-of-fact Unas on
the same elevated train with her, in their black hats
and black jackets and black skirts with white waists
. . . faces slightly sallow or channeled with care,
but eyes that longed to flare with love; . . . women
who would have given their salvation for the chance to
sacrifice themselves for love (p. 115).
Again, when returning from vacation in the Berkshires, she
nurses the illusion that "New York and the business world
simply couldn't be the same old routine, because she
herself was different."
The office was different, she cried--cried to that
other self who had sat in a train and hOped that the
office would be different (p. 216).
But the ghastly, gray scrub-rag is still in the washroom.
Nothing has changed. The sense of having been another
person, far away on a holiday, is characteristic of Lewis's
role-and-place transformation pattern.

" . . . Oh, Lord! I really am back here. Same old hot

streets. Don't believe there are any Berkshires; just

seems now as though I hadn't been away at all" (p. 217).

Una's most vivid fantasies spring up out of her

relationship with Walter Babson. During her first spring
in the city, she finds herself "wanting to tramp the
Palisades with-~with the Walter Babson who didn't even
know her first name" (p. 66). Eventually, Lewis contrives

a wish-fulfillment sequence. Walter escorts her to dinner

at a restaurant near those Palisades, then leads Una on a

172

restless ramble at the base of the cliffs, near the Hudson.
In the dark at the margin of the river, Walter turns to
suggest, "I wish we could go swimming."
She shivered to find herself imagining the
unimaginable--that she might throw off her stodgy
office clothes, her dull cloth skirt and neat blouse,
and go swimming beside him, revel in giving herself up
to the utter frankness of cool water laving her bare
flesh (p. 103).
But no, the impulse must be denied. Despite Walter's
excited arguments, she reverts to "good little Una," the
girl from Panama.
Earlier, she had imagined the joy of having a
baby, "a boy like Walter must have been--to nurse and pet
and cry over!" After Walter leaves the Gazette office
forever, Una reflects tragically, "Now I sha'n't ever have
a baby that would be a little image of him" (p. 108). She
engineers a picnic with friends near the remebered place
at the Palisades, and disappears for a time.
She sat alone by the river. Suddently, with a feverish
wrench, she bared her breast, then shook her head
angrily, rearranged her blouse, went back to the group,
and was unusually gay, though all the while she kept
her left hand on her breast, as though it pained her
(p. 108).
This theme of passion by the water echoes again during
Una's holiday escape from the office. In a department
store music section, a piano tune had sent her off pre-
tending "that she had a sweetheart, that with him she was

a-roving," and that "the imaginary man" was like Walter

Babson. Then, in a movie theater,

173

Una longed for a love-scene on the motion-picture
screen . . . the love scene did appear, in a picture
of a lake shore with a hotel porch . . . and a young
hero with wavy black hair, who dived for the lady and
bore her out when she fell out of a reasonably safe
boat. The actor's wet, white flannels clung tight
about his massive legs; he threw back his head with
masculine arrogance, then kissed the lady. Una was
dizzy with that kiss. She was shrinking before Walter's
lips again (pp. 118-119).

Afterwards, Una admits to herself, "It's been exciting,
running away . . . " Lewis has cleverly shown how watching
another person give a deliberate performance (emphasized by
his use of the tag words "hero" and "actor") induces not
only simple identification in the viewer, but even
independent role—playing in a fantasy echo, a palpable act
of "running away."

Supplementing these dramatics, which Lewis uses to
add dimension to his heroine, are images which reinforce
suggestions of martyrdom and sexual persecution. At the
death of Mrs. Golden, Una grieves dramatically. "Her agony
was a big, simple, uncontrollable emotion like the
fanaticism of a crusader" (pp. 126—127). Now alone, she
experiences a "half-hysterical fear of the city's power,"
epitomized in the phallic horror of the Subway.

Then, the train approaching, filling the tunnel,
like a piston smashing into a cylinder; the shoving
rush to get aboard. A crush that was ruffling and
fatiguing to a man, but to a woman was horror.

Una stood with a hulking man pressing as close to
her side as he dared, and a dapper clerkling squeezed
against her breast. . . . Almost hysterically she
resented this daily indignity, which smeared her clean,

cool womanhood with a grease of noise and smell and
human contact (pp. 134-135).

174

Later, when Una sees her husband escorting a "fluffy
blonde" from the hotel opposite their flat, Lewis wraps
her in a numb, almost fatalistic reaction to Eddie's
cruelties: "She was spellbound in a strange apathy, as
in a dream of swimming on forever in a warm and slate-
hued sea" (p. 268). There is a self-destructive note in
her resolution to find another job to escape the squalor
of life with Eddie.
. . . she more and more invited an ambition to go back
to work, to be independent and busy, no matter how
weary she might become. To die, if need be, in the
struggle. Certainly that death would be better than
being choked in muck. . . .

Una stared at herself in the mirror over the
bureau and said, aloud: "I don't believe it! It
isn't you, Una Golden . . . you couldn't marry a man
like that simply because the job had exhausted you.
Why, you'd die at work first" (p. 271).

She sees herself in the role of a prostitute, exchanging
sexual privileges for her "board and keep." These senti-
ments, added to her earlier thoughts of suicide (p. 258),
seem somewhat incongruous for the girl who had considered
herself "an Average Young Woman on a Job," and felt that
she was "nothing in herself" (pp. 129-130). In her anti-
pathy for all the values Schwirtz represents, Lewis has
assumed attributes of refinement and taste in Una's
character which she had not previously demonstrated, yet
he denied her the insight into human nature which might
have averted her tragic marriage. By being selective in

the qualities he ascribes to Una, Lewis assures that her

marrying will be an act of oblation.

175

This careful selectivity urges the conclusion
that Lewis clipped and edited his characterization of Una
carefully, but the appearances deceive. Lewis has taken
a small-town girl, whose hopes for success are like his
own, and posed her as a daughter, a student, a stenographer,
a mother-wife, and a business executive. He has moved her
residences many times, surrounded her in several settings
with personages of lesser light, shown her reactions to
the proffered affections of five different men, and re-
vealed many of her interior roles and fantasies. But Una
Golden does not speak and act for herself out of a person-
ality that has heart, lungs, and bowels behind it. Nothing
that she says or does is particularly remarkable; as a
means of maintaining control Lewis relies on role-playing
to decorate her banality. Even at last, when she succeeds
as an executive, Una is admittedly bluffing and playing
parts. Perhaps the fault is in Lewis's belief that there
must be a fascinating tale in every person, if an author
could amass enough facts about his subject, and probe, or
reconstruct, the secret self. As he expresses it in The
geh:

And indeed there was a whole novel, a story told and
retold, in the girls' gossip about each of the men
before whom they were so demure (p. 49).
One of these men who were talked about was Walter Babson,
the adman who yearns to be a novelist and frequently re-

sembles Harry Lewis.

176

Though Walter Babson appears as "a slender young
man with horn-rimmed eye-glasses, curly black hair, and a
trickle of black mustache," these adornments scarcely dis-
guise that fitful fellow in his role as a representation
of the creative and unstable bright-idea man, another face
of Lewis.

He was twenty-seven years old when he met Una
Golden. (Lewis was the same age when he met Grace Hegger
in their common office building.) Babson (does his name
suggest "baby son,"8 a recurring motif in the novel?)
originates from the Midwest, and he has drifted through
many states, tried an impressive number of occupational

roles. The staff at the Motor and Gas Gazette regard him

 

with mixed feelings.
He was at once a hero, clown, prodigal son, and
preacher of honesty. It was variously said that he
was a socialist, an anarchist, and a believer in an
American monarchy . . . the quickest worker in the
office, the best handy man at turning motor statistics
into lively news stories (p. 50).
Babson longs to "quit and free-lance if I could break in
with fiction, but a rotten bunch of log-rollers have got
the inside track with all the magazines and book-publishers."
He tries to bestow "some literary flavor" on their business-
like trade publication, and he cheers a gloomy secretary by

playing a breezy role: " . . . my name is Roosevelt, and

I'm the new janitor." Lewis stipples Babson with more and

 

8See below, p. 179.

177

more fond detail. He is a "beloved fool," but an "ec-
centric waster"; he is something of a health-food nut, and
reportedly drinks a great deal; in his desk drawers are
assorted articles which bespeak the pathos of his bachelor
existence. Most of all, Walter yearns to write, or at
least "to be literary, to be a Bohemian." "His prose was
clever but irregular; he wasn't always to be depended upon
for grammar." Lewis treats Babson with more sympathy than
ridicule, especially when reviewing his literary pre-
tensions.
He felt that he was an author, though none of his
poetry had ever been accepted, and though he had never
got beyond the first chapter of any of his novels, nor
the first act of any of his plays (which concerned
authors who roughly resembled Walter Babson) (p. 60).
Lewis's recognition of this last literary tendency, of
putting oneself into one's works as a character, suggests
that he was not unaware of the extent to which Babson
approximated himself. The following passage reveals this
apprentice adman and author-within—an-author as not only
erratic but at war with himself.
Literally, he hated himself at times; hated his own
egotism, his treacherous appetite for drink and women
and sloth, his imitative attempts at literature. But
no one knew how bitterly he despised himself . . . To
others he seemed vigorously conceited, cock-sure,
noisily ready to blame the world for his own failures
(p. 60).
Walter Babson is the son of a Kansas "farmer and
horse-doctor." He had run away from school, traveled

around the United States, to Alaska and Costa Rica, had

associated with "hoboes, sailors, longshoremen, miners,

178

cow-punchers, lunch-room owners, and proprietors of small
newspapers." At last he entered "Jonathan Edwards College,
Iowa," and had adopted the habit of blaming everyone else,
including his father, for whatever went badly. This re-
belliousness was aggravated by his disappointment that, "at
the age of twenty, his name was not appearing in large
flattering capitals on the covers of magazines" (p. 63).
Dismissed from the college, Walter had tried other occu-
pational roles. "He doubted himself . . . he wanted to
express himself without trying to find out what his self
was." Now an outcast, he "didn't at all know what he
wanted, but he wanted something stronger than himself,"
Lewis observes judiciously.

He was desperately lonely--a humorous figure who
had dared to aspire beyond the manure-piles of his
father's farm; therefore a young man to be ridiculed.
And in his tragic loneliness he waited for the day
when he should find any love, any labor, that should
want him enough to seek him, and demand that he
sacrifice himself (p. 65).

Lewis's knowing intimacy with Babson's case hints broadly
at autobiographical confession. The general tone of these
descriptions is one of commiseration, self-pity and
narcissism, with strong overtones of hostility toward the
rural origins, the father, and the self. His confident
and talkative manner is clearly a bluff to conceal the
essentially childish and dependent nature of his person-

ality wedded to a defensively swollen and belligerent ego.

There is no mention of possible brothers or sisters for

179

Walter. He shuns compliments, out of a sense of unworthi-
ness, and describes himself as "merely a neurotic failure";
he casts Una as a "queen," and himself as a "jester," in
the same manner that Sinclair Lewis "chose for himself the
roles of Jacques the Jester and Francois the Troubadour who
sang" to the Princess of Faraway, the Lady Grace, so well
remembered by his first wife.9 Una's response to Walter is
the same as Grace's to Lewis: "I knew I must give him
courage, a confidence in his ability. He was a man whose
talent I respected, he was also my child.10
As a lover, Walter Babson exhibits the peculiar

pattern of scheming to be alone with a desirable woman,
then choking himself off short of success, which charac-
terized Mr. Wrenn and Hawk Ericson. He is self-effacing
and apologetic about everything. Before asking permission
to call on her, he confesses, "I'm no good; blooming
waster, I told myself; and I wondered if I had any right
to make you care . . . " Once having kissed Una, he
directly suggests marriage, but in a way that would force
her to initiate the proposal:

"Any time you'd like to marry me--I don't advise it,

I guess I'd have good intentions, but be a darn poor

hand at putting up shelves--but any time you'd like

to marry me, or any of those nice, conventional things,

just lemme know, will you? Not that it matters much"
(p. 88).

 

9With Love From Gracie, p. 8.

 

lOIbid., p. 84.

180

They are "children of emotion," Lewis explains meaningfully.
Between them was the battle of desire and timidity
. . . [Una] fancied sometimes that he was as much

afraid as was she of debasing their shy seeking into
unveiled passion. Yet his was the initiative . . .

(p. 91).
Lewis shows solicitude for these "children of the city
where there is no place for love-making." They must
reconcile themselves to foreign-style food at various
restaurants, and gallery seats at the theater. They have
"real tea" together, and Walter sports a new walking-stick,
perhaps as a prop to his teetering male ego. But only out
in open nature, that is, the Palisades, can their passion
find full expression. By themselves at the edge of the
river, they know the thrill of contemplating a secret swim
together, without daring to act upon it--a frustrating
combination of bold proposition and triumphant virtue,
both complimentary to the male who deprecates himself as
a "nice little Y.M.C.A. boy." Inventing all sorts of ex-
cuses, Walter escapes from almost certain success with Una
by accepting a job in Omaha. After having developed Walter
Babson's character deeply and quickly by showing him as
man and boy in a variety of roles and poses, Lewis whisks
him away, "essentially clean and kindly" though Una's
lover is, and only restores him in a patchy ending on the
last three pages of The 229' Meanwhile Una, the incor-
poration of Lewis who strove to translate keen perceptions

and new ideas into moneymaking business success, has

181

married Eddie Schwirtz, the incarnation of commercial
catastrophe.

Lewis's representation of Julius Edward Schwirtz
is not unsympathetic. The worst to be said of Eddie is
that he has few manners, poor taste in clothing and
language, and a mistakenly good opinion of himself. But
the man is an illustration of what results when the good
luck fades, the competition is ruthless, and when one in-
sists on sustaining the lively life he can no longer
afford. In more contemporary terms, Eddie would be called
a loser. Lewis gives some of Schwirtz's opinions and atti-
tudes sympathetic handling, indicating that to a degree
this salesman is a fear-portrait of Lewis as he suspected
his wife may have seen him, symbolizing the nightmare of
failure.

Una had met Eddie briefly at lunch while she was
a student at the business school. Their intimate ac-
quaintance began on the porch of an inn-farm in Massa-
chusetts while they vacationed. Eddie appeared as a
"heavy-shouldered, typical American business man, in derby
hat and clipped mustache" with jowls, "an alert, solid man
of about forty-five" (p. 189). She finds his hearty
flippancy and joking manner diverting, thinkshim not
dull, but "the perfect summer man." As they talk, Una
puts her companion under cultural scrutiny, discovers that
he has some appreciation for Kipling, but that he prefers

the "good old songs," or "something that's really got some

182

melody to it," far more than "symphony poems and all that
long-haired stuff," which sounds like "a bunch of fiddles
and flutes fighting out a piece by Vaugner like they was
Kilkenny cats." Lewis did not appreciate opera, either,
although Grace Lewis remembers his having escorted her to
Tristan and Isolde. To refute the notion that salesman

are "low-brows, Schwirtz counters,

"Just between you and I, I bet I knock down more
good big, round, iron men every week than nine-tenths
of these high-brow fiddlers--yes, and college pro-
fessors and authors, too!"

Then Una prompts, idealistically,

"Yes, but you shouldn't make money your standard."

"Well, then, what are you going to make a
standard?" asked Mr. Schwirtz, triumphantly (pp. 197-
198).

This single-minded, practical question never receives an
answer in The Job, primarily because Una adopts the money
standard in her climb toward success and power.

Eddie may be sanctimonious in his opinion of what
makes good, clean literature, but the story of his own life
is straightforward and tinged with pathos. He had lived in
the West Virginia hills as a boy, had a paper route,
attended high school. His ambition to succeed had stranded
him, destitute, in Columbus, Ohio, to find a job.

Mostly it was a story of dates and towns and jobs

--the jobs he had held and jobs from which he had
resigned, and all the crushing things he had said to
the wicked bosses during those victorious resignings
(p. 212).

He had married, but his wife and child died within a year

of each other. His tale rouses Una's maternal impulses,

183

and Lewis shows her experiencing a typical shift in view-
point which became such a serviceable technique for the
novelist:
To her, now, Julius Edward Schwirtz was not a flabby-
necked widower, but a man who mourned, who felt as
despairingly as could Walter Babson the loss of the
baby who had crowed over the bunny-book (p. 213).
Representation in the roles of struggling young business-
man, husband, and father makes Eddie seem a victim of the
cruelest fates. Further, the hint of self-destruction he
reveals in reaction to his wife's death beings Una's
sympathy rushing forth.
"My wife died a year later. I couldn't get over
it; seemed like I could have killed myself when I
thought of any mean thing I might have said to her
. . . there wasn't anybody to write to, anybody that
cared" (p. 213).
Lewis makes it clear that during these vacation scenes,
both Eddie and Una are acting uncharacteristic parts.
Schwirtz's patient attentiveness and deference mask his
calculated stalk of the skittish prize. Una, for her role,
. . . developed feminine whims and desires. She asked
Mr. Schwirtz to look for her handkerchief, and bring
her a magazine, and arrange her chair cushions, and
take her for a walk to "the Glade" (p. 202).
Eddie pointedly compares Una to his deceased wife--"Though
you're really a lot brighter and better educated than what
she was." After returning to the city, Una continues to
see him. The following winter they are married, and take

a wedding trip to Savannah (Lewis and his wife visited

Savannah in late December, 1915, after he had said

184

"crushing things" to his "wicked boss" before a "victorious"
resignation from the Doran Company).

Abruptly, Lewis shifts Una's point of view as she
reacts with terror to the circumstances of marriage to
Schwirtz.

Always she brooded about the unleashed brutality of
their first night on the steamer, the strong, in-
escapable man-smell of his neck and shoulders, the
boisterous jokes he kept telling her (p. 245).

[She] dreaded being alone with him; dreaded always
the memory of that first cataclysmic night of their
marriage; and mourned, as in secret, for year on year,
thousands of women do mourn (p. 246).
The implication is that now Eddie's true and secret self
has been exposed; he is a coarse-talking roughneck with a
drummer's garish tastes. Now married to him, Una is
sexually exploited, not chivalrously admired for beauty
and intellect. Eddie had misled her about the amount of
his savings; she was alarmed at his extravagances; and she
"had not supposed that he drank so much."

As a salesman, apparently, Schwirtz is an accom-
plished role-player. On the day he is fired, Eddie stages
a melodramatic homecoming.

As though he were a betrayed husband dramatically

surprising her, Mr. Schwirtz opened the door, dropped
a large suit-case, and stood, glaring (p. 263).
There follows a recitation of all his imagined persecutions,

ending with his vow to confront the "old man" at the home

office.

185

"Well, now I'll go down and spit the old man in the
eye a couple 0' times, and get canned, unless I can
talk him out of his bad acting. Oh, I'll throw a
big bluff. I'll be the little misunderstood boy . . .
but I can't talk up the boss like I could once"
(p. 265).
Then he remarks, in a self-destructive dissociation, "Well,
I'm going down now and watch 'em gwillotine [sic] me"
(p. 266). At times like these, cramped by his own finan-
cial mismanagement, Eddie rails against the capitalistic
cut-throats, and threatens irrationally to "turn socialist."
The effect of these blasts is to ridicule notions, held by
malcontents and incompetents, that socialism would provide
speedy remedies to the inequities of the capitalistic,
competitive system, especially in View of Eddie's earlier
lectures about socialists as

. . . just a lazy bunch of bums that try and see how
much trouble they can stir up. They think that just
because they're too lazy to find an opening, that they
got the right to take the money away from the fellas
that hustle around and make good. Trouble with all
these socialist guys is that they don't stop to
realize that you can't change human nature" (p. 208).

Unemployed, stripped of his occupational role, Eddie is

nothing but a drunken liar and sponger. Una comes to re-

gard him as an "incubus." During their violent separation
scene, when Eddie, inflated by prospects of selling out-
board motors, orders Una to obey his commands, she packs
her things. At last comprehending that his wife was not
bluffing, Schwirtz "changed swiftly from a tyrant to a

bewildered orphan" (p. 301). After leaving, Una never

saw him again.

186

The completed portrait of Eddie Schwirtz is one of
a man whose compulsions and liabilities have made failure
inevitable. There is about him a scent of overripeness.
But Lewis saves him from utter villainy by posing him as a
pathetic victim of competitive enterprise, the man whose
inferior background and training have left him most exposed
to the savagery of the Job. Furthermore, Eddie's initial
gallantry with Una, his appreciation of Kipling and London
(who had "been a sailor and a miner and all kinds of
things"), his fondness for the good old songs, his enjoy-
ment of lively drinking companions, his existence in an
atmosphere of marital combat, his extravagant spending
habits--all mirror qualities of Sinclair Lewis. Eddie's
criticism of the socialist troublemakers complements Mr.
Fein's apology for business managers which emerges as the
tonic social theme in The_geh. The one factor which renders
Schwirtz sinister is that which differentiated him most
from Lewis (if his wives' accounts of the novelist indi-
cate correctly)--his sexual aggressiveness and lack of
fastidiousness. In these matters the author shows frank
disapproval.
Mr. Schwirtz's notion of being a man was to

perform all hygienic processes as publicly as the

law permitted. Apparently he was proud of his God-

given body . . . and wanted to inspire her not only

with the artistic vision of it, but with his care for
it (p. 255).

In small-town boy-gang talks behin barns, in
clerkly confidences as a young man, in the chatter of
smoking-cars and provincial hotel offices, he had been
trained to know only two kinds of women . . . (p. 274)

187

either bold or meek, but incapable of serious thought.
Eddie's sexuality seems in direct proportion to his in-
sensitivity and impoverished imagination. In the roles of
salesman and companion, Schwirtz is tolerable, but as hus-
band and lover he is boorish. As a mirror image, Schwirtz
seems to be the reverse of all the attributes Lewis wished
to see in himself.

Minor characters in the novel appear each time Una
moves her residence or changes jobs. They are usually
arranged around the central character as reflectors, or
bit-part actors, providing needed orientation and status
for the heroine. For example, at business college Sam
Weintraub, J. J. Todd, Sanford Hunt, Miss Moynihan, Miss
Ingalls, and Miss Moore provide a spectrum of friends and
rivals to complete the emotional range from ebullient to
anxious and stodgy. In her rooming house on Lexington
Avenue, Lewis surrounds Una with Mr. Gray and his wife,
the "city failure," the branch librarian from Kansas City,
and Phil Benson. After moving to the Temperance and Pro-
tection Home for Girls, Una acquaints herself with the
matron, Mrs. Fike; her room-mate, Mrs. Lawrence; and the
Jewish Mamie Magen, Una's "teacher in ideals"; Jennie
Cassavant, Rose Larsen and Mrs. Amesbury. Lewis quickly
tags each character with an assigned role and a Significant
Detail or distinguishing touch. The most extensive use of
this jewel-setting technique appears in Chapter XIX, where

Lewis surveys the offices of Truax and Fein, and Una's

188

specific position in relation to the rest of the hierarchy,

then sketches the microcosm of the Zodiac Building with a

whole village life in the hallway" and the greatest di-
versity of people "to whom the Zodiac hall was Main Street,"
seen through Una's eyes. When one is confident of one's
role, he views the human scene with compassion: in these
days of upward economic mobility, Una could apprehend her
surroundings with sympathy and reason, in contrast to the
hysteria of her days at Pemberton's.
Aside from Una Golden's father, described as a
"petty small-town-middle-class lawyer," there are scattered
authority figures in The Jeh. The bosses, such as S. Her-
bert Ross, Troy Wilkins, Mr. Pemberton and his chiefs, and
to an extent Mr. Truax, appear as bluffers, hypocrites and
incompetents. Humanitarian employers like Herzfeld and
Cohn and Mr. Fein make the Job a "joyous adventure." Lewis
identified the Jewish characters in his novel with attri-
butes of wisdom, insight, and taste which he does not per-
mit the others, and they speak with the authority of an
ethnic tradition. Mamie Magen, the lame Jewess, "was the
most highly evolved person Una had ever known." She it is
who transmits this humanitarian tradition to the heroine.
To Una she explained the city, made it compre-

hensible, made art and economics and philosophy human

and tangible. . . . She preached to Una a personal

kinghood, an education in brotherhood and responsible

nobility, which took in Una's job as much as it did
government ownership or reading poetry (p. 276).

189

Mamie is another of those curators of the liberal culture
whom Lewis fancied, and raised to eloquence in his por-
trait of the dedicated Max Gottlieb. As a minor character,
she is an Influence on Una, who gratefully accepts Mamie's
intellectual hand-me-downs, even though she can not wear
them easily. Another feminine authority figure is Beatrice
Joline, daughter of a distinguished but impecunious Gramercy
Park family, "whose dead father had been ambassador to
Portugal and friend to Henry James and John Hay." She in-
structs Una in manners and costume, handing down lessons

in cool, aristocratic snobbery and taste which Una imitates
assiduously when she wishes to make a favorable impression
on the Boutells and Mr. Sidney. Mamie and Beatrice, exem-
plars of the vision and taste which make Una's life on the
Job bearable, are teachers of roles and attitudes, ful-
filling the same functions that Bone Stillman and Henry

Frazer performed for Carl Ericson.

A discussion of crucial passages in The geh will
show that deeply emotional experiences supply stimulus for
role re-orientation or mask-shifting among the principal
characters. Walter Babson's demonstrations of passion
near the Palisades, for example, are his attempts to bluff
or stampede himself into a declaration of love by playing
a bold role. He suggests swimming in the Hudson, leaving

Una to divine that he means nude swimming; he unbuttons

190

the top of her blouse to kiss her neck, then fastens it
again, apologizing.

"I suppose there's a million cases a year in New
York of crazy young chaps making violent love to de-
cent girls and withdrawing because they have some
hidden decency in themselves. I'm ashamed that I'm
one of them-~me, I'm as bad as a nice little Y. M. C. A.
boy--I bow to conventions, too. . . . I'm really as
mid-Victorian as you are, in knowledge. . . . I'm a
Middle Western farmer, and yet I regard myself about
half the time as an Oxford man with a training in
Paris. . . . Whatever I did, I'd spoil you . . .
(pp. 104-105).

Several conclusions may be drawn from these outbursts.
First, Babson is afflicted with acute role conflict: he
has little idea who he is of what he wants to be, but he
has fantasies of great accomplishments (Oxford, Paris),
countered by fears of insignificance (boy, farmer). Second,
his admitted lack of sexual experience seems to be a self-
reinforcing anxiety: the more he apologizes for his
innocence, the more keeply he is condemned to it. Third,
his wordy explanations disguise a fear that he might suc-
ceed with Una, or worse, that she might reject him at the
last moment, so Walter rejects himself precipitately in the
name of chivalry and decency, not wishing to "spoil" the
young lady. Fourth, in dropping his pretensions to liberal
ideas of sexual frankness and confessing his debt to con-
vention, there is a hinted ploy for pity and sympathy from
Una, in a maneuver to have her take the roles of aggressor
and mother. Fifth, the entire affair is palpably ego-
destructive. At last, Walter covers his confusion by

announcing that he will seek another occupational role out

191

West, although Una perceives that he would be "running
away from himself." Essentially, this is the same pattern
of bold intimacy and retreat which Mr. Wrenn demonstrated
with Istra Nash, and Carl Ericson with Evelyn L'Ewysse.

Mrs. Golden's death in a shabby New York apartment

is another episode charged with emotion. From a mood of
patient irritation with her mother's dependency, Una bursts
swiftly into anger, penitence, alarm, agony, grief, senti-
mentality and blankness, as she sees Mrs. Golden lose her
struggle with pneumonia. But Una's mourning is brief. She
had idealized the memories of their life together:

Una evoked an image of her mother as one who had
been altogether good, understanding, clever and un-
fortunate (p. 128).

After the funeral, however, when Una returns to the flat,
she recalls Mrs. Golden's peevishness.
. . . in memory of that healthily vexed voice, it
seemed less wicked to take notice of food, and after
a reasonable dinner (p. 129)
Una lay on the couch to reassess her ambition to succeed
in business.

So Una Golden ceased to live a small-town life
in New York; so she became a genuine part of the
world of offices; took thought and tried to conquer
this new way of city-dwelling (p. 129).

As a token of this role-reorientation (she is no longer
a daughter to a dependent mother, is no longer shackled to
her past in Panama), Una moves her residence.

The terrifying honeymoon of Una and Eddie is

another sharply-drawn scene, in which their relationship

192

is harshly redefined as a mismating of two lonely people
who have merely discarded the artificial roles they had
acted in courtship. By changing the narrative focus to
one of deadly intimacy, Lewis dramatizes the alteration in
their roles, now less harmonious than before marriage,
casting Eddie as an urbanized peasant and Una as a senti-
mental fool. Throughout the account of the Schwirtzes'
married life, seen in a viewpoint sympathetic to Una in
Chapters XVI-XX, the descriptions border on the sur-
realistic. In the final days before their explosive
separation, Una comes to see her husband as "alcohol-
soaked, poor white trash" and "that mass of spoiled baby-
hood waiting at home for her."

Precipitating their final quarrel is the issue of
who shall have the dominant role in marriage. In this
bitter confrontation of wills, Eddie's ego is affronted by
his wife's earning power and independence, and he insinu-
ates that she capitalizes on her freedom to meet with other
men. This is an intolerable insult to Una, who has been
extremely loyal. She had felt free when she found a job
with Truax and Fein, and now that she is leaving Eddie,
Una exults, " . . . Oh, I'm free again. And so are you,
you poor, decent man. Let's congratulate each other"

(p. 301). Although Una does not immediately divorce her
husband, Lewis signals her freedom to assume a new role by

an increase in her salary and a change of costume (p. 301).

193

Another scene of meaningful intensity occurs dur-
ing Mr. Fein's defense of the employer in business in
Chapter XXI. Thematically, his speeches compose a coda
for The Job. Pointing out that managers are not willfully
heartless, Mr. Fein blames the "slackers" for the world's
financial inequities--a common criticism in those days of
World War I. He concedes that the capitalistic system is
imperfect, as is virtually everything else men have de-
vised, concluding philosophically,

" . . . We've got to be anthropological in our view.
It's taken the human race about five hundred thousand
years to get where it is, and presumably it will take
quite a few thousand more to become scientific or even
to understand the need of scientific conduct of every-
thing. I'm not at all sure that there's any higher
wisdom than doing a day's work . . . and then for-
getting all the Weltschmerz, and going to an opera"
(p. 309).
In these sentiments he seconds the views of the socialist
Mamie Magen "who was determined to control and glorify
business," and felt that "the capitalists with their profit-
sharing and search for improved methods of production were
as sincere in desiring the scientific era as were the most
burning socialists" (p. 182). Una is downcast at the
recitation of her employer's "drab opportunist philosophy,"
but she does discover, significantly, that her "new power
and responsibility" as sales manager unleash her creativity
and furnish new horizons for her life in the Job.
Finally, Una's rediscovery of Walter Babson in the

role of her assistant for the White Line Hotels forces her

to debate whether she will be a business woman or a wife

194

and mother. Despite the artificiality of Chapter XXIII,
the situation poses a crisis. Walter refuses to continue
working for her, saying, "The problem of any man working
for a woman boss is hard enough. He's always wanting to
give her advice and be superior, and yet he has to take
her orders." He will eventually take another job in ad-
vertising, then he will marry her, and they will be
"a terribly modern couple, both on the job . . . And
everybody will think they're exceptional, and not
know they're really two lonely kids that curl up
close to each other for comfort . . . "(pp. 326-327).
But at the close of this "feminist" novel, Una is still
undecided about her final role.

The three divisions of The Teh sustain well con-
ceived themes and atmosphere, suggesting that Lewis had
firm control of his seminal concept--the portrayal of a
young woman's struggles to accommodate herself to the
business world, while achieving success and a meaningful
identity in the process. The counter-themes of failure
and moral corruption Lewis also handles convincingly. The
ambiguity which is apparent in his handling of the socio-
economic message of The_geh (here Schwirtz's "lazy bunch
of bums" coincides with Mr. Fein's "slackers"), indicates
that, despite a divided loyalty, Lewis was more attracted
by success than by socialism.

It is in his delineation of major characters that
Lewis is disappointing. His emphasis is far more upon what

they do and say than on what they are, as if he assumed

195

that the interior person was merely a pastiche of lessons
and attitudes. Una Golden is still a wind-up toy of a

girl who sheds a father, mother, and husband because they
are not amenable to her "unconscious" feminism. She longs
helplessly after her impulsive and childish lover, waiting
patiently until the author sends him back to her, scarcely
changed, as her subordinate in a business firm. She moves
her residence at least eight times, works for six different
employers, is sought after by a half-dozen men, with one

of whom she tolerates a brief marriage, and hopes for union
with another. She has been daughter, lover, wife, friend,
stenographer, sales manager, and executive. But behind the
poses and labels, not to mention her pretendings and
imaginings, who is Una Golden? She is a force without a
personality, an ambition without the subtleties and nuances
of a woman. Una appears as a heroine in a peep-show kineto-
scope filmstrip run at slow speed, just rapid enough to
show changes in attitude and blurred images, but not enough
to create the illusion of lifelike animation. The defect
lies not in Lewis's desire to tell a socially realistic
story, but in his limited conception of character as a
conveyance for emotional impressions to be staged for an
audience. His prime concern seems always to have been
effect, rather than fidelity. The problem is one of over-
control, lest his characters escape and become autonomous.

Lewis seemed undecided about permitting Una to dominate over

196

the theme of the novel; in a letter to Joseph Hergesheimer
discussing The Jeh, Lewis wrote:
The central character is the young woman on the job;
or perhaps the protagonist is the office itself, with
its three o'clock hopelessness, and its general waste
of human life. I hope it is not too propagandist.ll
As the embodiment of Lewis's own aspirations, however, Una's
mistress is success, not social welfare.

A projection of Lewis the apprentice writer and
lover, Walter Babson is neurotic, self-destructive, and
sexually inhibited. Full of intense talk and inspired
projects, Walter is at once diverting and pathetic. His
past occupational roles and escapes to various geographi-
cal points have been numerous, yet they have evidently had
no broadening effect upon his attitudes or behavior. At
the novel's conclusion he is still the boy-child in search
of a mother-wife, emotionally appealing but intellectually
tiresome.

Eddie Schwirtz, surprisingly, shows the most
development in the novel. He has worked hard at many jobs,
made himself an astute enough salesman to sell Una the idea
of marrying him, and is not well enough educated to be dis-
satisfied with his life. His role changes are dictated by

fortuitous circumstances--death of his father, deaths of

his son and wife, loss of crucial jobs--and by Lewis's

 

11James J. Napier, "Letters of Sinclair Lewis to
Joseph Hergesheimer, 1915-1922," American Literature,
XXXVIII (May, 1966), 237.

 

197

manipulation of Una's viewpoint toward Eddie. This last
factor, Una's changing attitude, is occasioned by Schwirtz's
sexual aggressiveness, linked to his lack of an educated
sensitivity. It is curious that this virile vulgarity is
the key concept which Lewis uses to demonstrate Eddie's
unsuitability as Una's husband, while Babson's frenetic
puerility renders him more appealing and acceptable.

If 222.122 makes a significant statement, then,
it is not to be found in Lewis's characterizations. There
is a suggestion that the city as a brutalizer of the worker
underlies much of the social Darwinism implicit in the novel.
But the main themes are the obvious ones; that a person must
find the resources to succeed within himself; that new
clothes, a small amount of research, and a bluff will yield
gratifying dividends in ego gratification and a better job.
Concomitant success in love is more doubtful, however.
Lewis has difficulty in depicting scenes of deep affection.
For while Una wishes to "mother" Walter, and he yearns to be
worthy of her, they both show evidence of passion, but not
of sexuality. A portrayal of mature sexuality requires
that the lover's role should be shown to derive from his
fundamental character--not that depicting the role, on the
contrary, should imply depths of sensitive personality.
The_geh further illustrates the inadequacy of Lewis's
techniques of role attribution and role playing in de-

lineating major characters.

CHAPTER VI

THE INNOCENTS: A REVERSAL OF ROLES

 

Although it was published in October, 1917,1 some

eight months after the appearance of The Job, The Innocents

 

actually antedates Lewis's fourth book, at least in part.
Much of this story was composed during a six-week vacation
Lewis spent with his wife in St. Augustine, Florida, be;
tween January 8 and February 18, 1916. As a story it was

rejected by G. H. Lorimer of the Saturday Evening Post for

 

its fault of excessive sentimentality, according to Grace
Lewis.2 This editorial judgment presumably spurred Lewis's
subsequent appeal to a ladies' magazine; it was accepted by

the Woman's Home Companion and issued in two installments

 

a year later, in the February and March numbers of 1917,
illustrated by Worth Brehm, at the same time that The Job
was reaching the public.

Mark Schorer has dubbed The Innocents "almost

 

certainly the worst thing that Lewis ever wrote," and

 

lMark Schorer gives the month as September in
Sinclair Lewis: hh American Life, p. 819.

 

 

2With Love From Gracie, p. 84.

 

198

199

dismissed the book with a twenty-two-line summary para-
graph.3 It is not necessary to contest this view; by most
literary standards the story is a clumsy patchwork of
melodramatic remnants. The plot wrenches along like a
disabled trolley, with Lewis the heavy-handed motorman
turning on more "juice" in the flat places. The main
characters, hampered by their ill-defined roles, are
trundled relentlessly from one setting to another. The
poignancy of its two potentially meaningful social themes
--the desperate lives of the elderly poor in the city, and
children's lack of concern for the dignity of parents--is
blunted by Lewis's almost hysterical overmanagement, and

a manner which oscillates between a spinsterlike archness
and sophomoric hyperbole. Notwithstanding its lack of

literary merits, however, The Innocents provides a clear

 

view of some aspects of the author's creative motivation
and method, and perhaps even the emotional skeleton
beneath, without the cosmetic refinements or art or finesse.
The book's title, for instance, reads like an
apology for carelessly executed character definition; the
attitudes and behavior of Seth and Sarah Jane Appleby can
be altered readily to suit any emergent occasion, pre-
sumably because they are puttylike and "innocent." Inno-
cence certainly is a suitable subject for sentimental

romance when addressed with warmth and compassion. But

 

3Sinclair Lewis: hh American Life, pp. 230,
246-247.

200

the "Innocents" in this book are patronized, even exploited
by Lewis, who misconceives their simplicity to be a naiveté
which approaches feeble-mindedness, alternating with the
obstinacy and petulance of spoiled children.

Like an apology, too, reads Lewis's "Dedicatory
Introduction" which really neither introduces nor dedicates.
Apprehensive "lest the critics search for Influences and
Imitations" that he might have to live up to if the book
"were a ponderous work of realism" dedicated to "the splen-
did assembly of young British writers," Lewis excuses The

Innocents with the ambiguous tag of "flagrant excursion, a

 

tale for people who still read Dickens and clip out spring
poetry and love old people and children." He then professes
"strident admiration for Compton Mackenzie, Hugh Walpole,
Oliver Onions, D. H. Lawrence, J. D. Beresford, Gilbert
Cannan, Patrick MacGill and their peers," and offers an
"enthusiastic tribute" to H. G. Wells--probably the most
bombastic non-dedication composed for an ill-deserving book
that year.

On the surface, the prime theme of The Innocents
seems to affirm the faith that a man who hews steadfastly
to his creative ideas will at last find strength to break
away from monotonous life in the large city, and realize
financial success and some social eminence in a Midwestern
town. Such a theme is ideal for the development of a young
hero, a reversal of the "village-to-New York-and-success"

pattern. Lewis, who had just left the security of regular

201

employment for the uncertainties of a career in fiction
writing, doubtless felt impelled to dramatize his affir-
mation of the creative imagination which may be happily
transmuted into worldly dividends. One recognizes, of
course, the familiar search for identity through change

of occupation. The twist is that the Applebys are in their
sixties, and approaching retirement. These conditions pose
the dilemma, not resolved convincingly in the novel, that
although the protagonists are old in body, they must exhibit
the vitality and enterprise of youth.

This problem is complicated by other themes which
churn beneath the surface. These powerful undercurrents,
which reek of anxiety, are fear of crushing failure, loss
of identity, abandonment of manhood in regression to a
childlike state, suggested and attempted suicide, and
humiliation before one's inferiors--all modes of self-
defeating behavior. Add to these the numerous instances
of escape from self by role-playing and bluffing, and the
book can be regarded truly as a chronicle of fear and
hysteria, written by an author who dreaded economic ruin
caused by the failure of his creative powers.

The novel tells of Mr. and Mrs. Appleby, who live
in a shabby New York apartment, and call each other "Father"
and "Mother." He is a clerk at the Pilkings & Son's
Standard Shoe Parlor, and though sixtyish, he is treated
like Bob Cratchit by the paternally Scroogelike Mr.

Pilkings, who "didn't believe in vacations." Each year,

202

then, Father must feign a cough and take snuff that induces
sneezing to claim the two-week July holiday as a sick leave.
The Applebys' annual destination is the farm of "Uncle Joe"
and Matilda Tubbs at West Skipsit, Cape Cod, a location
symbolic of the "freedom which these two gray-haired chil-
dren had longed for all their lives, and had found during
two weeks of each year."4 In this particular year (identi-
fied repeatedly as 1915 in the serial version) a chance
ride in Uncle Joe's son-in-law's automobile carries them
to the threshold of a new experience.
"That car changed their entire life. Among the

hills of peace there was waiting for them an adventure"
(p. 22), Lewis intones portentously. On a motor trip to
Cotagansuit, Father grandly leads their group to an impul-
sive, and expensive, stop for refreshment at a roadside
tourist trap, "Ye Tea Shoppe." Stung by the unexpected
bill for three dollars and sixty cents, Father carelessly
estimates the tea room's profits at "something like five
hundred per cent," adding to Mother,

"That strikes me as a pretty good way to earn a living,

old lady. You live in a nice comfortable place in the

country and don't have to do any work but slice bread

and stick in chicken or cream cheese, and make five

hundred per cent" (p. 27).

Easy Street is really a country road with tourists driving

by.

 

4The Innocents (New York, 1917), p. 9.

 

203

Mother and Father resolve to open a tea shop of
their own at Grimsby Head, Cape Cod, the next summer, and
return to New York to begin saving money. Father entrusts
the purchasing and shipment of the tea room furnishings
and equipment to a rascally Hungarian second-hand store
operator, who unloads upon the Applebys a grotesque assort-
ment of mismatched and tasteless furniture, tea service,
and provisions. Father leaves Pilkings and Son's, and the
following May they prepare for business at "The T Room" on
Cape Cod.

"They had purchased freedom," Lewis states
Delphically. But the Applebys' venture is marked for many
kinds of disaster, particularly because of the insuperable
competition from Miss Mitchin's arty Old Harbor Inn at
Grimsby Center, two miles away. A visit from their
snobbish and managerial daughter, Lulu Hartwig, and her
insignificant son Harry, does little to restore the Apple-
bys' feeling of confidence. After an incongruous attempt
to invite the socially prominent Mrs. Vance Carter of Boston
to patronize the "T Room," Father must console himself in-
stead by bribing her chauffeur with a two-dollar bill to
bring the grand lady around.

Unexpectedly Mrs. Carter and daughter Margaret
do alight one day, but are so savagely critical of the
Applebys' establishment that Mother and Father, who have
been eavesdropping, are cruelly shattered. Lewis then

introduces a tempest and an off-shore shipwreck (reminiscent

204

of a scene in Hike and the Aeroplane) for no particular

 

reason, and the old couple decide to surrender their "free-
dom" at the tea room for a visit with Lulu and her husband,
Harris Hartwig, "the up-to-date druggist of Saserkopee, New
York." Life under the eye and will of Lulu and the sneers
of Harris becomes insufferable, however, and the Applebys
quickly tire of being represented as aristocratic parents
from the City. Conspiratorially they count their savings
of thirty-five dollars.

"Gee! if we only had two or three times that
amount we could run away and start again in New York,
and not let Lulu make us over into a darned old
elderly couple!" Father exulted (p. 98).

They escape Lulu's further designs by crawling out a window
and jumping from a shed roof. On a train they flee toward
the familiar city. Father whispers,
"Old honey, there's nothing holding us apart now no
more. We're partners again, and Lord! how we'll fight!
I'll go in and take Pilkings's business clean away from
him. I will! Old honey, we're free again! And we're
going to see--New York! Lord! I just can't believe
it!"
Mother's response is almost moronic: "Yes-~why--why, it's
our real honeymoon!" (p. 108). Thus like victors they re-
turn from ruin to face a winter of despair in the heartless
city.
There follow quickly accounts of Father's re-
jection by the Pilkings company, his employment at a de-
partment store at eight dollars a week, Mother's finding

a job at nine dollars during the holiday season, Father's

dismissal, his hopelessness, the theft of his overcoat from

205

a restaurant, and finally the Applebys' attempted suicide
by gas in their cheap flat. Had the story ended here, at
the end of Chapter XI, it might have attained some of the
poignancy of O. Henry's "The Furnished Room," and the author
might have been credited with a touching account of dis-
illusionment and anonymous death in the modern metropolis.
Lewis revives the Innocents from the nadir of
despair, however; the attempted suicide is, after all, only
a dramatic gesture of defiance. Stirred by no more com-
pelling thoughts than "Suicide is wicked" and the reali-
zation that he would never play his mouth-organ for Mother
again, Father breaks open the gas-filled room, and the
Applebys prepare themselves for a flight into health. Seth
exclaims,
"Now we'll start off again, and think, honey, whatever
we do will be a vict'ry--it'll be so much bigger than
nothing. . . . Gee! think, we're free, no job or
nothing, and we could go to San Francisco! Travel,
like we've always wanted to! . . . Come on, we'll
start for Japan, and see the cherry-blossoms. Come
on, old partner, we're going to pioneer, like our
daddies that went West" (p. 138).

The loftiness of his ideal is intended to give sanction to

inanities of deed.

The train takes them as far as New Jersey, where
the Applebys begin their trek west. Father fancies that
he will "play the mouth-organ for pennies," but local
villagers, bemused and envious of their freedom to travel,

treat them like touring celebrities. One snowy March

evening, they stumble into a hoboes' camp ruled by the

206

shady Crook McKusick. Showing unsuspected resources for
social rehabilitation and reform, Mother Appleby takes
charge, foils a meddling sheriff, and transforms them all
into "amiable boarders at Hoboes' Home." Under the super-
vision of McKusick, who once trained pugilists, Father
prepares for a career as a professional pedestrian.

Spring thaws bring restlessness among the hoboes;
camp life disintegrates. A fortuitous and absurdly in-
accurate newspaper column on their travels has made the
Applebys famous. They journey to Lipsittsville, Indiana,
where in a rapid sequence of events, Father capitalizes on
his notoriety as a walker to purchase a one-third interest
in the Pioneer Shoe Store, joins the G. A. R., is elected
president of the country club, and buys a modern bungalow
complete with a maid and a framed picture showing a baby
playing with kittens.

The final chapter of The Innocents is reserved

 

for relating the Applebys' elaborate scheme for confounding
their lubberly son-in-law, Harris Hartwig. It is an exqui-
site and fantastic instance of the role player outplayed,
with an artificial cast, setting, dialogue and costumes.
Apparently the "Innocents" may be permitted their moment

of malice, but not, curiously, to teach Harris respect for
his elders; rather, to punish him by capping his osten-
tation at Saserkopee with a gaudier display of Lipsitts-
ville society, toward the further view of impressing Lulu

and earning her unreserved affection.

207

The shortcomings of this virtually plotless
material make it difficult to confer upon it the dignity

of "novel." Schorer correctly points out that The Inno-

 

cents was conceived as a short story, and it does not
escape the limitations or tricks of that genre. It may be
that the tale was padded out to look length merely to ful-
fill a contract with Harper for one more look, as Schorer
suggests.5 Nevertheless, the story was revised in some
details--some better, some worse--and Lewis wrote three
entirely new chapters and parts of another, to be grafted

on to the rootstock of the Woman's Home Companion version.

 

Specifically, the second half of Chapter XIV and all of
Chapters XV, XVII, and XVIII, embracing the episode in the
vagrants' camp, and the ultimate financial success and
triumph over Harris-Hartwigism in Lipsittsville, were
added for the book. Further, the location of that town
was removed from Delaware to Indiana during the revisions.

Alterations of the Woman's Home Companion text

 

 

are surprisingly extensive and detailed, and the number of
words, lines, and paragraphs rewritten and inserted sug-
gests that Lewis, not a publisher's editor, executed most
of the changes. These are of three main types: (1)
topical allusions which might have become stale were

updated; (2) wordy or tangential passages were excised;

 

5Sinclair Lewis: hh American Life, p. 246.

 

 

208

and (3) many parts were thoughtfully added, to thicken the
book. Revisions of the first kind are generally associated
with scenes where clever conversation or haughty poses are
in demand while dining at table. During supper at the
Tubbses', for example, Father and Mother represent them-
selves as "superior star boarders from that superior city,
New York, personages to whom the opera and the Vernon
Castles6 were perfectly familiar"; allusion to the per-
former is altered to read "horse-show" in the Harper
edition (p. 19). A subsequent cribbage game is compared
in the serial to "a Forest Hills tournament," and revised
to "Davis cup tournament" in the book (p. 20). Father's
assumed roles as the "First Customer" in a rehearsal for
Mother before the opening of the T Room include "Jack
Jackson, Senator Lodge, General von Mackensen or Eva

Tanguay"7 in the Companion; but in the book the boxer be-

 

comes "Jess Willard,"8 the general "von Hindenburg" and the

 

6Vernon Blythe [Castle] (1887-1918) was a dancer
and aviator born in England and author of a book of in-
structions in dancing titled Modern Dancihg; as a flying
instructor, he was killed in an air collision at Ft. Worth,
Texas.

 

7Jack Johnson was the first Negro to hold the
world heavyweight boxing title, from 1908-1915. Field
Marshal August von Mackensen (1849-1945) was a German
general very successful against the Russians on the east-
ern front in World War I. Eva Tanguay (1878-1947) was a
Canadian-born star of American vaudeville and musical
comedy theatre, known as the "I Don't Care Girl" after a
famous song which she introduced.

8World heavyweight boxing champion 1915-1919,
defeated by Jack Dempsey. The author's interest in boxing

209

actress "Mary Pickford"--Senator Lodge still remaining very
topical in 1917 (p. 44). The spinsters and club women who

frequented Miss Mitchin's "to drink tea and discuss

Bakst"9 in the magazine version later discussed Freud

(p. 54). During Lulu Hartwig's approving visit to the Old
Harbor Inn, the young man in an Albanian costume talked to
her "about Matisse" in the earlier story; but the subject

was later changed to "vorticism, which sounds more eso-

teric. In these and other contexts throughout The Inno-

 

cents, regular meals and teatime afford the focal character
opportunities for making dramatic impressions through role
playing before the seated captive audience--much as Lewis
himself used to perform imitations and antics at dinner
parties. A variation of this pattern occurs in the case

of conversation from other tables overheard, as when the

 

Applebys listen to a funny man next to them at the Hun-
garian restaurant exhibit gallows humor:
"My grandfather was a great acrobat. He was an aerial

dancer. But he shouldn't have stolen that horse"
(March Woman's Home Companion, p. 18).

 

In the later edition the joke was not improved:

 

may have been piqued by the accomplishments of the aggres-
sive Jewish-American welterweight Harry Lewis (1887-1956),
at the top of his form between 1908 and 1911, who went
into retirement a few years later.

9Leon Bakst (1866-1924), born Lev Samuilovich
Rosenberg in St. Petersburg, was an innovative artist and
ballet scene-and-costume designer, notably for Diaghilev.

210

"We been going to dances a lot, but last night the wife
and I wanted to be quiet, so I bought me two front
seats for Grant's Tomb!" (p. 128).

Outright deletions from the serialized Innocents

 

are rarer than subsequent embellishments, but a few merit
attention. Passages which recount Father's deep attach—
ment for the Pilkings shoe store, and his sentimental
leave-taking of "his old acquaintances among the clerks"
have been excised. A hint of possible privation in the
early life of Seth Appleby was later discarded: after
Mother's warning to Father that she won't have him "hang-

ing around sayloons,‘ Lewis confided: "She had never been
quite able to convince herself that Seth Appleby merely
lacked the chance to be a gay young blade." More amusing

is the wise omission of a lengthy passage from Chapter XIII

in which Father had regaled the Companion readers with a

 

virtuoso exhibition of role playing and fantasy projection,
while attempting to build a fire in the snowy woods, in the
manner of Jack London's celebrated story (March Woman's

Home Companion, p. 80). In Lewis's hands this little

 

scene depicted a ritual test of manhood (incongruous for

a man in his sixties), in which the novice camper, "panic-

stricken" in the "North Woods," torturing himself with

needless dread of phantasms behind the trees and lurking

ferocious beasts, fancies being reduced to his last match.
It was a very melodramatic moment. Life and adventure
depended on the one match that Father cautiously drew
from his pocket.

He scratched it and feverishly stuck it among
the leaves. It went out.

211

Without any precautions he scratched another
match. It promptly caught the leaves, kindled the
fire.

The author bursts in to assure the reader, importantly,

It might have been explained that Father had a
whole handful of matches, though his make-believing
soul hated to admit it; might as well not have been
a jolly vagabond at all if he had to carry all these
luxuries.

Mother, of course, is the audience who must be impressed,
although Lewis concedes that because Sarah's feet are cold,
her "interest in having the match make good was not ro-
mantic but practical."

"Oh!" Mother applauded, in awe and relief, while
Father straightened and looked patronizingly at his
fire. He wasn't a failure.

The last sentence is only half ironic, and it introduces
a new plane of emotional intensity into this ambivalently
mock-heroic scene. Who would even dream that a routine
test of fire-lighting skill in New Jersey must indeed be
a ceremonial trial of life's success or failure? Certainly
not a sixty-year-old indigent shoe clerk. But it might to
Timothy Hale-Hal Lewis who performed similar feats while
picnicking with Grace Hegger in the outskirts of New York
City.

The only other noteworthy deletion concerns
Mother's vision of a projected trip back to West Skipsit
in the coming summer, which Father's new partnership in

the shoe business will enable them to take. (Presumably

affluence affords as much "freedom" to travel as poverty.)

212

Mother mentally rehearses a dramatic scene with a new bit
of costume.

"I swear to goodness, I would like to get one of
those new angora mufflers embroidered with woolen
flowers, like I saw in the window in Wilmington. I
guess Matilda Tubbs's eyes would bulge out when she
saw that."

But then, curtailing her satisfaction with a crosscurrent
of self-deprecation, she adds,
"Oh, I'm just a wicked old creature thinking of vain
gauds and vanities when I ought to be crying, I'm so

proud of your actually signing a partnership contract"
(March Woman's Home Companion, p. 83).

 

Both of these omissions deserve attention, because in the
fire-building and muffler-wearing, Father and Mother build
up disproportionate expectations of success, then thwart
themselves-~he by staking everything on the match that
fails, she by throttling her desire for finery. This
emotional pattern, of anticipated gratification blocked or
muted by self-frustration and ending with inconclusive

gains, recurs throughout The Innocents, as it does in much

 

of Lewis's other work. A review of this theme of self-
defeat, and the concomitant motif of escape from anxiety
into role playing, will find support in the text of this
novel, including the passages Lewis added for Harper and
Brothers.

Once again, Lewis devises opportunities for role
playing on several levels. The first is the familiar
change of occupation as a change of role, already seen in

The Trail 2: the Hawk and The Job. Seth Appleby begins as

 

213

a small shoe clerk, and of course, ends as a big shoe

clerk, in a career reminiscent of Mr. Wrenn's in the novelty
business. In the interim, however, Father is a tea room
proprietor, a temporary leather goods salesman in a large
store, noon-hour waiter at a workmen's diner, "Mr. Smith"
the woodchopper, a hobo, and a "professional pedestrian."
But curiously, he is not conspicuous in his roles as hus-
band and father.

Secondly, each occupational switch is accompanied
by a change in location, necessitating travel in most cases,
and presenting occasions for extensive posturing and role
improvisation. The temptation to pretend being someone
else while traveling is, of course, a double escape--from
person and from place--into the congenial realms of fantasy.

In The Innocents these character-obbligatos are sometimes

 

accompanied or suggested by handy props, like Mother's
"smart new hat," Father's traveling cap, or the treasured
mouth-organ. Seth becomes a masterful "man of the world"
while he prepares for the journey to Cape Cod. On board
ship he unfolds the mysteries of the deck chair; he is
"tremendous," "immense," "admirable." He struts about in
his new cap: "He rather wanted to let people see it.
He was no Pilkings clerk now, but a world-galloper" (p. 10).
As always, the role performer is conscious of his audience.
Lewis feeds these affectations with such effusions as

He was so prosperous of aspect, so generous and proudly

affectionate, that people turned to look. It was
obvious that if he had anything to do with the shoe

214
business, he must be a manufacturer in a large way,
with profit-sharing and model cottages (p. 11).

This passage illustrates a third facet of Lewis's
technique for character delineation through role playing.
Not only is Father exhibiting a bit-actor's virtuosity,
conscious of being watched, but also the author must in-
volve the reader as watcher and straight man who pretends
to be fooled by the assumed costume and manner. Another
quotation illustrates this tactic more clearly.

From the pompous manner in which Father unpacked
his bag you would have been utterly beguiled, and have
supposed him to be one of those high persons who have
whole suites to themselves and see their consorts only
at state banquets, where there are celery and olives,
and the squire invited to dinner. There was nothing
these partners in life more enjoyed than the one
night's pretense that they were aloof. But they
suddenly forgot their roles . . . (p. 12).

This kind of writing, perhaps intended to be charming and
whimsical, puts a minimum of strain on the novelist, who
can attribute all sorts of settings, props, roles and
mannerisms to a basically amorphous character, contrive a
bravura performance, and then withdraw thoughtfully, con-
ceding that, after all, it is only for show.

Lewis's similes and metaphors offer a fourth mode
of character description by role attribution. The Applebys
belong to the "meek race" of "the people, descendants of
shopkeepers and clerks, who often look like New-Englanders"
(p. 2). Sarah Jane "was as used to loneliness as a hotel

melancholiac" (p. 3). As travelers the Applebys are "like

solumn white puppies venturing away from their mother"

215

(p. 8). On board ship, imagining that "two toughs" were
annoying his wife, Father "glared at them like a sparrow
robbed of a crumb" (p. 11), although he does not seem to
enjoy that sparrow's other, more notorious vitality.
Nevertheless, Lewis explains, "Father was, in his unquench-
able fondness for Mother, like Romeo, like golden Aucassin"
(p. 18). At times the comparisons derive from the charac-
ters' imaginings, as when at the crucial visit to the Tea
Shoppe, Seth experienced a Revolutionary Idea, and "they
had been fated the moment Father had seen Mother and him-
self as delightful hosts playing with people in silk
sweaters, in a general atmosphere of roses, fresh lobster,
and gentility" (pp. 30-31).

On the level of literal characterization, then,
Lewis follows a practice similar to candle-dipping, adding
innumerable coatings of waxy roles upon his common wick-
string central characters. Father and Mother Appleby have
no real inner workings; they are tallow to the core. They
must wait pathetically for the author to send down a
Revolutionary Idea as a pretext for activity in the next
episode, or to redirect the plot arbitrarily with no more
elaborate transition than, "Suddenly--." The absence of
robust characterization curtails the possibility for any
meaningful plot, since Lewis apparently felt that if he
were to sustain the fond old innocence of the Applebys,

they must be feeble-minded as well.

216

On another level, however, that of the symbolic
roles which these characters occuPy, an interpretation may
be suggested that provides insight into Lewis's clumsy

handling of The Innocents, edited, rewritten and expanded

 

though it was. The newly independent Sinclair Lewis,
determined to be free of authoritarian restraints either
in the form of office job or parental subsidy, was
dramatizing his own conflicting feelings of defiant self-
congratulation at having made a new beginning (thus the
Applebys' emphasis on being "free" and trying several new
occupations), and a paralyzing fear of failure and ruin
(reflected in Father's obvious anxieties about his success
and virility, and in the hinted and attempted suicides).
There is more. Father and Mother Appleby are parental
authority figures diminished and controlled to the point
of abusrdity. Father, particularly, is made to look ridicu-
lous: he is impulsive, prodigal, irresponsible, vacillat-
ing, dependent upon Mother for support--all that did not
characterize Dr. E. J. Lewis. Yet, in a dramatic reversal
of roles, Sinclair Lewis the Author could manipulate and
control these keWpie-doll parents, and in a gratifying
power play, assume not only their parts, but those of Lulu
and insignificant young Harry also.

Throughout the book Lewis insists that the Inno-
cents behave like children, and this paradox of the old
child is not wholly explained by the attribution to them

of virtue and naiveté. They are yet too young to be

217

senile, but too near retirement to change occupations
capriciously or travel like hoboes, then become prosperous
citizens in a Midwestern hamlet. No, their actions read
more like a history of Sinclair Lewis's hopes and fears--
fears that he would reach a mindless old age without ever
experiencing the joys of childhood, and of the loving
acceptance by his family that he still hoped for. So
Lewis fused the dreams of ingratiating innocence with the
terrors of failure and obscurity (which would extend to
his old age) in the creation of Seth and Sary Jane Appleby,
those consummate denials of human identity.

Lewis's delineation of Lulu Hartwig, however, is
an affirmation of fear. In contrast to her parents, Lulu
moves quickly, is a strongly opinionated snob and a bluffer.
Her tastes are expressed arbitrarily, with force and vul-
garity. In fact, Lulu's most repellent characteristics,
notably her officious management of household life and
affairs, seem to be exaggerations of Lewis's complaints
about his wife Grace, who was expert with the social snub
or condescending barb. More interesting, though, are the
double representations of Lewis himself, suggested in the
names of Harris and Harry Hartwig, in juxtaposition to

"Lulu" (one recalls Miss L'Ewysse in The Trail 93 the Hawk)

 

 

--the husband a dolt (reflecting the way Lewis felt over-
shadowed by Grace's social adroitness), and the son a
prankish boy (suggesting Lewis's intermittent need for a

subordinate role to a self-assured and punishing female

218

figure). Added to these anomalies is the inconsistent be-
havior toward Lulu of Father Appleby, now apprehensive and
repressed, as when in anticipation of her visit to Grimsby
Head, the old couple "knew that they would not enjoy a
single game of cribbage, nor a single recital by Signor
Sethico Applebi [another role for Father] the mouth-organ
virtuoso as long as she was with them" (p. 57); now defiant
in denouncing her preference for Miss Mitchin's at Grimsby
Center (pp. 58-59); then submissive and painfully conscious
of being watched by Lulu (Chapter IX); and finally, perse-
cuted by Lulu when she threatens to dispatch them to the
Cyrus K. Ginn Old People's Home (pp. 204-205), and abruptly
conciliatory at the close of the book:
. . . Father volunteered: "I actually do hope that
Lulu and Harry will come to pay us a visit now. Maybe
we can impress her, too. I hope so. I really would
like a chance to love our daughter a little. Don't
seem natural we should always have to be scared of her.
. . . Why, think, maybe Lulu will let me kiss her,
some day, without criticizing my necktie while I'm
doing it!" (pp. 216-217).

This passage, which appears in the appended final
chapter Lewis devised for the Harper edition, was probably
written after the stopover Lewis and Grace made at Sauk
Centre--the time when the author triumphantly impressed
Dr. Lewis with the amount of money he was paid for the
shorter, serial edition in the Woman's Home Companion.

Thus it is fascinating to read other meanings in Father's

coda-speech, since it appears to be Lewis's projection of

a plausible remark by Dr. E. J. himself, wistful, slightly

219

forlorn, and conciliatory, hoping that Lulu (read Gracie)
and Harry will come to pay a visit.

Certainly Lulu is the most forceful character in
the book. The Hartwigs' marriage is woman-dominated; their
life is one of poses and regimentation, their household one
of rigidly controlled hysteria; did these represent Lewis's
hallucination of how a settled life with Grace would be?

If the Hartwigs' pretensions seem socially absurd,
the claims of Miss Mitchin and the hobohemians at the Old
Harbor Inn to any artistic distinction bring down Lewis's
special scorn. His sneers at the activities of the arty
tea-room patrons tell of another skirmish in the author's

campaign against self-proclaimed cognoscenti and pseudo-

 

sophisticates who, he felt, were simply lazy frauds. Lewis
sees them universally as insincere players of roles, mis-
chievous poseurs who "talk about" many things knowingly

and cliquishly, but who produce nothing of value.

Of little literary value itself, The Innocents is

 

essentially a book about failure. Father and Mother Appleby
are memorable for their social, economic, and spiritual
destitution. Beyond that their characters are not con-
ceived sharply enough to hold a slicing edge of social
significance or satire. The triumph at Lipsittsville is

too contrived to offset their more than sixty years of
poverty, obscurity, and simple-mindedness. Lewis's pre-

dilection for writing about "little people" smacks of

220

condescension, it is true, but the emotional intensity with
which he takes their part and the shifting points of view
from which he examines their predicaments show more than a
patronizing superiority. Very probably Lewis identified
with the poor and routine-ridden people that he met in his
travels and in the low-rent districts of New York--but, one
feels, not with pulses of human sympathy and indignation;
rather, as calculated lessons to himself warning of the
disastrous anonymity that would result if his typewriter
failed to turn out more stories, or if his mind ceased
generating new Revolutionary Ideas. In other words, there
are only a few teeth in Lewis's muck rake, and the handle
is short, because he fears to go too far or too deep.

It could be argued that Lewis's penchant for
writing inferior fiction, like that typified by The Inno-
eehhe, is an aspect of his neurotic need for self-punish-
ment, offering another pretext for him to hate himself, by
"whoring," as he called his hack writing. Certainly this
suggestion cannot be dismissed casually. The creatures in
the novel seem to go out of their way to court misery: how
then can the author escape? When the Applebys achieve
success at last, it is by chance and bluff, and they have
already paid for it in advance with meaningless lives.

When Lewis won great fame with Main Street, one could

 

wonder how he wrote so many earlier things so unworthily.
It was as if Lewis had phantasms to exorcise, terrors to

dramatize, anxieties to confess.

221

The dominant moods of The Innocents are ones of

 

fear and insecurity, which give the novel a fatal air of
tentativeness and indecision. The erratic and pointless
careers of the Applebys and the segmented story line in-
breed literary weaknesses in characterization and credi-
bility to such an extent that the reader can sense only
the raw emotions behind the story. Fear is most evident
in the actions of Seth Appleby; one feels the constricted
breathing, the narrowed field of vision, the sweating
palms, and the paroxysms of showing off whenever Father
has to make a decision or feels threatened by the slight-

est contretemps. Insecurity manifests itself in the

 

Applebys' essential poverty, the peeling away of their
material possessions and prospects for employment, their
alienation from Lulu, and their penniless wanderings to
Lipsittsville. Their emergence as citizens of substance
in that town must be viewed as safe arrival in a secure
harbor, not as a vindication of patient virtue or the
triumph of sound business practices. It is most signifi-
cant that Father is able to cast away fear and hazard in
the end by persuading the Lipsittsville men to accept him,
not as he really is--an itinerant, frightened former shoe
clerk--but in his "role as public character," an eccentric
world traveler, business genius, bluffer, and plain liar,
who mouths chamber-of-commerce fatuities about "Progress"

and "nice houses and--uh-wide-awake town."

222

Seth Appleby's faking and posturing illustrate

the following motifs in The Innocents: role playing dis-

 

pels fear and insecurity because it is basically an inno-
cent, childlike game of make-believe, enabling one to
escape from himself, and because it is amusing to watch
the exaggerated reactions of other, unsuspecting people to
any number of false faces one may choose, and then to jeer
silently at the audience for being dupes. Lewis prepares
an important transition passage in Chapter XIV in an
attempt to reconcile the "new" Seth Appleby of Lipsitts-
ville with the old one who nearly died in New York.
Quite without knowing it, Father was searching for his
place in the world. . . . But he was learning something
more weighty--the art of handling people, in the two
aspects thereof--bluffing, and backing up the bluff
with force and originality. He came to the commonplace
people along the road as something novel and admirable,
a man who had taken his wife and his poverty and gone
seeing the world. When he smiled in a superior way
and said nothing, people immediately believed that
he must have been places, done brave things. He didn't
so much bluff them as let them bluff themselves (pp.
(Does the lack of distance from his subject suggest that
Lewis is revealing his own discovery?) Then later: "Seth
Appleby began to think for himself, to the end that he
should be one of the class that rules and is unafraid"
(p. 175). And finally: "In his attempt to let people
bluff themselves and accept him as a person to be taken
seriously, Father kept on trying to adhere to the truth.
But . . . " (pp. 189-190). Deception enabled Seth to make

an advantageous partnership with the proprietor of the

223

Lipsittsville Pioneer Shoe Store. The fact is that role
playing in its various guises brings the only brightness

and diversion evident in The Innocents; without this device

 

Lewis and his characters are powerless.

The main fault of this patchy, sentimental tale
is that the main characters are so inadequately conceived.
They have no souls, no centers for any inner-directed
activity higher than tropism. To seem "innocent" they
must be childish and stupid. They appear to have been
marked as vicarious bearers of Lewis's own emotional bur-
dens--fear of failure and profound insecurity. Beyond this
the Applebys represent parental authority figures debili-
tated and controlled by Lewis, the author-son, who is also
able to express his hostility through the mask of Lulu,
the punishing, ungrateful child. If there is any moral or

resolution to be extracted from The Innocents, however, it

 

must take the form of a warning that Lewis himself would
have heeded: a bright idea and hasty calculations are not
sufficient to insure success; lack of research brings
bankruptcy, failure, and paralysis; helpless people will
be safe and successful if they cleave to what they know
and avoid experiments. Meanwhile, a little banana oil is
efficacious as a hinge lubricant for the country club

gates, and as balm for the shrunken ego.

CHAPTER VII

FREE AIR: I'M ONLY A SMALL-TOWN

 

BOY MYSELF

"Motoring is the real test of marriage. After a
week of it you either stop and get a divorce, or else . . .
you discover again the girl you used to know," wrote Sin-

clair Lewis in 1919.1

Earlier, in a serialized Saturday
Evening Post story, he had indicated that an automobile
tour might prove a reliable shakedown cruise for a court-
ship. The serial had been called "Free Air," and the first
installment received prime billing on the magazine's cover
of May 31, 1919. Three more parts followed, on June 7,
l4, and 21. The public received Lewis's tale so well that
he devised a two-part sequel, called "Danger--Run Slow,"
which appeared in the Teeh issues of October 18 and 25,
1919. As he had instinctively perceived a tacit fusion of
characteristics between man and airplane in hThe and The

Trail 9: the Hawk, Lewis also recognized the complex

symbolism implicit in a man's relationship to his motor

 

1"Adventures in Automobumming,’
Post, CLXLII (December 20, 1919), 142.

Saturday Evening

224

225

car. Not only for the subtleties of social status, taste,
and individualism evident in a man's choice of his per-
sonal car, but also for the ego satisfaction in being able
to guide and control a formidable, self-moving gadget,
Lewis's delight in the automobile was natural. In addition,
the captive proximity of one's passengers, expecially if
female, could provide numberless opportunities for impres-
sive actions, roles, shared sentimental experiences and
perils, and conversations with a portable audience. As
tangible support for Lewis's familiar "manly" themes of
capricious roaming and camping outdoors, the automobile
also contributed the supposition of male mechanical mastery,
as well as hints of uncertainty and danger to be overcome
during cross-country travel around 1916, when good roads
and repair facilities were few. A car also doubles as a
handy device for escape, when emotional temperature and
pressure in a given situation may prove unbearable for the
hero.

The serials were based on fact. Grace Lewis calls
"Free Air" flatly "the story of our motor trip west"2--a
trip from Sauk Centre to Seattle and San Francisco which
the Lewises made in their new Ford touring car, from
August 7, 1916, until the last days of October. Lewis's
letters to Alfred Harcourt reveal his response to the

latter's suggestion that the original "Free Air" be

 

2With Love From Gracie, p. 124.

 

226

extended to book length, in preparation for publication by
the new company of Harcourt, Brace and Howe. Lewis was

already immersed in early drafts of Main Street, but laid

 

them aside in July to complete the "Free Air" sequel, which
comprises the last eleven chapters in the book. Traveling
east from Mankato in August, 1919, Lewis stopped in Phila-

delphia to visit Mr. G. H. Lorimer, editor of the Saturday

 

Evening Post, who offered to publish these end chapters as

 

a two-part serial the following October. Lewis could not
resist the tender of ready money, so he permitted the issue
of "Danger--Run Slow" with apologies to Harcourt, who
obligingly deferred release of the complete book until
October 23, 1919.3 In this form, the combined serials

totaled 370 pages.

Free Air is a novel of contrasts and a study of

 

cultural shock. The story relates how Milton Daggett,
self-employed garage mechanic in Schoenstrom, Minnesota,
impulsively pursues the cultivated Claire Boltwood of
Brooklyn Heights, New York, across prairie, gorge, and
mountain to Seattle, in hopes of being near enough to ob-
serve her, and perhaps worthy enough to deserve her. The
American Middle West and Far West supply a generous,
weathertinted background for the ensuing mechanical steeple-
chase between Miss Boltwood's racy Gomez-Deperdussin auto-

mobile and Milt's spunky little Teal "bug." There is

 

3See Harrison Smith, ed., From Main Street he
Stockholm: Letters 2E Sinclair Lewis, 1919-1930 (New York,
1952), pp. 3-20 et passim.

 

 

227

drama in this travel adventure, which Lewis felt was "ro-
mance with dignity and realism . . . Milt, in his garage,
in his adventuring, is as true to life as though this were
a drab story of manners instead of a romance."4 There are
numerous changes of scene and role, and diverting character
bit-actors pepper the pages. There are heroic themes of
rescue, pathetic themes of human degradation, noble mo-
tives, snobbery and contemptuous acts, city scenes, de-
serted farmhouses, a ferocious bear and a tame cat, chil-
dren, desperadoes, an impressive list of improbable settings
and coincidences, and above all--love.

The love theme is serious but not profound, in a
manner suited to light fiction. Lewis manages this motif
in characteristic fashion: by alternatively abrupt and
gradual role changes, or hot-and-cold emotional climates,
he keeps the lovers in proximity without allowing them any
clear-cut success. The hero, Milt, is perpetually at a
disadvantage culturally, socially and psychologically,
despite his mastery of camping and motoring. Claire, the
heroine, is cool and superior, due to the fairly stereo-
typed conventions of the sophisticated East, and she is
adroit enough to undertake a hazardous cross-country motor
trip accompanied only by her aging father. The problem of
the novel is to arrange a romantic accommodation between

Claire and Milt, as if to make a working team out of a

 

4From Main Street he Stockholm, p. 15 (letter to
Harcourt, October 6, 1919).

 

 

228

thoroughbred filly and a country hack. Accordingly, Lewis
endeavors to "democratize" the luxury-loving lady under
the influence of the pioneering prairie spirit and with
periodic injections of egalitarian compassion, symbolized
by the "free air" which all men must breathe. Milt, on
the other hand, Lewis must show currying his natural abili-
ties, channeling his ambition and energy into a course of
self-education, and absorbing enough culture to best the
Seattle snobs at their own game of condescension, in
attempts to impress the lofty lady and prove his worth as
her champion. Indeed, there is an almost medieval sim-
plicity to this tale of motorized romance and derring-do,
in which Milt is identified as "the Galahad of the Teal
bug." At one point Milt even sees himself in the role of
Robin Hood, as he recalls childhood make-believes for
Claire, and she, moved by this evidence of creative imagi-
nation, wishes she could have played Maid Marian for him.5
It is too simple to assert merely that in EEEE
hie Sinclair Lewis reaffirms his faith in the unaffected
country virtues of friendship, honest work, and love of
nature, and his belief that these would triumph over urban
qualities of affectation, hypocrisy and class prejudice.
Milt's attitude of apology for his small-town background
does not support this view. Lewis has staked everything

in the book on the assumption that Milt will become an

 

5Free Air (New York, 1919), p. 147.

229

engineer, and that Claire will mightily assist him in doing
so. That is, by becoming a success, Milt can save Claire
from a boring existence among the effete and stupid

bourgeoisie of Seattle and Brooklyn; she, in turn, can

 

save him from a purposeless life in Schoenstrom by teach-
ing upper-class tastes to her proletarian, and by helping
to transform him from a small-time mechanic into a big-time
mechanic. In this context their marriage, like the mar-
riages in Whehh, hehh, and The_geh, is not so much a life-
long affair between devoted lovers as it is a mutual rescue
operation. Indeed, Milt's dogged pursuit of Claire smokes
with an adolescent-crush ardor which evidences at once a
farouche opportunism and a voyeuristic abridgment of pri-
vacy. The woman is more than a love object; she is poten-
tially a means to success, a lucky resource to be ex-
ploited, a guaranteed audience. That is to say, there are
cynical and calculating aspects to Milt's campaign of
courtship, with each encounter between man and woman seized
upon and worked for a planned effect.

In view of Grace Lewis's revelation that she had
served as the model for Claire Boltwood, it is difficult
to avoid identifying Milt Daggett with Lewis. It is clear
that the author's visit to Sauk Centre, which preceded the
storied motor trip west, was a crucial occasion in his
life. Symbolically, it was a confrontation with his for-
midable father, a demand for recognition of the son's new

marital status, implying equality with the father and

230

therefore full accession to the robes of manhood. Further,
Lewis's ability to score two 22222 on the old doctor
(Milt's father is described as a pioneering "Old Doctor")
--the impressive sum he had earned from the serialized
"Innocents" and the dramatic purchase of the Ford--signified
more proofs of maturity, as well as tacit solicitations of
his father's grudging approval. By taking his father for a
drive, while operating the machine's controls himself,
Lewis dramatized his subjugation of the dreaded authority
figure, by reducing him to the ineffectual role of passen-
ger. Thus it is fascinating to note that Milt's principal
attributes of manliness are outdoor camping, already a
Lewis benchmark, and familiarity with automotive machinery,
while the only real authority figure in the novel, Claire's
father, Mr. Boltwood, is limited and controlled as a semi-
invalided passenger in her car.

The stay in Sauk Centre also permitted Lewis to
observe the cultural shock waves as his wife, a representa-
tive of the urbane East, adjusted to the homely pace and
customs of the ingenuous West. On the other side he marked
the town's self-conscious reception of Grace. His obser-
vations furnished important perspectives not only for
Claire Boltwood's delineation, but also for the development
of Carol Kennicott in Gopher Prairie, in a shift of pro-
tagonists from the Guy Pollock of the original "Village

Virus" concept. Lewis seemed to favor depicting solitary

231

characters wrenched from a familiar setting and deposited
in strange or hostile surroundings, and embroidering the
implicit comparisons and contrasts in manners and customs.
In this fashion Claire Boltwood feels threatened and in-
sulted by the familiarities of small-town citizens, while
they feel put upon by her overbearing deportment; Milt
feels disadvantaged and patronized at brunch or tea parties
in metropolitan Seattle, while Claire's friends regard him
as a rustic adventurer.

As the central problem of the story suggests,
there is little plot to Thee hi5. The story line develop-
ment is fairly horizontal from east to west through time,
with a few flashbacks to fill in details or present a
fresh point of View. Interest in the tale is sustained
theoretically by Milt's powerful desire for Claire Bolt-
wood's presence (though not specifically her body or her
mind), but practically by demonstrations of motoring
problems to be solved, narratives of views to be appreci-
ated, and by reliance upon manufactured incidents and
expedient characters suddenly introduced and dismissed.
Inevitably, Claire faces trumped-up perils on the road
from which Milt, compulsively smitten by her image, is
able to extricate her. The Seattle interlude is a con-
venience for turning the tables on Milt, to examine his
adaptability to Western smart society, which, Lewis makes

clear, has been grafted from the East. The hero's struggle

232

to adapt, the handholds he grasps to gain upward mobility,
and the emotional anxiety and role conflicts he endures,
form the melodramatic core of reader interest. Whether
Milt will succeed is not the question posed in Thee élE;
hey he will win the girl, subdue his rival and overcome
his handicaps to realization of a successful occupational
role comprises the main business of the story. Claire, as
the aloof virgin unsullied, requires little development or
modification beyond an increased awareness of the great
diversity of human lives in America, and the ability to
place her fondness for upper-class perquisites in a more
realistic perspective. Underlying the improbable plot for
dragging these two lovers together with automobiles is
Lewis's apparent assumption that the only differences be-
tween them are details of taste and style; that if a man
wishes to enhance his social status, he needs merely to ob-
serve some exemplars of the envied life-style, and mimic
them in roles.

Viewed as a vicarious Harry Lewis, Milton Daggett
bears noteworthy similarities to his creator. Both are
doctors' sons raised in small Minnesota towns, who trace
ancestry back to stock of New England origin. As youths,
both enjoyed playing make-believe games alone. Both
idealized the rugged arts of camping and life outdoors,
and were fascinated by mechanical devices. Emotionally,

both exhibit similar mercurial patterns of sanguine

233

optimism and corrosive self-effacement, and feel persecuted
and plotted against when projected plans go awry. More
particularly, the relationship of Claire to Milt as in-
spiration and impelling force corresponds roughly to that
between Grace and Hal Lewis--he the assiduous student of
manners, décor, stylish costumes and fabrics, which become
increasingly important as significant symbols of charac-
terization in his later novels.

An unresolved perplexity in Free Air is the
question: Where has Milt acquired his sophisticated taste
in women? Lewis records his hero's first reaction upon
seeing Claire.

He saw a girl step from the car. He stopped . . . in

uneasy shyness. He told himself he didn't "know just

what it is about her--she isn't so darn unusually

pretty and yet--gee--Certain1y isn't a girl to get

fresh with. . . . Like to talk to her, and yet I'd

be afraid if I opened my mouth, I'd put my foot in

it. "

He was for the first time seeing a smart woman.

This dark, slender, fine-nerved girl, in her plain,

rough, closely-belted, gray suit, her small black

Glengarry cocked on one side of her smooth hair, her

little kid gloves, her veil, was as delicately ad-

justed as an aeroplane engine (pp. 58-59).
Of course, Milt's eye had first been attracted by the
asexual beauties of the powerful Gomez auto (imported from
France, special body), then by the foreignness of the
license plate. When Claire emerges, fashionably dressed--
anticipating Mr. McLuhan's identification of the car as an
item of apparel--Milt's enthusiasm transfers from the

machine to the girl. His initial reaction is not admir-

ation or desire, however. It is consternation. The words

234

"uneasy shyness," "afraid," and Milt's instinctive sen-
sation that she "isn't a girl to get fresh with," implying
a defense against foreseeable rejection, suggest an acute
awareness of Claire's femininity, with an accompanying
sense of his own clumsiness and inadequacy. His immediate
wish is to heTh to her, but he is too upset to wait upon
her in his own garage, leaving that pleasure to his
assistant, Ben Sittka, while he himself skulks about,
pretending not to watch her avidly.

Milt wanted to trumpet her exquisiteness to the
world, so he growled to a man standing beside him,
"Swell car. Nice-lookin' girl, kind of" (p. 59).

It seems more casual to note first the car, then the girl,
both viewed as marvelous objects. Milt creeps toward his
garage, peeps at the girl, passes her while affecting not
to see her, listens in on her conversation with Ben, learn-
ing of her plan to drive toward Seattle. What is the reason
for stealth? Either Milt is ashamed of his suddenly found
desires, barely masked by his tame urge to converse with
the girl and his ostensible admiration for her car, or he
afraid of them. Claire and her father remain in Schoen-
strom for eighteen minutes, only long enough to change an
inner-tube. Twenty-nine minutes after their departure

Milt drives his Teal out of town in frenzied pursuit. He
has had time to change into a suitable traveling costume
and purchase a garish plaid cap--"in his discovery of
Claire Boltwood he had perceived that dressing is an art"

(p. 61)--leave Ben in charge of the business, pack a

235

suitcase, pay his landlady and bid goodbye to friends.
Accompanying him is the cat, Lady Vere de Vere. Custom-
arily, a change of role and scene necessitates a change of
costume for the Lewis hero. From being Milt the garage
mechanic he has been transformed into a free traveler, a
Galahad, a Good Samaritan. These are the symbolic roles
which dominate his repertoire.

Milt's father, the Old Doctor, "had meant to send
him to the state university," but after graduating from
high school in St. Cloud, he had become a flour mill
engineer before rising to be "owner, manager, bookkeeper,
wrecking crew, ignition expert, thoroughly competent bill
collector," and general laborer in his own Red Trail
Garage. He is also the "leader" of the progressive
political faction of the Schoenstrom populace, a man of
whom his friend Barney confides,

" . . . he's got a nerve, that fellow. . . . He's got
a great line of talk . . . Thing about him is: if he
sees something wrong, he picks out some poor fellow
like me, and says what he thinks" (p. 34).
His particular friends, intended to mirror Milt's catholic
taste in companionship, are the rough Bill McGolwey,
proprietor of the Old Home Poolroom and Restaurant, and
the refined "Professor" and Mrs. James Martin Jones, with
whom he talks about science, politics, and literature.

The last of Milt's occupational role changes comes about

after he reaches Seattle, where he becomes a student at

236

the university, preparing for a career as an engineer,
striving to be worthy as Claire's future husband.

In his functional roles, Milt performs many ser-
vices for the Boltwoods. He is their rescuer, cook, guide,
guardian, driving instructor, host, and guest. Even when
he is not physically with them, his presence hovers over
the Boltwoods like that of an impresario. He is happy to
repair their car or be a chauffeur. Intuitively Claire
expects Milt to appear when the travelers are in diffi-
culty.

In fantasies or in imaginary adventures, Milt
projects himself into roles with ease. His serviceable
inventiveness generates amusing talk about the cat, Vere
de Vere, for Claire's benefit, in the same manner that
Hawk Ericson first attracted Ruth, and Mr. Wrenn beguiled
Istra Nash.

. . . She's kind of demanding. She wanted a little
car of her own, but I didn't think she could keep up
with me, not on a long hike."

"A little car? With her paws on the tiny wheel?
Oh--sweet! . . . " (p. 31)

He tries to impress Claire with another flight of fancy
by embroidering a report about Japan heard from a mission-
ary.

" . . . From what she says, I guess all you need in
Japan is a bottle of mucilage and a couple of old
newspapers and some two-by-fours. And you can have
the house on a purple mountain, with cherry trees
down below, and--" He put his clenched hand to his
lips. His head was bowed. "And the ocean! Lord!
The ocean! . . . And steamers there--just come from
India! Huh! Getting pretty darn poetic here! Eggs
are done" (p. 32).

237

A now-familiar pattern re-establishes itself. No rhapsody,
no ecstasy may be long enjoyed without being cut short,
deprecated, suppressed. The sublime experience must find
its quick antithesis in the banal. Evocations of Japan
and India reaffirm the hero's need for escape--into fantasy,
into travel, into books. An exemplary fugitive scene com-
bining projected escapes to Another Place (Minneapolis),
in reading (books and magazines) and in a daydream appears
in Chapter V.
He seemed to be fumbling for something about which he
could deliciously think if he could but grasp it.
Without quite visualizing either wall or sea, he was
yet recalling old dreams of a moonlit wall by a warm
stirring southern sea. If there was a girl in the
dream she was intangible as the scent of the night
(p. 56).
Always intangible are the women in these heroes' dreams.
With such elusive ladies one can suffer no disappointment
or surfeit. In these kinds of fantasies, Milt is a passive
spectator, not a participant. One may wonder why, if his
imagination is so fertile, Milt's role options and re-
sources seem so limited.

Lewis seeks to broaden his hero's character with
many incidental role attributions, conferred by metaphor.
Milt is labeled variously as "eternal boy" (p. 22), the
"engineer" of the Teal car (the cat is the "captain")

(p. 24), a good "fairy" (p. 30), a "sloppy hound" and
"the World's Champion Dude" in his own opinion (p. 64),

a "spy" (p. 82), a "young poet" in another of his day-

dreams (p. 97), Claire's "perfect companion" (p. 267), an

238

imagined "piker" wearing a "rented soup and fish" (p. 318),
a "deposed aristocrat" (p. 337), a "prairie pirate" (p.
349), and "a young viking . . . a young seaman of the crew
of Eric the Red" (p. 368), as well as a "young tramp" and
Claire's "one real playmate." Lewis can not represent Milt
as entirely heroic, or use a consistent, tightly-disciplined
scheme of metaphors to support his characterization, for
several reasons: (1) the author's notion of character is
too emotionally and impressionistically grounded to endure
the restrictions of highly rational heroic attributes or
patterns of imagery; (2) Lewis identified too closely with
his protagonists to allow much distance or objectivity

that might underscore their independence from his own
peculiar life patterns; (3) the original short story mode
of EEEE hi; did not warrant meticulous attention to con-
sistency in characterization or motif; and (4) in the loose,
adventure-fantasy plot, the desires which impel Milt across
the prairies derive from bursts of his ambition to be a
successful bourgeois, alternating with troughs of gloomy
self-doubt and anxiety.

These alternate periods of elation and depression
compose a rough behavior pattern which does more to charac-
terize Milt than his specific actions do. Given the
proposition that Milt's "purpose in life was to know
Claire," one is at first puzzled by his irresolution and
feelings of inferiority--those debilitating convictions of

unworthiness which seem so disharmonious with the broad,

239

democratic theme in EEEE hip that upholds the fundamental
equality and worth of each individual in the human com-
munity. If Milt is humanly the Boltwoods' equal, what
reason is there for all his apologizing and backsliding?
By examining certain passages for evidence of self-defeating
maneuvers, one may learn that Milt is Oppressed by guilt
originating from a basic role conflict. For example, the
first indication of Milt's admitted anxiety appears in
Chapter IV, as he prepares to follow Claire after camping
near Gopher Prairie for the night.

To the high-well-born cat, Vere de Vere, Milt Daggett

mused aloud, "Your ladyship, as Shakespeare says, the

man that gets cold feet never wins the girl. And I'm

scared, cat, clean scared" (p. 48).
Scared of what? Milt is not afraid of travel. Is he
afraid of leaving his familiar role as Schoenstrom mechanic
for an impulsive chase into upper levels of "society?"
Probably. There are foolhardy risks in what Milt is doing:
he hazards total rejection and ridicule by Miss Boltwood
for his presumption; he may also discover that he is not
adequate to make the adjustment, or to learn the roles and
shibboleths of the upper class. Close behind Milt, seeming
to identify deeply with the conflict of his rustic paladin,
is Harry Lewis, affirming the same unspoken apology, "I'm
only a small-town boy myself."

Support for this essentially serious motivation on

the author's part flows from the discovery that nowhere

does Lewis regard Milt's drive toward wish fulfillment as

240

the absurd, fortuitous and sentimental scheme that it is.
Milt's intense self-doubts may spring from a sense of
quasi-Christian modesty, designed to mortify Pride, or
they may be ploys for reader sympathy and traps for praise.
But guilt deriving from role conflict--the betrayal of home
virtues and customs, with the accompanying threat of lost
identity, in the attempt to assume a new and alien life
style--seems to be an underlying cause of Milt's self-
deprecation.

Obviously Milt is not satisfied with his situation
in Schoenstrom. "I don't know just what I want to do,"
he confides to Bill McGolwey (p. 54). Gradually he
"realized that for the past two years he had forced him-
self to find contentment in building up a business that
had no future" (p. 85). The contrast between himself and
the shining vision of Claire prompts his first expression
of "something like agony."

"But, oh, what's the use? I can't ever be any-

thing but a dub! Cleaning my nails, to make a hit

with a girl that's got hands like hers! It's a long
trail to Seattle, but it's a darn sight longer one

to being--being--well, sophisticated . . . (p. 65).
As he pursues Claire over the highroad, Milt tries to
become a critic of life; he frets about the matter of
"good taste." Then he sees himself as "a boob, chasing
after a lone, cold star like Miss Boltwood" (p. 92). When
Claire defensively stops her car and surprises Milt with

a lofty dismissal of his unsolicited services, the young

241

man is deeply humiliated and hurt. He derides himself
for acting like "a small boy in love with teacher," a
"Yahoo" and a "Goat" (pp. 94-95). To Claire, in a later
encounter, he confesses that he "wasn't bright enough" to
satisfy his early ambitions, adding, "I just became a
garage man" (p. 118). When they visit Yellowstone Park
together, Milt assumes a wary reserve, "afraid that Claire
would find him intrusive" (p. 130). While Claire dines
with an affected young gentleman in riding breeches, Milt
fusses in the background, imagining himself disadvantaged
and inferior, in a small boy's swollen reaction to an
Olympian rival. This reaction he repeats at the appearance
of Jeff Saxton, Claire's old suitor, at Flathead Lake,
Montana:

He was agonizing, "This Jeff person is the real

thing. He's no Percy in riding-breeches. He's used
to society and nastiness. . . . And I thought I could

learn to mingle with Claire's own crowd! I wish I
was out in the bug. I wonder if I can't escape?"
(p. 187).

Later, Milt's fears at the prospect of tea with
the Gilsons in Seattle follow this pattern.
"Tea--Now we're so near your Gilsons, I begin
to get scared. Wouldn't know what to do. Gee, I've
heard you have to balance a tea-cup and a sandwich
and a hunk 0' cake and a lot of conversation all at
once! I'd spill the tea, and drop crumbs, and prob-
ably have the butler set on me" (p. 239).
The supreme ridicule, of course, is to endure the dis-
approval of menials--but1ers, chauffeurs, garage attendants

in uniform. Milt's whole approach to Seattle is guarded,

apprehensive. He is driving the Boltwoods' Gomez into the

242

city, while Claire and her father have taken the train
ahead, "And every minute he drove more slowly and became
more uneasy" (p. 254). His first impressions of the city
are distorted, hysterical. Lewis provides Milt with some
irrationally peasant-like thoughts. The young man feels
laughed at. "Will the whole town be onto me?" is his
panicky reaction. He feels "crushed" by the multilevel
parking garage, and its rows of automobiles seem to number
millions; the attendants are costumed and condescending.
A Seattle movie theater appears enormous. The nearby hotel
is "entirely full of diplomats and marble and caviare"
(pp. 256-257). In this frame of mind, when he "humbly"
telephones for Claire, only to fetch a reply from the
Gilsons' maid
who said "Yes?" in a tone which made it mean "No!"
he ventured, "May I speak to Miss Boltwood?"
Miss Boltwood, it seemed, was out.
He was not sorry. He was relieved. He ducked
out of the telephone-booth with a sensation of escape
(p. 257).
Milt acts like a hunted and threatened man. His are not
simply the reactions of a bumpkin overawed by the city,
but the hallucinations of a frightened amateur who has
bluffed himself into a high-stake game and fears that his
fund of experience is inadequate. Escape seems the best
maneuver.
Still, Lewis repeats,
Milt was in love with Claire; she was to him

the purpose of life . . . All the way into Seattle he
had brooded about her . . . But Claire had suddenly

243

become too big. In her were all these stores, these

office buildings for clever lawyers and surgeons, these

contemptuous trolley cars, these careless people in

beautiful clothes. They were too much for him.

Desperately he was pushing them back--back--fighting

for breath. And she belonged with them (pp. 257-258).
What contributes toward this stockpile of opposition, or
in what respect Claire now seems "too big" (and Milt, pre-
sumably, too little) remain mysteries. But in a grotesque
and formidable way, Claire and Seattle seem fused into one
hostile establishment, like maiden and keep, against which
Galahad must sally with his puny lance. However much these
obstacles may be products of Milt's own imagination, they
seem designed to thwart any enjoyment in his pursuit of the
young lady, or any promise of success in winning her.

The period of Milt's Self-induced eclipse is
extended. He skulks about the Gilsons', spies on Claire
at a party within, feels moved to kill the young man he
sees dancing with her. "With all the pleasure of martyrdom
. . . he studied the other guests," Lewis relates.
It was the easy friendliness of all of them that

most made Milt feel like an outsider. If a servant

had come out and ordered him away, he would have

gone meekly . . . he fancied (pp. 261-262).
After a series of social ordeals at tea, brunch, the opera,
and at the Astoria Club, Milt satisfies himself that by
imitating the manner and costume of his companions, and
by bluffing the rest of his assumed role with bits of
equivocal repartee, he can equal the pretenders in their

own game, and win the esteem of Claire as well. The diffi-

culty is that Milt relishes his society role, and when his

244

oafish friend Bill McGolwey descends on him for a drunken,
Schoenstrom-style fling, the hero experiences harrowing
role conflict. These brief scenes with McGolwey are
significant because they labor to show how far Milt has
progressed since his Minnesota days, by the expedient of
depicting Bill as crudely boorish, but loyal. Momentarily,
Milt sees his campaign as hopeless.
What was the use of trying to go ahead? Wasn't
he, after all, merely a Bill McGolwey himself?
If he was, he wouldn't inflict himself on
Claire (p. 343).
Claire, however, commends Milt for his fidelity to an old
friend, although she observes, "You've grown away from him."
Bored at last by the pomps and pretensions of Jeff Saxton
and the Gilsons, Claire trundles them away for a visit to
improbable Aunt Harriet, plain-speaking clairvoyante of
the Boltwood-Gilson-Saxton families. With a few well-

remembered anecdotes "Aunt Hatty" demolishes the haughty

poses of the arrivistes, and the Gilsons slink away

 

shamed. This outrageously contrived episode seems intended
to show Milt that his longed-for role change from mechanic
to engineering student (and potential husband to Claire
Boltwood) need not stir in him any guilt feelings. The
formidable leap into genteel society proves to be merely

a low step, now that the Gilsons and their ancestry have
been revealed as commonplace, and their style of life ex-

posed as vulgar ostentation.

245

Seemingly elated by this unforeseen success, Milt
declaims,
"Why, these are just folks, the same as kings and
coal-beavers. There's no army we've got to fight.
There's just you and me--you and I--[Milt's grammar
improves, as the satisfaction of his social ambition
seems imminent] and if we stick together, then we have
all society, we are all society!" (p. 359).
After all, it is most agreeable to display democratic
sentiments, especially when one is assured a position near
the top. Claire cautions,

"Ye-es, but, Milt dear, I don't want to be an
outcast."

"You won't be. In the long run, if you don't
take these aristocrats seriously, they'll be all the
more impressed by you" (p. 359).

In other words, the most profitable course for the parvenu
is to feign indifference, and to outbluff and outsnub the
"establishment," then catch them admiring him for his
effrontery. This is apparently a role that Lewis, as well
as his hero, was mastering, laid down as it is like a blue-

print for the invasion of bourgeois society by the humble

journeyman, in these days before Main Street.

 

It is worth tracing briefly the steps by which
Milt develops the assurance that carries him toward social
success. First, his public school education has been
rigorous and varied. Secondly, he had read extensively.
Third, he is progressive in his political and social
orientation. Fourth, he is a particularly sharp and per-
sistent observer of human behavior, and fifth, Milt is an

accomplished imitator and bluffer.

246

From the time he first saw Claire Boltwood in
Schoenstrom, up to the time he spies on her at a picnic
"from the shelter of a manzanita bush" in the final chapter,
Milt has been observing her every move. In their first en-
counter Lewis revealed that Milt, upon seeing Claire, had
received an instantaneous lesson in the art of dressing
(p. 61). Realizing that their meetings on the highway
were too frequent to be coincidental, Claire gives Milt a
curt dismissal, although she had valued his help enough
earlier to present him with a gift of books. Thereafter,
Milt keeps a more circumspect distance behind the Bolt-
woods.

That he might not fail her in need, he bought a

ridiculously expensive pair of field glasses, and

watched her when she stopped by the road (p. 99).
When Claire has dinner at the hotel in Yellowstone Park,
Milt, having refused an invitation, watches her through a
window and mimics her companion "Percy" of the riding
breeches. Privately Milt wonders how quickly he could
"Pick up" a line of affected manners and talk, the way he
had learned "Plattdeutsch" back home. His peeping through
the window at the Gilsons' party in Seattle also had the
double purpose of watching Claire and conning the manners
of her dancing partners.

Milt has been studying for his role change at
every possible moment. Liberated on his journey from the
restrictive tastes of Schoenstrom entertainment, Milt

shows a nicer choice of movie fare. Avoiding the western

247

variety, he now chooses "films in which the leading men
wore evening clothes, and no one ever did anything with-

out being assisted by a 'man." This revelation is comic-
pathetic, in the hero's naive assumption that he could

learn savoir faire from cinema situations, which might

 

prepare him to cope with a social life he had not yet en-

countered, or had no way of judging. But Lewis follows

this with a transition to even more remarkable matters.
Aside from the pictures Milt's best tutors were travel-
ing men. Though he measured every cent, and for his
campfire dinners bought modest chuck steaks, he had at
least one meal a day at a hotel, to watch the traveling
men (p. 86).

In an intense and approving digressive passage, Lewis

commends these traveling salesmen as "the missionaries of

business," "martyrs,' and "pioneers in spats," who,

. . . as much as the local ministers and doctors and
teachers and newspapermen, were the agents in spread-
ing knowledge and justice (p. 86).

Hence it was to the traveling men, not to super-
cilious tourists in limousines, that Milt turned for
suggestions as to how to perform the miracle of chang-
ing from an ambitious boy into what Claire would
recognize as a charming man (p. 87).

He studies the eating of oysters and salad, and imitates
the drummers' tastes in shirts and socks. He buys a nail
brush to scour his hands, and a rhetoric book to help
polish his language; he had discovered "subtleties which
he had to express." Milt labors to become more discrimi-
nating and critical of life, noting "that there was an

interesting thing he remembered hearing his teachers call

'good taste'" (p. 91). Milt even resorts to inventing a

248

fictitious salesman named Smith, for whom he may pretend
to search in each little town, while actually trying to
discover where Claire's Gomez has been garaged for the
night.

For her part, Claire, who is above the class of
salesmen, considers them "merely commercial persons in
hard-boiled suits. She identified them with the writing-
up of order-slips on long littered writing-tables, and
with hotels that reduced the delicate arts of dining and
sleeping to gray greasiness" (p. 86). From her point of
View, the salesmen aboard her Seattle-bound train are
gaudily dressed sources of "satisfaction and horror," who
possess "harshly pompous voices--proudly unlettered voices
of the smoking compartment" (p. 244), whose small talk is
of Great Propositions and legendary business successes.

In addition to observing salesmen, Milt learns new
rules of dress and decorum from studying fashion brochures
and imitating his "betters" like Jeff Saxton. Indicating
once again that a change of costume forecasts a change in
role, Lewis shows Milt in the agonies of renting just the
right evening clothes for the crucial confrontation at the
Gilsons' opera box.

He called it "a dress suit," and before the com-
plications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with
anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom . . . the dress
suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and
manner, of sophisticated wealth. . . .

No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the
movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't

a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football
team, and had chambers and a valet (pp. 317-318).

249

At last outfitted in acceptable regalia rented from Silber-
farb the Society Tailor, Milt boards a trolley "and sat as
one rich and famous and very kind to the Common People,"
reveling in his masquerade, until he realizes that he is
without a top hat. Crushed by this seemingly stupid over-
sight, Milt imagines being stared at for a provincial--
until he notices that Saxton is wearing a soft hat, also.
Comparing himself to his rival, Milt feels reassured.
"Except that Jeff did put on white gloves, Milt couldn't
see that they looked so different." He instructs himself:
"Forget you're a dub. Try to be human." . . . Milt
had found that the one thing that would save him was
to smile as though he knew more than he was telling.
It did not, he remembered, make any difference
whether or not the smile was real (pp. 326-327).
It is interesting that in formal clothes, the uniform de-
signed to make men seem identically pruned of individual-
istic marks, Milt finds his pinnacle of "democratic"

equality, and dares to bluff and banter with the upper-

class dilettanti. He congratulates himself: "I'm not

 

afraid of the kid-glove precinct any more. My brain's as
good as theirs, give it a chance." But then, refusing to
allow himself the savor of victory unqualified, Milt adds
plaintively, "But oh, they're all against me" (pp. 329-
330). Now role conflict and confusion overtake him, as
he murmurs, "Where am I? Where am I?" The question is
that of a self-alienated man who is too proud to confess

that he is lonely and disoriented.

250

Nevertheless, Milt's performance in the opera box
has answered positively his earlier question to Claire,
"Can I become--the kind of man you like?" and she had re-
plied indirectly, " . . . Don't you forget for one moment
that all these people . . . that seem so aloof and amused,
are secretly just plain people with enamel on, and you're
to have the very best enamel, if it's worth while" (p.
298). One hears this as an echo of Istra Nash'a pronounce-
ments, as she took over William Wrenn as an amusing project.
Beyond this, however, is a restatement of Sinclair Lewis's
seemingly unquestioned assumption that mankind is uni-
versally the same in motives and life patterns; that
differences in occupation and style are fortuitously
gained, or won through cheeky virtuoso performances; and
that people as common as little brass bowls could be trans-

formed into successful bourgeoisie with the aid of some

 

artistic cloisonné work. But they are "secretly just
plain people." By believing this, and saying so in his
role as an author, Harry Lewis could feel that he was
evening things up a bit. A fervent avowal of radical
social democracy could assure a small-town boy that he
was as good as any other man--perhaps secretly, a little
better, because he was purer.

The purity of Claire Boltwood, however, is of the
kind guaranteed by her life of affluence and vacuity among
superficial friends in the East. After presenting the

heroine as a well-schooled snob with an aggressive, curious

251

mind, Lewis can do little else with Claire than portray
her as a slowly thawing ice maiden. She has scarcely any-
thing to do except speak and act like an arbiter of that
"good taste" which Milt feverishly hopes to acquire in a
few weeks.

Claire Boltwood is twenty-three, and she is as
SOphisticated and stylish as her upbringing in Brooklyn
Heights, in close proximity to New York City, will permit
her to be. She has planned the trip West to distract her
father from his compulsion for overwork. Since "nervous
prostration" has twice undermined his health, Claire must
take charge of travel arrangements, including operation of
their car and the choice of evening accommodations. These
matters she feels entirely capable of managing, but it is
evident that her expectations of success are unrealistic
and naive. From the point of view of an author who knows
his home country well, and has found a bright, inexperi-
enced woman tracking across his preserve, Lewis scolds,
instructs, and patronizes his heroine through the officious-
ness of Milt Daggett, his local representative. Thus, the
education of Claire is not a grinding and polishing pro-
cess, as it must be for Milt, but a roughening and etch-
ing one. Lewis permits Claire to play few overt roles,
and to exhibit imagination only occasionally. Often her
interior reflections develop into dissociative reactions--
that sense of standing rooted while watching oneself per-

form like another person.

Specifically, Claire has no occupational role.
This fact reinforces her identification with the "idle
rich," and explains her lack of experience in dealing with
the general populace. The democratization of Claire is
keyed to her empirical discoveries about the West and its
inhabitants, and her remarkable sensitivity to the exact
degree of acceptance she receives from the people in any
particular town. Any "change" Claire may undergo depends
on relinquishment of "her own Eastern attitude that she
was necessarily superior to a race she had been trained to
call 'common people'" (p. 67).

Claire's first attempt at problem-solving suggests
what a handicap her training has been. Mired in a slough
between Schoenstrom and Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, Claire
first gathers brush to thrust beneath the car wheels. When
this proves fruitless, she looks for a local man to drag
the Gomez out with a team, assuming blithely that "all
farmers have hearts of gold" (p. 16). The real farmer in
this case is the roughneck Adolph Zolzac, who had deliber-
ately developed the mud-hole near his farm, to earn easy
money from outrageous towing fees. To him Claire speaks
in almost British-English:

"My car--my automobile--has been stuck in the

mud. A bad driver, I'm afraid! I wonder if you
would be so good as to--" (pp. 17-18).
When Milt arrives to rescue her from further embarrassment,

her talk is larded with Anglicisms like "immensely grate-

ful," "Horrid wet!" "awfully independent," and "really much

253

indebted." Her phrases and cadences underscore her
separateness from the Minnesota natives, whose slang and
idioms come across broad and flat like the prairie. Though
she lacks an occupation, her language indicates Claire's
chief functional role in Thee hT£--that of exemplar and
defender of the Eastern society standard of taste and
conduct. This cultivated manner, Lewis seems to imply,

can be rendered much less obnoxious, if people who affect
it will only concede the existence of other persons, other
customs, in a spirit of social brotherhood. These con-
cessions Claire does make--she must, to find Milt tolerable
--as distinct from Jeff Saxton and Eugene Gilson, who will
never abandon the facade of superiority, even when it makes
them appear ridiculous. The division between the men and
Claire becomes quite clear in Chapter XXXIII during their
awkward visit to Milt and Bill McGolwey in the former's
shabby Seattle apartment. Against the snobs, Claire sides
with the egalitarians.

Claire's other functional roles of driver, tourist,
and nurse to Delores Kloh are far less important than her
role as teacher to Milt, who yearns to imitate her social
graces. In a burst of self-effacing confession, Milt de-
clares,

" . . . Clair dear, do you know why I came on this
trip? In Schoenstrom, I heard you say you were going
to Seattle. That moment, I decided I would, too, and

get acquainted with you, if murder would do it. But
oh, I'm clumsy."

254

To which she replies:

"You've seen me clumsy, in driving. You taught
me to get over it. Perhaps I can teach you some
things. And we'll study--together--evenings! I'm
a thoroughly ignorant parasite woman. Make me be-
come real! A real woman!" (p. 239).

There is a lack of sequential logic in Claire's aspiration,
but she is apparently suggesting an exchange of services
for their mutual benefit. But Claire had had an earlier
vision of her mission. When her father had inquired about
her attitude toward Milt, " . . . what will you do to this
innocent?" she had replied,

. . . I'm going to carve him, and paint him, and
possibly spoil him. The creating of a man--of one
who knows how to handle life--is so much more wonder-
ful than creating absurd pictures or statues or
stories. I'll nag him into completing college. He'll
learn dignity--or perhaps lose his simplicity and be
ruined; . . . I'm monkeying with destiny . . . "
(p. 153).
These passages bring to light a curious feature of the
novel: while Milt must rely on accidental circumstances
to advance his case with Claire, drawing encouragement only
from her toleration of his attempts to ingratiate himself,
Claire has matters very much her way. She it is who makes
the crucial decisions, who handles the machinery of the
story's development; Milt only acts on his initial im-
pulse, then follows it out ee absurdum in a fantasy of
wish fulfillment. Furthermore, as Claire's experience
broadens, and she becomes more tolerant, she endures few

agonies of role conflict, because essentially her attitude

does not change. True, she discovers the proletarians,

255

but in their presence she strikes the pose of the Lady
Bountiful, Friend of the Poor, in which guise it becomes
difficult to fault her. When she breaks with her snobbish
friends, it is because they have become shallow, spiteful,
and boring, and not because their attitude of social
superiority seems fundamentally wrong.

What is remarkable about Lewis's characterization
of Claire is the frequency with which she thinks dissoci-
atively. Sometimes she fancies that she is unreal; some-
times she speaks of herself in the third person, in a token
self-denial of identity. Examples of this phenomenon are
abundant. In Chapter I, battling prairie mud on the road-
way, Claire "was too appallingly busy to be frightened, or
to be Miss Claire Boltwood . . . " (p. 4). Exhausted that
evening, she and her father had repaired to the hotel at
Gopher Prairie, and outraged by the familiar questions and
stares of the townspeople, Claire's entire sensibility to
her surroundings seems distorted and soured by her fatigue.
The next morning, however, cold wash-water leaves Claire
feeling "that she was a woman, not a dependent girl" (p.
45). The sun shines. A meadowlark sings. Excitedly,
Claire decides to go on. Glad greetings from the hotel
clerk and waitress, lately offensive, now spur a complete
reversal of the heroine's former attitude, as if the fuming
woman of the day before had indeed been someone else.

Lewis shows this transformation in a crucial passage.

256

"Why! Claire gasped, "why, they aren't rude.
They care--about people they never saw before. That's
why they ask questions! I never thought--I never
thought! There's people in the world who want to
know us without having looked us up in the Social
Register! I'm so ashamed! . . . And the people--
they were being friendly, all the time."

Then she adds, in a topsy-turvy metaphor of her relation-
ship to her father,

"Oh, Henry B., young Henry Boltwood, you and
your godmother Claire have a lot to learn about the
world!" (pp. 46-47).

In this lighthearted mood, she decides that "Free Air,"
the sign appearing at the local garage, will be the motto
for their "pilgrimage."

As Claire's acquaintance with Milt grows, she
begins to speculate about such imaginary projects as es-
corting him to the Winter Garden in New York, or to Bach
recitals. Mr. Boltwood, however, discourages her rumi-
nations "till Claire returned from youthful romance to
being a sensible Boltwood . . . " (p. 125). But as the
wonders of land and sky impel Claire to appreciate them
with Milt, she finds such supercilious freaks as the
jodhpur-clad companion at dinner too painful a reminder of
her former narrow tastes. To Milt she relates,

"Then he insisted on introducing me to a woman from
my own Brooklyn, who condoled with me for having to
talk to Western persons while motoring. Oh, dear
God, that such people should live . . . that the

sniffy little Claire should once have been permitted
to live!" (pp. 136-137).

257

Later, as Lewis describes the numbing effect of relentless
driving at night, Claire experiences dissociation under
pressure.
She wasn't hungry any longer. She would never reach
the next town--and she didn't care. It wasn't she,
but a grim spirit which had entered her dead body,
that kept steering, feeding gas, watching the road
(p. 195).

Following her last romantic drive with Milt and
the pathetic Delores Kloh to North Yakima, Claire boards
a train with her father to complete their trip to Seattle.
As the momory of Milt's farewell kiss fades, Claire sees
herself as having been fetched away by madness.

"I'm crazy. In-sane! Pledging myself to this boy
before I know how he will turn out. . . . Will I hate
him when I see him with nice people? Can I introduce
him to the Gilsons? Oh, I was mad; so wrought up by
that idiotic chase with Delores, and so sure I was a
romantic heroine and--And I'm simply an indecisive
girl in a realistic muddle!" (p. 243)
She can not bear being "eyed by the smug tourists--people
as empty of her romance as they were incapable of her
sharp tragedy." Fleeing to the railroad-car vestibule,
"she tried to imagine that the train was carrying her
away from the pursuing enemy--from her own weak self"
(p. 244). Still harrassed by qualms after she reaches
Seattle, Claire escapes from the quizzical gaze of her
hostess: " . . . she fled inside--fled from her sputter-
ing inquiring self" (p. 252).

Even in the final chapter, Claire can not respond

to Milt's invitation, "Let's pretend we're driving across

258

the continent again" (indicative of his boyish wish to
stage a repetition of a previous successful performance),
without misgivings. She imagines that she can "be herself"
with Milt beside her. She is glad to have escaped the
poses Jeff Saxton would have required. Still,
"But I wonder if I am aphoristic and subtle?
I wonder if when she gets the rice-powder off, Claire
isn't a lot more like Milt than she thought?" (p. 365)
Claire asks herself. Milt, however, demands that they
marry immediately. When she reveals that she has a fair
sum of her own money, Milt feints a withdrawal of his pro-
posal, saying, "That makes it impossible. Young tramp
marrying lady of huge wealth--" But Claire has decided.
"No you don't! I've accepted you. Do you think
I'm going to lose the one real playmate I've ever had?
It was so lonely on the Boltwoods' brown stoop till
Milt came along and whistled impertinently and made

the solemn little girl in frills play marbles . . .
(p. 370).

Avoiding confrontation with their basic incompatibility,
Claire idealizes their past relationship with third person
address and juvenile metaphor.

Indeed, these childlike references to romantic
love follow the pattern established in Lewis's earlier
novels. As the plight of Delores Kloh was drawn Claire
and Milt together, the two sit exhausted on the Klohs'
back porch in North Yakima viewing a tin-can littered

scene. Claire observes,

259

"We're like two children that have been playing
too long."

"But don't want to go home!"

"Quite! Though I don't think much of your idea
of a playhouse--those tin cans. But it's better than
having to be a grown-up" (p. 235).

In the final scene of Free Air, when Milt contrives to

 

separate Claire from the Gilsons' picnic and drive off

with her into the hills, she exclaims excitedly, "Oh, we
ehe two forlorn babes in the woods!" (p. 363). Milt, re-
calling an earlier line by Walter Babson in The 2221 pleads
for no delay in marrying: "Dear, can't we be crazy once,
while we're youngsters?" (p. 367). Now Milt Daggett is
twenty-five years old (p. 50), and Claire Boltwood is two
years his junior (p. 12); the child metaphors seem in-
appropriate, even perhaps bizarre, occurring as they do

in deadly-earnest contexts--not in scenes of hilarious
irony or foolery, as might be expected. Even when one
remembers the relatively prim literary conventions of the
day, Lewis's lovers seem to lapse into these childish roles
too complacently, as if they signal a sanctification ritual
--proving indisputably that if love is exciting in a child-
like way, it must also be sweet and innocent and true.

But these proofs do not explain the urgent inevitability

of the lovers' stylized roles. To love, why must they be
represented as pre-adolescents? As Lewis uses them, these
child-love references seem gratuitous and naive, until it
becomes evident that the author is deploying them as a

screen to remove love from physical immediacy, and to make

260

it remote, idyllic and immortal. The bogey of sex, denied
an introduction, interposes no problems to children who
have not yet heard of it. Lewis's hero-lovers must be
either children or courtiers, so preoccupied with playing
their roles in metaphor, that the realities of sexual love,
beyond some devoted kissing, need never be acknowledged.

For Milt Daggett, then, his sudden passion for
Claire in Schoenstrom marks only his departure from the
boy-gang stage of develOpment. Aside from the news that
his personal notebook contains "the smudged pencil addresses
of five girls in St. Cloud" and that Minnie Rauskukle preens
at Milt's appearance in the general store, the hero seems
quite uninformed about women for his age. The world of his
acquaintance is peopled with brother-friends like Bill
McGolwey, Prof Jones, and Barney the banker of St. Klop-
stock. As leader of the progressive political wing to
Schoenstrom, moreover, Milt is leader of his own gang, a
role which Harry Lewis never enjoyed as a boy, but one
which devolved upon his envied brother Claude. Without
rivals at home, Milt seems to encounter formidable oppo-
sition in his pursuit of Claire. His prime adversary is
Geoffrey Saxton, sophisticated and slightly caddish, who
has been Claire's escort in Brooklyn society for many years.
But Jeff is too rich, efficient, unimaginative and paternal
to do more than "disturb" the heroine. Furthermore, at
thirty-nine he is obviously too old. As a foil for Milt,

Jeff is merely a perfunctory menace, true to Lewis's custom

261

of providing a puffed-up antagonist for the hero's dramatic
slaughter--a symbolic, crucial act against exaggerated
opposition which establishes his full self-confidence,
and gives him courage to demand his meed of affection from
the waiting girl. At the conclusion of EEEE.§$£J Milt is
without rival, and without friend, too, having staked every-
thing on his campaign to win Claire. Thus untroubled by
comparisons, the hero may be allowed preeminence.
Milt answers to no authority figures, either.
His own idealized pioneer father, about whom he bluffed
to Jeff as having belonged to "the old Puritan aristocracy"
(p. 335), was dead. Only Claire's father, Henry Boltwood,
reputed "one of the keenest intellects in New York whole-
sale circles . . . a scholar, and . . . chiefly instru-
mental in the establishment of the famous Brooklyn Symphony
Orchestra" (p. 334) demonstrates the manner and presence
to command (Chapter XXIII), but only after he has recovered
from illness. Throughout the first half of EEEE hip, he
is plaintive and feeble, a representation of the auto-
cratic father subdued and relegated to the passive role
of passenger. Lewis underscores the subtlety of this
relationship in several passages.
He was not a father, just now, but a passenger

trying not to irritate the driver. He smiled in a

waxy way . . . (p. 8).

Her father never drove, but she could, she insisted.

His easy agreeing was pathetic. He watched her with
spaniel eyes (p. 14).

262

Her father was easily tired, but he drowsed
through the early afternoons when a none-too-digested
small-town lunch was as lead within him (p. 68).

Mr. Boltwood is ineffectual in fending off the nasty hitch-
hiker Claire had picked up in Chapter IX, and he must sit
fearfully in the passenger's seat until Milt drives up to
send the ruffian scampering. Later, in Chapter XX, Mr.
Boltwood's anxiety over driving through treacherous

Blewett Pass, coupled with his poor digestion, causes him
to require medical attention. The situation must again be
tended by Milt, who exhibits renewed qualities of leader-
ship and authority as the "new Milt, the boss, abrupt,
almost bullying." A chance companion, Pinky Parrott, knows
of a Dr. Hooker Beach living nearby, and to this Harvard-
educated physician they bring the ailing Mr. Boltwood.

Dr. Beach is only an incidental character, but his appear-
ance in the story affords Lewis a pretext for observations
on taste and breeding. Out here in remote Washington, the
Beaches ate "thin toast" from "thin china," and possessed

a "talking machine" which "played the same Russian music
that was popular that same moment in New York." Claire
thinks of the Beaches as "genuine aristocrats, while Jeff
Saxton, for all his family and his assumptions about life,
was the eternal climber" (p. 212). She notes that Milt

is at ease with the Beaches, whom he takes to be "just
regular folks." Claire, however, confides that the Beaches'
"kin are judges and senators and college Presidents, all

over New England," adding, "This doctor must be the

263

grandson of the ambassador . . . (p. 213). Dr. Beach is
the only man in Thee hi5 besides "Professor" Jones of
Schoenstrom for whom Milt shows genuine respect as an
authority figure. Beach seems to be a living echo of
Milt's own dead pioneer father, the "Old Doc" with origins
in Maine, who read Dickens and Byron. These men reflect
Lewis's idealization of weatherbeaten New England indi-
vidualists, whose culture and tastes and self-assurance
were elegant, in a Spartan way, and whose roots trailed
back long and deep in the rocky traditions of American
democracy. Henry B. Boltwood, on the other hand, and Jeff

Saxton, who is described as "too paternal,‘ are merely
lucky merchants, "obviously versed in the strategems of

the great golden game" of finance, to use Pinky Parrott's
phrase. These men have no tastes except expensive ones,

no enthusiasms except for money and the power which accrues
to it. Further, it is remarkable that rich people in
Lewis's works generally spend their money idly and osten-
tatiously, buying dinners, automobiles or restless enter-
tainments, while the true aristocrats (to make a dis-
tinction) have honestly lost their wealth, or pretend to
have none, and find acceptance among ordinary men. Jeff
Saxton cares not for unaffected men like Milt Daggett or
Bill McGolwey, however. Jeff's reappearance in Seattle
after several weeks in the Alaskan wilds seems to show a

profound change: he appears rugged, manly, tanned, and

scarred. Incredibly, now, at nearly forty, Jeff becomes

264

a man! But his adventures have only been intended to im-
press Claire; his role as the "Alaskan caveman" is spurious.
For her part Claire sees Jeff still as the "Modest Christian
Gentleman." As her perspective has changed, Claire's dis-
tance from Jeff has widened. In seeing the land and its
many sorts of people, Claire has learned humility and com-
passion. Her transformation, in contrast to Jeff's, has
added breadth to her roles; she still loves her "clever
dinners" and elegant clothes, but she has learned to re-
spect the ambition and enterprise of Milt Daggett, Minne-
sota mechanic.

The dramatic situations and literary diction of
Thee 5T3 seldom struggle above melodrama. The exigencies
of serial publication for a popular magazine audience, and
the necessity for rapid writing may be blamed for many of
the book's faults. Lewis's revisions of the Saturday

Evening Post texts were neither far-reaching nor profound.

 

There are many fussy word substitutions and many small
additions. Of interest is the ending Lewis devised for

the original "Free Air" serial on June 21, 1919. Board-
ing the train at Yakima for Seattle, Claire encounters old
friends Frances Goring and Alden Stamm of Brooklyn Heights,
now newly married and honeymooning to Japan. After a
trivial conversation with them, however, Claire goes to a
platform alone, to think. She decides to send a telegram

to Milt, in care of Dr. Hooker Beach:

265

Hope this reaches you. Have decided not teach

you drink tea; you teach me drink whatever we

can get, Alaska mountains. Would hate peaceful

evening and hand of cards. Come quick so we

can scrap and make up. CLAIRE6
The democratization of Claire had succeeded so well at
this point (the end of Chapter XXIII in the Harcourt, Brace
and Howe edition), that a brief reintroduction to the
frivolous pastimes of Brooklyn Heights society made her
yearn for uncharted adventures with Milt, the plebeian.
Significantly, in her telegram Claire renounces her plan
to teach Milt the mysteries of acceptable social deport-
ment--a plan which Lewis had to revive when recounting
Milt's embarrassment before the Seattle snobs in the
sequel.

Three crucial passages in Thee §l£t which indi-
cate changes in the direction of the plot development, in-
volve changes of role for the main characters. Two of
these concern Claire's earlier acceptance of social de-
mocracy--the change in her attitude toward the well-meaning
queries by citizens of GOpher Prairie (pp. 46-48), and her
decision to work ruin on the Seattle pretenders by calling
on Aunt Hatty to expose their family skeletons (pp. 352-
357). The third passage describes Milt's confrontation

with the Gilsons and Jeff Saxton at the opera, where,

with both parties bluffing about their appreciation of

 

6Saturday Evening Post, CLXLI (June 21, 1919),

 

146.

266

TT Amore dei Tre he, Milt's responses have the advantage

 

of being supported with common sense (pp. 327-328). The
point is, that while Claire is learning a new role as an
equal of the "common people," Milt is discovering how to
act like an aristocrat--not like Jeff Saxton, who is after
all an impossible jackass, but like Dr. Hooker Beach, with
roots in the New England past. Both Claire and Milt en-
dure the anxieties of role conflict and guilt. She is
almost instantly sorry for her qualified acceptance of
Milt's "proposal" in the Ellensburg train station. Will
she give up her luxuries to marry a mad mechanic? Milt
feels threatened and persecuted for his lack of social
sophistication. Will he ever be worthy of this woman with
cultivated tastes? The semblance of a resolution to these
difficulties emerges at the end of Chapter XXXIV after

the electrifying visit to Aunt Hatty. Claire has learned
that she no longer cares for the shams of the shallow
Western Easterners, and Milt discovers that his family is
no more ignoble than those of Saxton or the Gilsons. Milt
marvels,

. . . Do you realize that a miracle has happened?
We're no longer Miss Boltwood and a fellow named Dag-
gett. We have been, even when we've liked each other,
up to today. Always there's been a kind of fence be-
tween us. We had to explain and defend ourselves and
scrap--But now--we've he, and the rest of the world
has disappeared, and--"

"And nothing else matters," said Claire (p. 360).

267

Again, as he has shown in Wrenn, Hawk, The Job,

 

 

and even in The Innocents, Lewis contrives the union of

 

the lone hero and the uncommitted heroine in a context of
role-and-job change, which point toward success in one's
chosen occupation, and improvement in one's social status.
In most cases, a prudent marriage is the key to upward
mobility in taste and income. The hero's task is to iso-
late the girl from her family and from other competitive
men; then he assumes a chivalric role, and in some signal,
self-effacing act, hopes to impress her enough to consider
him worthy of marriage. In the case of Milt Daggett, this
Galahad on wheels has endured many ordeals for his lady.
He is the talking frog, grown familiar to the princess,
transformed into a prince by her kiss. Thus, role-playing
and role change are indispensable for plot development in
Thee_hT£. While Milt squirms in and out of costumes and
roles, hoping to hit upon the most ingratiating combination,
one senses that his success is spurious, and that this
hero is little more than a desperate actor. As for Claire,
it appears that she has undergone no real change: her
attitude toward people on the road has always been patroni-
zing, and her relationship with Milt seems based on amused
condescension. Essentially, she is passive before Milt's
antics.

In conclusion, it must be obvious that Milt's
successes are crudely rigged. The opposition of his rival,

Jeff Saxton, is melodramatic and absurd. Social opposition

268

from the Seattle set is made ineffectual by their own
inanity and by Aunt Hatty's exposure of their pretensions.
Milt's fiercest battles are within himself, as he compro-
mises his basic loyalty to the working class, the pro-
letarians of democratic America with whom he identifies
himself, yearning for the woman and the tastes and the
perquisites of a class he regards as aristocratic. It
does not occur to him that Claire might be a fool mas-
quarading as an emancipated, modern woman. But his main
appeal for her, aside from his candid manner and address,
seems to lie in his novelty. It seems fairly certain
that after guiding Milt through engineering school, Claire
will have him made over the way she likes him. Thus,
Milt's triumph is neither convincing nor valid: the
opposition has been too perfunctory, the prize of too
doubtful value. The small-town boy's quest for identity,
aborted by a preoccupation with external evidences of
change, is sadly inconclusive. It remains to be seen
whether the same is true of Carol Kennicott's search for

her prime role in Main Street.

 

CHAPTER VIII

MAIN STREET: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO

 

PERCY BRESNAHAN?

Less than a year before the publication of MeTh
Street, Sinclair Lewis wrote to his publisher, Alfred Har-
court, "I'll NEVER do a novel more carefully planned and
thought out and more eagerly written than Main Street

. . . "l the work which Lewis felt "may, perhaps, be the

 

O O . 2
real beginning of my career as a writer," and he was most

anxious that his forthcoming novel must be accepted as a
realistic picture of American life," even "an unusually
factual picture." Among his many suggestions to Harcourt

over the handling of publicity and the soliciting of
favorable comments from critics was Lewis's idea for a

promotional letter, explaining that Main Street had taken

 

almost two years to write, and that

 

lHarrison Smith, ed., From Main Street he Stock-
holm: Letters eT_Sinclair Lewis, 1919-1930 (New York,

1952), p. 20. Letter headed "Washington, Monday, Decem-
ber 15 [1919]."

 

 

2Ibid., p. 21. ("Washington, December 24.")

269

270

this is much bigger than The Job [which Lewis had con-
sidered his best work until then]--just as true and
much better done. It is almost the first book which
really pictures American small-town life.3
How completely Lewis had been absorbed in this novel was
indicated in his admission to Harcourt,
No book and no number of short stories I've ever done
have ever meant a quarter of what this does to me.
I"m working on it 24 hours a day--whether I'm writing
or playing.4
In a later correspondence Lewis asserted that he had
actually begun "to plan M EE 1905," a time of origin which
Mark Schorer has traced in the novelist's recollections
and diaries, when the novel was "not yet even a formulated

literary idea, but "only an irritation."5 Surely his
determination to set down those emotions first projected

as "The Village Virus" was revived by the Lewises' visit

to Sauk Centre in mid-1916. Concentrated work on the manu-
script began in the fall of 1919, while the Lewises lived

in Washington, D. C.

Harcourt, Brace and Howe published Main Street

 

on October 23, 1920. Subtitled The Story eh Carol Kenni-

 

 

cott, the novel bears a dedication "To / James Branch
Cabell / and / Joseph Hergesheimer," followed by an un-

titled introduction on the leaf preceding page one of

3From Main Street he_Stockholm, p. 35. ("Kennebago
Lake [Maine], August 11 [1920].")

4

 

 

Ibid., p. 25. ("Washington, February 8 [1920].")

5Sinclair Lewis: hh American Life, pp. 101-102.

 

 

271

Chapter I. The novel runs through thirty-nine chapters in
451 pages. By March 5, 1921, according to the Lewis-

Harcourt correspondence, sales of Main Street had already

 

reached 130,000.

Mark Schorer has reviewed many of the factors
which contributed toward this unprecedented popularity,
"the most sensational event in twentieth-century American
publishing history." For one thing, the taste of the
reading public was for change; for another, Lewis and Har-

court managed the publication of Main Street imaginatively

 

--a well-wrought product cleverly promoted; further, there
was a cultural tradition in American literature of reaction
against the barbarisms of rural life, reinforced by a grow-
ing tendency toward national self-criticism, or "debunking"
of inherited assumptions and ideals. Finally, there was
the almost exposé style of the novel, which appealed to
readers in towns across the United States who scanned the
book for characters like themselves, as well as to urban
readers, many of whose roots lay in rural America or in
immigrant origins a generation back.

Main Street is a serious book with a sheaf of

 

social messages, but it is not fundamentally a satire.
What it is, from the perspective of fifty years, is an
account of a few years in the adult life of Carol Kenni-
cott, a woman locked within herself by barriers of role
and fantasy--her defenses against any confrontation with

the fact of her own mediocrity. Mounted before the

272

comparatively drab background of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota,
Carol's is a figure with color and movement. But any pre-
tensions the novel may have to dimensions of tragedy or
pathos depend on the fundamental proposition of this
individual-vs.-environment juxtaposition; more particularly,
these claims derive from Carol's assumption of her personal
martrydom in having to reside in a prairie town.

To what extent Carol's attitudes of discomfiture
and disparagement reflected the real feelings of Grace
Lewis on her visits to Sauk Centre, it is difficult to
assess. It is apparent that in showing and explaining his
birthplace to his wife, Lewis discovered new insights into
his own former mode of life, and appreciated them even if
he did not share Grace's outsider's judgment. Mrs. Lewis
declared that she had been the model for Carol Kennicott,6
and to a degree this seems reasonable; Carol's tastes and
values, as well as some of her charm and repartee, seem to
coincide with Mrs. Lewis's. Furthermore, the authentic
situation of a newcomer in unfamiliar, if not openly
critical and hostile, surroundings would not have been
wasted on Lewis, who had used this as a dramatic device
in all of his earlier books, and had certainly experienced

the anxieties of being a stranger in many inhospitable

 

6With Love From Gracie, pp. 152-153. Lewis's
inscription in his wifeTs copy of Main Street reads: "To
Mrs. Sinclair Lewis from Mr. Sinclair Lewis this lil
masterpiece by Mr. §E§.H£§° Sinclair Lewis. To Gracie,
who is all the good part of Carol--Hal."

 

273

places, himself. Thus, it seems best to say that, insofar
as Carol resembles Grace Lewis, she represents Lewis's
impression of his wife's essential predicament in Sauk

Centre. But Carol's modus operandi in Gopher Prairie

 

society, her mercurial affections and disaffections, her
impulses and antipathies, as well as her social theories
and naive faith in simple systems of political and eco-
nomic order, are those of Harry Lewis from Sauk Centre.
Mark Schorer has discussed this melding of identi-
ties in Carol, and quotes Charles Breasted's recollection
of Lewis's admission that
'Carol is "Red" Lewis: always groping for something
she isn't capable of attaining, always dissatisfied,
always restlessly straining to see what lies just over
the horizon, intolerant of her surroundings, yet lack-
ing any clearly defined vision of what she really wants
to do or be.'7
Schorer suggests that Carol's origins in the blended experi-
ences of Grace and Sinclair Lewis may be responsible for
the author's ambiguous point of view toward the character,

and indeed, this inconsistency of focus must present a

problem to any critic of Main Street. One can not escape

 

the fact that, artistically, the characterization of Carol
is flawed. The main reason for this is that Lewis had
great difficulty maintaining a judicious distance from
his protagonists; the more they tended to become vehicles

of expression for his own frustrations and indignations,

7Sinclair Lewis: eh American Life, p. 286 n.

 

274

the closer and more sympathetic was the author's partisan—
ship; in other episodes, however, where the emotional stakes
are lower and the action is of merely transitional interest,
Lewis takes a more distant and patronizing View of his
characters, under the pretext of exhibiting the versatility
or disparate facets of his puppets' personalities. Another
reason for the awkwardness of Carol seems to be that Lewis
usually seemed positive about what his heroine should do
and say and represent, but denied her a human psyche which
would have informed her actions with dignity and purpose.

As a consequence, Carol is bent on Opposing for Oppo-
sition's sake only, a circumstance which reduces Meih
Street to a novel of dilettantish impulses instead of a
moving account of self-realization.

For tens of thousands of readers, nevertheless,
these gestures of defiance were enough. The very
imprecision of Carol's characterization which caused debate
among thoughtful critics was the quality which permitted a
vast audience to identify with the doctor's wife so
importuned. Carol's roles as rebel and challenger of the
old virtues were accepted at full value, and throngs of
Americans saw in her the personification of their
alienation from the manners and pace of life in country

towns. The astonishing pOpularity of Main Street,

 

irrespective of its conflicting interpretations by readers,

had two far-reaching consequences for the author and

275

his craft. First, Lewis's commercial achievement forced
him into a conspicuous role as a celebrity and liberal
social critic, a role which he felt compelled to uphold
before any future public audience. Secondly, pOpular
approval and the critics' praise caused Lewis to overlook
the limitations of his characterization of Carol, and
froze his technique to a calculated formula (which Schorer
describes as "the illusion of completeness"), when there
might have been an Opportunity for better disciplined
insight and craftsmanship. In both cases, Sinclair Lewis
seems to have been wrecked by success, fated forever to
wear the measured epithet "caricaturist" in future
discussions of the American novel.

Thematically, Main Street seems greater in stature

 

than its predecessors The Trail e: the Hawk and The Job,

 

 

because of its "microcosm" dimension, a factor which Lewis
only experimented with briefly in his examination of the
New York office building where Una Golden toiled. But
behind Lewis's protestations of the universality of the
human village everywhere and the typicality of GOpher
Prairie and its Main Street lies the author's unquestioned
and journalistic tenet that mankind across the globe is
essentially the same. He had earlier written in the short
version of "The Innocents":

The greatest philosophical theory in the world is
that "peOple are peOple." The Applebys, who had

276

mellowed among streets and shOps, were very much like

the Tubbses of Cape Cod.8
It is a convenient convention for Lewis, who sometimes
fancied himself in the role of a preacher, to imply that
while he was treating of the individual, he was really
speaking of the many; and that what he generalized about
the mass was applicable also to the man. But while this
thematic framework seems to lend a noble and heroic sc0pe
to events in GOpher Prairie, it is essentially a hedge
against the weakness of either the protagonist or the
social import of the book. At bottom, it is a bluff. To
suggest that Carol Kennicott is typical Of scores of
frustrated women confined in towns throughout the nation
and world is to pass along her unfinished portrait to the
reader with the comment, "--You know what I mean." Lewis
did not make the distinction that, while men in society may
be the same in their roles and functions among each other,

they are unique in themselves. It is this lack of a sense

 

of selfhood which deprives Lewis's main characters of their
majesty, makes them dread loneliness, and causes them to
see themselves only in relation to other people, playing
roles or acting in fantasies. The same deficiency seemed
to plague the author.

If one's life is shorn of meaning by the

judgement that his acts are only typical of the race, what

 

8"The Innocents," Woman's Home Companion, XLIV
(February, 1917), p. 8.

277

then is the significance attached to success and fame? To
interpret this problem, Lewis introduces the character of
Percy Bresnahan, GOpher Prairie's only native son to
achieve a national reputation. In a curious way, Carol's
shifting perspective of Bresnahan comprises a significant
counter-theme in the novel. Her first inkling of the
great man's existence issues from a boast by her new
acquaintance, Dr. Will Kennicott, about his home town:
"Of course I may be prejudiced, but I've seen an awful
lot of towns-- . . . But I never saw a town that had
such up-and—coming people as GOpher Prairie.
Bresnahan—-you know--the famous auto manufacturer-~he
comes from Gopher Prairie. Born and brought up
there! . . . "9
Later, after her marriage and removal to this same GOpher
Prairie, she learns during a reception in her honor that
Bresnahan is
" . . . president of the Velvet Motor Company of Boston,
Mass.--make the Velvet Twelve--biggest automobile
factory in New England. . . . Why, he's a millionaire
several times over! Well, Perce comes back here for
the black—bass fishing almost every summer, and he says
if he could get away from business, he'd rather live
here than in Boston or New York or any of those
places. . . . " (p. 43)
In similar contexts, the illustrious son receives mention
at the Jolly Seventeen Club (p. 123), and as a contributor

to a fund for Carol's amateur dramatic association (p. 220).

Finally, in Chapter XXIII Bresnahan pays a personal visit

 

9Sinclair Lewis, Main Street: The Story eT
Carol Kennicott, lst ed. (New York, 1920), pp. 13-14.

 

278

to GOpher Prairie. On his way to Washington "as a dollar
a year man for the government, in the aviation motor
section, [to] tell them how much I don't know about
carburetors," the great man will interrupt his career for
the celebrated bass fishing at Red Squaw Lake. A sizeable
crowd of town notables meets its hero at the railroad

station.

Carol saw Bresnahan laughing down at them from the
train vestibule--big, immaculate, overjawed, with the
eye of an executive. In the voice of the professional
Good Fellow he bellowed, "Howdy, folks!" (p. 277)

Almost instantly Carol senses in his masterful and flatter—
ing attentions toward her the possibilities for a flir-
tation or a precipitous affair. She imagines herself in

the role of his conquest.

"Yes. He probably would make a woman fall in love
with him. But it wouldn't last a week. I'd get tired
of his confounded buoyancy. His hypocrisy. He's a
spiritual bully. He makes me rude to him in self-
defense. Oh yes, he is glad to be here. He does like
us. He's so good an actor that he convinces his own
self. . . . I'd hate him in Boston. . . . How I lie!
His arm coaxed my shoulder and his eyes dared me not
to admire him. I'd be afraid of him. I hate him!

. . . Oh, the inconceivable egotistic imagination of
women! All this stew of analysis about a man, a good,
decent, friendly, efficient man, because he was kind to
me, as Will's wife!" (pp. 278-279)

Carol tries to dismiss her confusion over his maneuvers by
lying to herself. She endeavors to be fair.

Carol realized that he was not one of the sons of
Gopher Prairie who, if they do not actually starve in
the East, are invariably spoken of as "highly
successful"; and she found behind his too incessant
flattery a genuine affection for his mates (p. 280).

279

At last, however, Bresnahan boldly singles Carol out for a
ride into the country in a borrowed automobile.

He chuckled. "Sister, you can't get away with it.
I'm onto you. You consider me a big bluff. Well,
maybe I am. But so are you, my dear-—and pretty enough
so that I'd try to make love to you, if I weren't
afraid you'd slap me" (p. 283).

Having brought matters into the Open with admirable
assurance, Bresnahan curiously retreats from his initiative,
shifting the conversation to a socio-economic disputation.
Carol pours out her dissatisfactions with Gopher Prairie.
The famous man observes, in one of the few pointed
assessments of Carol in the novel:

" . . . My humble (not too humble!) opinion is that
you like to be different. You like to think you're
peculiar. Why, if you knew how many tens of thousands
of women, especially in New York, say just what you
do, you'd lose all the fun of thinking you're a lone
genius and you'd be on the band-wagon whooping it up
for GOpher Prairie and a good decent family life.
There's always about a million young women just out of
college who want to teach their grandmothers how to suck
eggs" (pp. 284-285).

Despite Carol's protestations that his arguments against
reform must have been the same which satisfied the cave
man, she is subdued by his solid practicality, and
unsettled by his last, game attempt at a seduction: "You'd
be a darling child to play with."

Her brush with this attractive stranger has made
Carol more critical of Will Kennicott. She compares her
husband unfavorably to Bresnahan. But when Will alludes

once more to Perce's fine Opinion of the gang in Gopher

Prairie, Carol snaps, "Bresnahan! I'm sick of him!"

280

adding, "How do we know but that in Boston, among well-bred
peOple, he may be regarded as an absolute lout?" (p. 293)
Still, when Carol longs for a trip to the East, the
adventure is linked with recollections of the magnetic
industrialist.

Through all this restless July after she had tasted
Bresnahan's disturbing flavor of travel and gaiety,
she wanted to go, but she said nothing.

When the Kennicotts do make an impromptu rail trip to
neighboring Joralemon, Carol reflects that

It was the first unusual thing, except the glance of
Bresnahan, that had happened since the weaning of
Hugh (p. 301).

Much later, after Carol's flight from Gopher
Prairie and her establishment in Washington as a civil
servant, she encounters Bresnahan at a public place, whence
she had been taken by her escort, an Army officer.

She was on the Powhatan roof with the captain. At
a table, somewhat vociferously buying improbable "soft
drinks" for two fluffy girls, was a man with a large
familiar back.

"Oh! I think I know him," she murmured.

"Who" There? Oh, Bresnahan, Percy Bresnahan."

"Yes. You've met him? What sort of a man is he?"

"He's a good-hearted idiot. I rather like him, and
I believe that as a salesman of motors he's a wonder.
But he's a nuisance in the aeronautic section. Tries
so hard to be useful but he doesn't know anything—~he
doesn't know anything. Rather pathetic: rich man
poking around, and trying to be useful. Do you want to
speak to him?"

"No--no--I don't think so" (p. 432).

One should, presumably, understand and assent to this snub,
and Carol's dismissal of a man who had formerly seemed so

attractive; ostensibly, Carol's viewpoint has changed, now

281

that she is an urbanite. Her deference to the captain's
judgment of Bresnahan over her own previous opinion,
however, suggests that Carol is a shallow snob, convinced
that now she is witnessing the real Percy, whereas the man
who had swept through GOpher Prairie was merely staging a
performance for the provincials. A last allusion to
Bresnahan reinforces this ironic shift in attitude, when
Carol, once again in Gopher Prairie, realizes with some
bitterness that
Few people asked her about Washington. They who had
most admiringly begged Percy Bresnahan for his
opinions were least interested in her facts. She
laughed at herself when she saw that she had expected
to be at once a heretic and a returned hero; she was
very reasonable and merry about it . . . (p. 448).
Contrasted with the discredited Bresnahan, Carol finds grim
amusement in knowledge that the old pretender, an actor
"so good that he convinces his own self," should gain more
credence than she.

Several points about the Percy Bresnahan theme in

Main Street are worth attention. Though not a love theme,

 

its continuity as a motif indicates how well Lewis planned
his novel in many details. Lewis deploys Bresnahan not
only as another representative of the human spectrum in his
prairie microcosm, and as an ageht provocateur against
Carol's notions of fidelity in marriage, but also as the

spokesman for a value system.

282

He preached his gospel: love of outdoors, Playing
the Game, loyalty to friends. She had the neophyte's
shock of discovery that, outside of tracts, conserva—
tives do not tramble and find no answer when an
iconoclast turns on them, but retort with agility and
confusing statistics (p. 285).

Further, Bresnahan is the only person to utter the direct
judgment that Carol is a bluffer, a pretender. More than
representing the sterotyped Successful Business Man, he
emobidies an emotional value: the tolerance and fondness
one may feel for flawed humanity, striving mightily to
offer itself as a friend. If Lewis must find Bresnahan at
last expendable, as a poignant symbol of the relatively of
success and great reputation in a world where myriads

yearn for fame and a public identity, it is only in
deference to Carol's need for new perspectives in her empty
life. His sacrifice seems so gratuitous, so unwarranted,
that one is prompted to ask, "Whatever happened to Percy
Bresnahan?" It is probable that he grew to international
stature in the roles of George F. Babbitt and Sam Dodsworth
of the Revelation Motor Car Company.

As a testament to the fortuity of fame apart from
wealth, Percy Bresnahan's motif is actually a simple
counter—statement to the entire novel's broad theme: Carol
Kennicott's assumption that, in order to achieve any
discernible identity, one must emphasize his differences
from the rest of common humanity by masquerading with

particular attitudes, opinions and tastes--in brief, by

the performance of roles. That her assumption is only

283

halfway challenged and compromised at the conclusion of

Main Street is due to Lewis's preference for an emotionally

 

gratifying ending, over a morally or intellectually pleasing
one. Still, this is a novel about a frantic search for
identity, and of the individual's almost self-destructive
appetite for recognition in the eyes of his fellow beings.
Carol, in the last analysis, does not wish to bring about
reform; she wishes to exercise omnipotence, and in a
childish way she wants to control Gopher Prairie, but most
of all she feels compelled to attract attention to herself.
She is always sharply aware of her surroundings and of any
prospective audience, conscious of her costume. Her
actions, however elaborately justified, seem calculated to
startle, offend, or chide the many watchers that she

fancies will note every gesture or evidence of Taste. Only
insofar as every man hugs his absurd illusions and rekindles
old self—deceptions to warm his ego does the reader find
identification with Carol Kennicott. But it would be too
galling to represent her as Everyman's Wife.

The supporting themes which remain--the thera-
peutic blessings to be discovered in the benevolent land,
the parasitism of provincial towns, the mindless conserva-
tism of affluent men vs. the hungry radicalism of the
prairie worker, the excitement of travel, even the
microcosm motif, are ingredients present in Lewis's earlier

novels. The sustaining interest in Main Street evolves

 

284

from the question of how Carol will solve her adolescent
ego problem, since apparently either Carol must digest
GOpher Prairie, or the town must absorb her. With an
ending which can be seen as characteristic of his plots,
Lewis never definitely tells which.

The plot of this "Story of Carol Kennicott"
develops fairly chronologically. The first section of
preparation for conflict occupies Chapters I and II, where
details of Carol Milford's college experience, jobs in
Chicago and St. Paul, and her meeting with Dr. Will
Kennicott provide a sketchy history. The information that
chance "supplementary reading in sociology led her to a
book on village-improvement," which Carol picked up
"carelessly," then read with fascination, stretches
credibility, especially when one sees the immediate result.

She sighed, "That's what I'll do after college!

I'll get my hands on one of those prairie towns and
make it beautiful. Be an inspiration. . . . I'll make
'em put in a village green, and darling cottages, and
a quaint Main Street!" (p. 5)

Thus preoccupied, Carol does not hear the dreary voice of

her professor.
She was completing the roof of a half-timbered town
hall. She had found one man in the prairie village
who did not appreciate her picture of winding streets
and arcades, but she had assembled the town council
and dramatically defeated him (p. 6).

On some such slight foreshadowing the development Of this

novel depends. But it indicates Lewis's dependence on the

oft-used convention that casual reading matter must

285

influence crucial, irreversible decisions. It further
shows that Carol is never daunted by doubt over the clair-
voyance of her reformer's vision, but that stuffy
opposition to her arbitrary designs may be anticipated,
even though it may be "dramatically" overwhelmed in her
fantasy.

The second section of the plot line, by far the
longest, concerns the clash of wills between Carol and
various representatives of the Gopher Prairie ethic,
including her husband. Generally embracing Chapters III
through XXXV, this section relates with great detail the
shifts in mood and role which Carol exhibits during the
warmings and chillings of her attitude toward the town and
its inhabitants. These narratives consist of confrontation—
episodes, of interviews and reactions, of acts which
provoke indignation, reckless whims, and real or imagined
censure by the natives. Always within the framework of
Carol's viewpoint, restless and irritable criticism, these
events build pressure until the heroine senses a showdown,
and must initiate decisive action. Yet throughout these
developments, Carol seems to search out her torture, like a
would-be martyr climbing up crosses to try them for size.

The novel's third division describes Carol's
reaction to crisis--disengagement and flight. One is to
believe that the precipitating event, neighboring

Wakamin's mob ejection of an organizer for the National

286

Non-partisan League (to the hearty approval of Gopher
Prairie's leading citizens), is merely the latest in a long
series of intolerable acts which divide Carol from the town.
Her escape to Washington with her son Hugh provides the
authentication of physical distance to underscore Carol's
burgeoning sense of separation from the values and concerns
of GOpher Prairie, and of Will Kennicott. To make the
motive for departure more convincing, Lewis exaggerates the
heat and viciousness of Will's distaste for political
agitators:
"All these organizers, yes, and a whole lot of the
German and Squarehead farmers themselves, they're
seditious as the devil--disloyal, non-patriotic, pro-
German pacifists, that's what they are!" (p. 419)
The usually sympathetic Will seems even boorish, as Lewis
recounts how he "bayed":
" . . . we're going tO take these fellows, and if they
ain't patriotic, we're going to make them be patriotic.
And--Lord knows I never thought I'd have to say this
to my own wife--but if you go defending these fellows,
then the same thing applies to you! Next thing, I
suppose you'll be yapping about free speech. Free
speech! There's too much free speech and free gas and
free beer and free love and all the rest of your damned
mouthy freedom, and if I had my way I'd make you folks
live up to the established rules of decency even if I
had to take you--" (p. 420).
Thus, by the familiar tactic of distorting the stated
position of the established, institutional attitude, Lewis
makes it easy for the rebel to make a few righteous,

moderate remarks and withdraw with apparent justification.

Carol observes,

287

" . . . I don't belong to GOpher Prairie. That isn't
meant as a condemnation of Gopher Prairie, and it may
be a condemnation of me. All right! I don't care!

I don't belong here, and I'm going. I'm not asking
permission any more. I'm simply going" (p. 420).
Resigned to martyrdom, Carol hopes to punish the town with

a forgiving, generous, and self-effacing speech. Will
demands to know how long she will be away. Carol replies
darkly, "I don't know. Perhaps for a year. Perhaps for a
lifetime." It is difficult to relate such scenes and
dialOgue without degenerating into melodrama, but the
immediate pretext for Carol's break seems so contrived,
Will's anti-freedom speech so rabid, and the heroine's
attitude so bent on tragedy, that structurally this is one
of the weakest transition scenes in the novel. Neverthe-
less, Carol has achieved her recession from the town, and
Chapters XXXVI through XXXVIII describe her exile in

Washington.

The final chapter of Main Street Lewis devotes to

 

the detente between Carol and Gopher Prairie. Carol has the
air of one who has withdrawn from competition to take
special lessons for a time, before returning to renew the
old game. In the opinion of Sam Clark, Will's loyal

friend, "Mrs. Kennicott is smart, even if she is skittish

. . . and these smart educated women all get funny ideas,
but they get over 'em after they've had three or four

kids" (pp. 446-447). In some respects, Sam is correct.

The game of opposing wills continues, but the stakes are

288

not what they were. Carol now seems content to wait for
future Opportunities to score points against the smugness
of Gopher Prairie. Still essentially the same Carol of old,
she has learned that watchful patience, not active
opposition, is the best alternative to compromise.
Opposition--this compulsion for making and taking
exceptions--is the main characteristic of Carol's person-
ality. She is the woman with "Yes, but--" perpetually on
her lips. Like her precursors, Una Golden and Claire
Boltwood (and to an extent Istra Nash), Carol's hOpes for
a better "something else" are never fully requited. But
unlike them Carol can not console herself by making over a
serviceable young man like Walter Babson or Milt Daggett to
suit her taste; once separated from their home grounds,
these men could be tamed and civilized. There in GOpher
Prairie, however, Will Kennicott hulked in the ancestral
den, and would not permit himself to be bullied or changed.

Main Street is another example of Lewis's reversal formulas,

 

like The Innocents: instead of a young man painfully

 

learning to become citified, like Carl Ericson or Milt
Daggett, let there be a young woman undergoing initiation
into village life. Managerially, Lewis arranges GOpher
Prairie as carefully as a movie set, and peOples it with a
complete social spectrum of characters well worn in their

roles. Then dramatically he introduces Carol.

289

Carol must oppose GOpher Prairie, of course, or
there is no story; to expect her to blend into the town
society like Mrs. McGanum, daughter of old Dr. Westlake,
would be too sanguine. Certainly Carol must struggle to
maintain an identity, but her motives and methods in the

contest must be questioned. Behind Carol's thoughts and

acts are the assurance that, since she is college-educated

and has lived in cities, her tastes and style of living

should prevail over those of the provincials. These
assumptions, coupled with her sketchy notions about town
planning and social justice, have anointed her for the
roles of reformer and busybody, fated beforehand for tragic
martyrdom. In hewing so stubbornly to these roles for so
long, Carol seems deliberately to court censure in a self-
destructive way. Essentially hysterical in response to
her environment, Carol tries to mask her insecurity with
acts and bluffs, which shriek their insistence that Mrs.
Dr. Kennicott is an individual apart from the herd, and
therefore deserving special attention. When she is not
attracting notice by espousing unpopular causes or
defending underdogs like Miles Bjornstam and Erik Valborg,
Carol imagines the town as a rapt audience, constantly
watching, avid for reports of her tastes and daily
activities, to be discussed, gossiped over, marveled about.
It is as if she performs for a theater-in—the-round. She

has been trapped in isolation by her desire for uniqueness.

290

If the freshness of her viewpoint toward the prairie
town, and the presumption to urban superiority are Carol's

Jegmarfrom Grace Lewis, psychologically she is the
representation of Harry Lewis, the dialectic rebel.

Wherever two or three are gathered, the Lewis protagonist

must improvise a performance or project a fantasy, just as

the author could do. Carol characteristically reacts to

people, instead of growing to appreciate them with human

compassion, and her interpretation of their actions seems

dictated by perversity or caprice, not by tolerance.

Among the occupational roles Lewis assigns to his

heroine are those of student, librarian, wife, mother, and

government clerk. Her functional roles she wears like a
series of identification labels. She is an orphan (p. 3),

a prospective town planner (p. 7), possibly a teacher; for
the duration of one party she is a Bohemian (p. 10); then

she is a shy lover with Will Kennicott, who believes her

to be the woman "that would transform the town" of Gopher

Prairie (p. 14) . Once established in the town as "the

bonny bride" and the "prettiest Frau in G. P.," Carol vows

to be "the community sunbeam" (p. 43) . At Sam Clark's

welcoming party, Carol looks past her greeting host.

Beyond him in the hallway and living-room, sitting
iJi a vast prim circle as though they were attending a
funeral, she saw the guests. They were waitin so!
They were waiting for her! The determination to be all.
one pretty flowerlet of appreciation leaked away. She
begged of Sam, "I don't dare face them! They expect
so much. They'll swallow me in one mouthful. . . .

291

Ickm't dare! Faces to right of me, faces in front of

me,volley and wonder!"
She sounded hysterical to herself; she fancied that

UJSam Clark she sounded insane (pp. 40-41).
Tithxiby the attentions of the evening, Carol "gushed" at

Dr.(km1d and bluffed a lie about knowing how to play

"bezique."

While others drifted to her group, Carol snatched
Iqathe conversation. She laughed and was frivolous
She could not distinguish their

and rather brittle.
eyes. They were a blurry theater-audience before

which she self-consciously enacted the comedy of being
the Clever Little Bride of Doc Kennicott and Sam
Clark's party assumed a glittering lemon-yellow color
of brocade panels and champagne and tulle and crystal
chandeliers and sporting duchesses (pp. 45-46).

The smeared, surrealistic quality of Carol's vision during
this fifteen-minute performance, and the shrillness of her
dialogue, emanate from an inner hysteria and panic at the
imagined threat Of annihilation by her watchers. This

antic mode of behavior, exhibited here for the first time

in Gopher Prairie, will dominate Carol's relationship with

the townspeOple. At the end of the evening, after Carol

had "defied decency by sitting down with the men" to share

theiJ: talk, Will gently rebukes her for her forwardness.

She was silent, raw with the shameful thought that
time attentive circle night have been criticizing her,

laughing at her (p. 53) .

JBefore Carol can assume her roles as a reformer,
she is surprised by her first joy at being a housewife.

Forgetting her earlier despair at the dismal aspect of

Main Street, Carol becomes suffused with an attitude of

romantic merriment.

If ““ “

292

Like a child playing Grandma in a trailing skirt,

Carol paraded uptown for her marketing, crying
greetings to housewives along the way. Everybody bowed
Unher, strangers and all, and made her feel that they

vented her, that she belonged here. In city shops she

has merely A Customer. . . . Here she was Mrs. Dr.
Kennicott, and her preferences in grape-fruit and
manners were known and remembered and worth discussing

o o O (p. 62) O
iflmzseems to draw pleasure from hearing "village noises"

and from drives in the country. Like Claire Boltwood

suddenly reassessing GOpher Prairie in Free Air, Carol
appears now to sympathize with the rough, rural virtues.

But her new friendship with the schoolteacher Vida

Sherwin stirs up Carol's appetite to exercise power for

change in Gopher Prairie. Urged by Vida's flattering

promises that the town "needs live creature like you to

Carol formulates

awaken it. I shall slave-drive you.!"

vague plans for founding a literary Group and a dramatic

club. Established later as a member of the ThanatOpsis

Club, Carol sees the other ladies as campaigners for her

causes a

It was they who would carry out her aspiration.
(campaign against village sloth was actually begun! On

‘what.specific reform should she first loose her army?
(p. 128)

Her plans to rebuild the city hall and school quickly

Her

disintegrate. Her notion to refurbish the rest room for

farnlinives comes to naught. The dramatic association

becomes a reality, however, as an outgrowth from a suc-

cessful evening of charades. Though chosen president and

director, Carol still is unable to carry her desire to

293

fwveaaShaw play performed, and must yield to the pOpular

tasuafor "The Girl from Kankakee." Elaborately self-

effiufing in the stage role of a maid, Carol realizes that

thecxfly convincing actor in the group is the effete shoe-

cleflg,Raymie Wutherspoon. In her eyes, this latest effort

1x>instruct the tastes of Gopher Prairie has failed

miserably.
Finding herself appointed to a board for the town

library, Carol plots "to revolutionize the whole system."
At first she is pleased to be discussing books with men who
seem unimaginably well read, but eventually Carol sees her
colleagues as essentially bluffers with narrow interests,
who wish to run the library like a pinchpenny business.

She fails in her management of a much-advertised tennis

tournament. She can not even succeed in being a great

Influence on the weakly artistic Erik Valborg, the
assistant tailor, and she is unable to accept his love,

because she insists that he act out her fantasies rather

than develop his own sense of purpose. Nor can Carol argue

convincingly enough to rescue Fern Mullins from ruin.
Carol defends the young teacher, a victim of the town's

(codes of morality, against Mrs. Bogart's hypocritical

crude
Her

wrath and the phlegmatic judgment of the school board.

pleas are heard respectfully, then disregarded.

Carol Kennicott fails in her coveted role of
revolutionary because she does not understand the human

psychology which underlies the desire for change.

294

Her attempts to induce reforms correspond to preaching and

advertising by testimonials. Preoccupied with her

illusions and roles and fantasies, Carol can not see that

nenckpgedly resist change, and yield only when it is
inewfiable, and not because they have been stampeded by an

Opinionated woman. Vida Sherwin's accusation says it:
You

"What do you know about the toughts in hearts?
just play at reforming the world. You don't know what
it means to suffer" (p. 372).

Diverted by her many misdirected energies, Carol also fails

as a wife.
Will Kennicott, on the other hand, does his best as

a husband. Despite his reluctant philandering with Maud

Dyer and the hints concerning his frisky bachelorhood, Will

is tender and constant in his adoration of Carol, and

evidently with few thanks from her. Lewis Offers three

main aspects of Will Kennicott's character. As Carol's

husband he is patient to teach her the compensations of

.life jJi1Gopher Prairie, and temperate in his reproofs of

her'iimolishness until she challenges his integrity. As a

university-educated doctor and man of science, Will

exhibits an innate folk wisdom to balance his technical

medical competence. He explains to Carol during their

quarrel over Erik Valborg's flirtation:

. can't you see that I'm all the science there is
And I can stand the cold and the bumpy roads and
the lonely rides at night. All I need is to have you
here at home to welcome me. I don't expect you to be
passionate--not any more I don't--but I do expect you
to appreciate my work. I bring babies into the world,

here?

295

and save lives, and make cranky husbands quit being
mean to their wives. . . . " (p. 396).

The fluid aspect of Will is that of community goodfellow--

Innuer, fisherman and poker player, a shrewd speculator in

real estate, like his friends the town businessmen: Sam

(Hark, Harry Haydock and Dave Dyer. In this role Will is

the grown—up boys'—gang male, the teller of heavy jokes,

the drinker of beer, and the chauvinistic small-town

booster who hates radicals and makes mistakes in his

grammar. It is Lewis's achievement to have depicted these

three roles and maintained a sense of Will's integrity,

and a suggestion of hidden resources of wrath and selfless

pity within the man.

Will's character is a well-devised contrast to

Carol's, not only in the marital contests of husband and

wife. Where he seems deep and unsearchable, she is obvious

and brightly scattered. He enjoys the predictable routine

of small-town lives and events, and looks forward to the

turns of the seasons. Carol longs for the brilliant

diversions of the big city scene, and escape from the

chillness of Gopher Prairie. Her orientation toward life is

thai::it should be arranged to please her, because she is

Mrs. Dr. Kennicott, and deserves distinct consideration,

or else she will stage a tantrum and threaten to remove
herself. His humility is conspicuously different from
Carol's hauteur when he journeys to Washington to petition

for her return, much in the same manner that Cass Timberlane

296

would later entreat his errant Jinny to go back to Grand

Republic. Will knows intuitively that Carol must be wooed

from the beginning again.
Mark Schorer suggests that Will is a complement to

Carol, that if Carol was "a large part" of Lewis, then the
10 He

"other part was Will Kennicott, the downright."

submits that Lewis may have modelled Will after his father,

and the admired-and—envied Claude, which seems very

plausible. But the fact that Lewis does not maintain much

authorial distance from the good doctor during scenes of
emotional intensity argues that Will is Lewis's compli-

mentary projection of himself, had he been content with

Sauk Centre and followed other lights. In these respects,

Will appears as a fantasy fulfillment of the wistful Harry

Lewis, rehearsing himself in a role which he would some—

time perfect as the life of Martin Arrowsmith, the man of

pure science who yet longed for escape to the North Woods.
Which Kennicott, then, represents the truer part of Lewis?
Certainly Carol does--melodramatic, frenetic, defensively

hostile, and neurotically inducing herself into a martyr's

isolation, from which she could rail that the world was

brutish and insensitive. Paradoxically, Carol seems to

seek out her failures, as surely as she defends unpopular

causes without hope of winning. She realizes that by

 

loSinclair Lewis: Ah American Life, p. 286.

297

making an exhibition of herself, and by risking every kind
of danger, she will gain more attention and power over
Gopher Prairie by failing, than by succeeding as the
invincible belle of the town.

Suitably, then, if Carol is a performer, she must
have an audience--individual hot-and-cold reflectors
against whom she may react in calculated roles. Lewis
provides her with a gallery of selected human specimens.
Among the women are Vida Sherwin, the browbeating conscience
of reform, spinsterish despite marriage, as Carol's adviser
and "older sister“; Bea Sorensen, the maid, whose simple
pleasure in life Carol envies but can not duplicate;
Juanita Haydock, Carol's rival as lively queen of the
town's smart society; Maud Dyer, her pale and pneumatic
token competition for Will's affection; and the devious
Mrs. Westlake, who publicizes Carol's confidences. Apart
from Will, the men who serve as Carol's subluminaries are
Guy Pollock, the decayed lawyer; Miles Bjornstam, the
radical laborer in the Bone Stillman tradition; Percy
Bresnahan, briefly; Erik Valborg, pathetic tailor with a
fever for elegance; and to an extent Sam Clark, the
hardware dealer. Like bits of shattered mirror Lewis
arranges them about Carol, as if by assembling the combined
reactions to her dramatics that Carol reads in their faces,
one could reconstruct the true, complete heroine. This
conjuration is often successful, but at last Carol seems

hollow, her life empty of resolution and authority.

298

The authoritative voice in Main Shreet can not be
clearly identified. Even the omniscient author does not
speak with firmness, suggesting that once Lewis had
embroidered his fantasies with fact, he could no longer
distinguish between them. Carol often harks back to her
father as an authority figure, but he is an idealized
memory. It is not Miles Bjornstam, defeated by the deaths
of his wife and son, and by the town's animosity. It is
not Percy Bresnahan, discredited as a meddling idiot. As
an authority figure, even Will seems hypocritical in his
intolerance of dissent. But despite Carol's many con—
victions on democratic freedoms, Will is the one who asks
her, pointedly, "What's the reason you're so SUperior?

Why can't you take folks as they are?" refuting her com-
plaint about the meanness of small-town men: "You'll find
these characters in all these small towns, and a pile of
savvy in every single one of them, if you just dig for it,"
after citing a list of townsmen who had achieved
distinction. However, if Will does not qualify as the
unquestioned authority figure, but as a "brother-friend,"
then the only triumphant voice in the novel is the brooding
Consensus of Main Street, first sketched in Lewis's
introduction.

Among the significant passages in Main Street,

 

these prefatory paragraphs are remarkable for several

reasons. First, they comprise not so much an introduction

299

as a mood piece, almost as tendentious as the blurb on a
dust jacket. Second, this prelude demonstrates Lewis's
skill in capturing a sympathetic, if not partisan, dispo-
sition in the reader to share the author's views. Third,
the introduction is an important step in creating the
"universal" context for the scrutiny of life in one
American town; and last, Lewis frames a complimentary role
for himself, though submitted equivocally in a negative
question with ironic overtones, as an "alien cynic"
knowledgeable enough to speculate on the viability of
"other faiths."

The first sentence seems unassuming enough, with
everything democratic and fair: "This is America-—"
implying the EEEl America, as Lewis is about to identify it,
known from his childhood. In the second paragraph Lewis
lures the reader toward a sense of common agreement by
writing of "our" tale—~"tale" itself a word elaborately
modest and deprecatory. Proceeding, Lewis established the
assumption of the universality of his microcosm (i.e.,
men everywhere are basically the same). Then he posits the
condition of grass-roots feedback to the cities, rather
than urban advancement over the provinces: what the
country folk say is "the new law for London, Prague, and
the unprofitable isles of the sea." There is also an
ironic thrust at provincial resistance to change and

suspicion of new ideas, couched in quasi-scriptural

300

"timeless" phrasing--"whatsoever Ezra does not know and
sanction, that thing is heresay, worthless for knowing and
wicked to consider." Though this last idea appears to be

a continuation of the previous clause, it is actually a
logical non-sequitur, strung on an emotional sensitivity to
what the representative townsman says and thinks, and how
he reacts to innovation. That is to say, by using ironic
bombast, Lewis is editorially reacting against the
chauvinistic sentiments he has salted in the mind of Ezra
Stowbody beforehand.

The good-humored ambivalence of "Main Street is
the climax of civilization" gives way to the irony of the
improbable assertion that "Our railway station is the final
aspiration of architecture"-—architecture, along with
flawless grammar and enthusiasm for the theater, being one
of Lewis's touchstones of Taste. That statement yields to
the more disparaging, "In the sensitive art of the Rosebud
Movie Palace there is a Message, and humor strictly moral."
Of course it is highly unlikely that movies in a country
town would be sophisticated in a cosmopolitan sense, or
that the humor would be anything other than broad and
clean; both Lewis and the reader know this, and have already
tacitly agreed in a co-conspiracy to deprecate the small-
town value system, which views the ancestral turf as "God's
Country" and every tradition and prejudice as authorized by

the Almighty.

301

By the time Lewis arrives at the statement, "Such
is our comfortable tradition and sure faith," the tone of

Main Street has been set. In a skillfully mixed context of

 

hyperbole, ironic juxtaposition and mock solemnity, Lewis
has undermined the fundamental integrity of the words
"tradition" and "faith," and rendered them absurd. Thus

in five paragraphs Lewis has fixed the mood and atmosphere
of his novel, singled out the object of his thematic
concentration (Gopher Prairie's questionable distinction

as an exemplar of the world community), made an ally out of
his reader-audience, and set himself in a posture where he
can maintain the viewPoint of an oracular critic--sometimes
testy and hectoring, sometimes arch and indulgent, but
always as patronizing as a citified sociologist back on his
home soil. Lewis can not resist calling attention to
himself as he assumes one of his favorite roles, that of
the rebellious, worldly-wise outsider, prepared to endure
martyrdom when misunderstood: "Would he [i.e., an author
like, say, Lewis] not betray himself an alien cynic who
should otherwise portray Main Street, or distress the
citizens by speculating whether there may not be other
faiths?" Posed with disarming innocence, this question is
involuted and negative, suggesting the possibility that
Lewis himself was not sure whether he was truly an "alien

cynic” or not, and wrote Main Street in an attempt to find

 

out, hOping that an approving audience would make up his

302

mind for him. His introduction may signify even more:
because of its didactic tone and its initial position in
the book, this little essay rings like a proprietary

author's special directions on how Main Street is to be

 

read. In any case, one may detect in Lewis's irony an
evasiveness, an obfuscating compound-eye's View, a muddling
bluff with raillery by a novelist who seemed unable to
spell out his attitudes clearly for himself.

The ritualistic flavor of Will and Carol's early
love and courtship, linking these accounts to loves in
earlier novels, makes this narrative worthy of attention.
Like Wrenn and his Istra and Nelly, Hawk Ericson with Gertie
and Ruth, Una with Walter and Eddie, and Milt Daggett with
Claire, Will Kennicott is shown courting Carol with
rambling walks and conversations. Characteristically, the
lovers share poignant moments near flowing water, surrounded
by an impressive View (in this case, the Mississippi River
near the Twin Cities and at its confluence with the
Minnesota River at Fort Snelling). More remarkable, Will
woos Carol with photographs of Gopher Prairie, pictorial
facets of rural life from which Carol must compile her own
good impressions--the same kind of montage technique Lewis
uses as a pattern in exhibiting his characters. Again,
water:

. . . she exclaimed over the lakes: dark water
reflecting wooded bluffs, a flight of ducks. . . . One

winter picture of the edge of Plover Lake had the air
of an etching: lustrous slide of ice, snow in the

303

crevices of a boggy bank, the mound of a muskrat house,
reeds in thin black lines, arches of frosty grasses.
It was an impression of cool clear vigor.

"How'd it be to skate there for a couple of hours,
or go zinging along on a fast ice—boat, and skip back
home for coffee and some hot wienies?" he demanded
(p. 18).

Is it purely coincidence that in these projections of
aquatic pleasures, Lewis's language should seem crypto—
erotic? There follow some recollections of a camping
honeymoon in Colorado, with the almost obligatory his—hand-
around-my-little-hand caress of intimacy (p. 22), and
Carol's bold confession at Sam Clark's party of daring Will
"to strip to his B.V.D.'s and go swimming in an icy
mountain stream" (p. 45).

Carol's celebrated thirty-two-minute walk around

GOpher Prairie and its Main Street in.Chapter IV has had
two rehearsals in earlier Lewis novels. One was Una
Golden's last assessment of Panama, Pennsylvania, as she
walked back from the post office in The Jeh; the other was
faintly anticipated in Claire Boltwood's fresh view of
GOpher Prairie after a restful sleep, in contrast to her
indignation at the town's apparent rusticity the previous
night, related in Thee hie, Further, the account of Bea
Sorensen's awe at witnessing the wonders of Main Street,
which follows Carol's "private tour," is a reworking of the
same idea for ironic contrast. Glimpses of the business

districts of Schoenstrom and Joralemon reinforce Carol's

jaundiced apperception of GOpher Prairie's ugliness.

304

But the tour scene is a masterful device, despite its
patent reliance on impressionism. It identifies characters
important later in the story by name and status; it outlines
the breadth and depth of the town's socio-economic develop-
ment; it suggests the varieties of human activity, as well
as the citizens' tastes in architecture and merchandise;
and it advertises, through their names, the inhabitants'
German, Scandinavian, and Anglo-Saxon antecedents. Thus,
Lewis seems to be laying down the territorial limits and
ground rules for this first autOpsy of Americana, in this
town of three thousand souls.

Among these many it is curious that Carol
Kennicott is unable to find one enduring friend. Her
unrequited search for a kindred spirit is the outcome of
Carol's solipsistic approach to life, not necessarily the
result of a poor selection of possible friends in Gopher
Prairie. Vida Sherwin is too intense and managerial to be
suffered without intermission. The lawyer Guy Pollock
seems amusing at first, a man who reads seriously and
thoughtfully, a possible respondent to flirtations, but
their falling-out arises, improbably, from their differences
on democracy and social justice, from the time Guy argued,
"Democracy is all right theoretically, and I'll admit there
are industrial injustices, but I'd rather have them than

see the world reduced to a dead level of mediocrity."

305

At this second Carol realized that for all Guy's
love of dead elegances his timidity was as depressing
to her as the bulkiness of Sam Clark. She realized
that he was not a mystery, as she had excitedly
believed; not a romantic messenger from the World Out—
side on whom she could count for escape. He belonged
to GOpher Prairie, absolutely. She was snatched back
from a dream of far countries, and found herself on
Main Street (p. 202).

Later in her estimation Carol demotes Pollock to "merely a
pleasant voice which said things about Charles Lamb and
sunset" (p. 324), and he drOps from View. Guy Pollock
deserved better treatment. His perceptive account of
himself in Chapter XIII as a victim of the Village Virus is
a touching "biography of a living dead man." He alone in
the novel possesses insight into the complexity of human
personality, revealed when he checks himself after a
monologue on compulsive hypocrisy (itself a common form of
role playing) in Gopher Prairie: "Oh, my dear, I haven't
talked to anybody about myself and all our several selves
for years" (p. 158).

Carol's magnanimous attitude toward Miles
Bjornstam, the "Red Swede," irritates Will. Appreciation
for Miles's "proletarian philOSOphy" is one of the liberal
poses which Carol wears conspicuously, especially after the
radical handyman marries Bea Sorensen, Carol's familiar
housemaid. Miles represents the free, independent
scoffer at social institutions that Carol likes to think

she could be. He was the crusty, bumptious, first-name—

greeter with red hair that Lewis himself used to enjoy as

306

one of his own roles. Yet even this veiled representation
of Lewis is marked for persecution and martyrdom. No
promised witnesses appear at the Bjornstams' wedding; no
sympathetic mourners follow the bodies of Bea and little
Olaf, dead from typhoid, to the cemetery. Utterly
alienated, Miles departs on the train, seeking a farm in
Canada "--far off from folks as I can get" (p. 323). So
it seems to be with those whom GOpher Prairie has worn
down or defeated, for daring to make themselves conspicu-
ously different from the traditional norms of behavior:
not only Miles, but also Fern Mullins, discredited by the
rowdy Cy Bogart, and Erik Valborg the effeminate tailor,
Carol's last object of her hunt for intimate companionship.

The town refers to Valborg derisively as
"Elizabeth," because of his finicky manner and very modish
clothes. Seeing him for the first time in church, Carol
compares him to Keats and Shelley, with "curving Grecian
lips and serious eyes." Contriving to meet him at the
tailor shop, she soon entertains highminded thoughts of
being a significant Influence on Erik, inspiring him to be
a brilliant artist. Erik reveals an interest in dramatics,
and betrays his self-education by mispronouncing the
esthete's shibboleths badly.

Carol nodded in the manner of a lady being kind

to a tradesman, and one of her selves sneered, "Our
Erik is indeed a lost John Keats" (p. 337).

307

Nevertheless, she recognizes the youth's struggle to reveal
his Hidden Self: "She knew that he was . . . trying to
indicate that he was something more than a person to whom
one brought trousers for pressing." Carol tries on a few
attitudinizing roles Opposite him; she was "seventy years
old, and sexless"; she spoke "maternally"; she assumed "the
air of amused woman of the world" (p. 338). At last Carol
schools Erik "like a cranky teacher," and counsels him to
"go East and grow up with the revolution!" As their
friendship becomes more intense, Carol catches herself
spinning fantasies.
. . . she was picturing herself and a young artist--an
Apollo nameless and evasive—-building a house . . .
exuberantly buying a chair with his first check;
reading poetry together, and frequently being earnest
over valuable statistics about labor; tumbling out of
bed early for a Sunday walk, and chattering (where
Kennicott would have yawned) over bread and butter by
a lake . . . and she admitted that Erik did partly
make up the image of her altogether perfect artist
But later, sensing that her formerly stylish tastes have
become outmoded, Carol inspects herself in a mirror,
believing that she has "become a small—town woman," a
"wedded spinster." Impulsively, she smears on gaudy
lipstick and rouge, and poses as a Spanish dancer with her
blouse unbuttoned (as Una Golden had bared her breast near
the Hudson); then she murmurs to herself: "Heavens! When

I came here from the Cities, girls imitated me. Now I'm

trying to imitate a city girl" (p. 355).

308

Carol feels that she has been thrown at Erik by

Will's indifference. In a many-sided internal debate with
herself, Carol represents the young tailor as "my child
Erik, who needs me" (p. 367). Later, however, as the two
of them lean over her sleeping son's bed, Carol sees the
young man in another guise.

She did not think of Kennicott, the baby's father.

What she did think was that some one rather like Erik,

an older and surer Erik, ought to be Hugh's father.

The three of them would play-~incredible imaginative

games (p. 369).
Will now seems like "an elder brother." Carol begins to
feel guilty, watched. Then, "Carol was suddenly and for
the first time convinced that she loved Erik" (p. 390).

One evening while Will is away, the infatuated

lovers walk impulsively in the country. Erik confides his
experiences in Minneapolis as a tailor, escaping into
fantasies about living in an Italian chateau: "I was a
marquis and collected tapestries-—that was after I was
wounded in Padua" (p. 391). It is a wet night, and Erik
wishes "we could build a fire, and you could sit on my
overcoat beside it. I'm a grand fire-builder!" The
kindler of outdoor fires is a role sacred to all of Lewis's
earnest hero-lovers. The walk, as a Lewis institution,
represents in miniature what travel has usually signified
in larger dimensions: a chance for escape from the con-

finement of the home and mundane anxieties, and a stimulus

for fantasy-spinning and improvisational role playing.

309

But Kennicott drives up unexpectedly, and escorts the
crestfallen pair back to Gopher Prairie, and to reality.
Reality, as Will sees it, means conceding that
Erik Valborg will never be "anything but a pants-presser."
He points out to Carol that "it's only just by contrast
with folks like Doc McGanum or Lym Cass that this fellow
seems artistic." In a masterly monologue, projecting cer-
tain failure as an artist for Erik, Will appeals to Carol's
every vanity and insecurity, showing her relationship and
plans for the youth as self-deceptions, and revealing un-
suspected strengths of compassion and love in himself.
The next day Carol receives a note from Erik declaring that
he will leave for Minneapolis that evening. Four weeks
later the Kennicotts depart for a "vacation" in California.
The theme of travel and change of location as a
change of role recurs in this story of Carol Kennicott.
Whether she sojourns to Joralemon or the Twin Cities or
California, Carol feels compelled to pose and pretend.
Her most remarkable adventure is the sortie to Washington,
during her separation from Will. The pretext which pre-
cipitates Carol's departure is a roundhouse argument with
Kennicott over civil rights, patriotism, and the place of
women in society. Seeing her opportunity for escape, Carol
announces that she will leave, and take Hugh with her.

Will asks,

310

Forlornly, "Uh--Carrie, what the devil is it you
want, anyway?"

"Oh, conversation! No, it's much more than that.
I think it's a greatness of life--a refusal to be con-
tent with even the healthiest mud."

"Don't you know that nobody ever solved a problem
by running away from it?"

"Perhaps. . . . I'm going away to be quiet and
think. I'm--I'm going! I have a right to my own
life" (pp. 421-422).

Conversation and a few romantic notions about utter free-
dom are all the Lewis protagonist desires in his escape
from the suffocation of established society. This is be-
cause, in the image of their creator, they are essentially
talkers and projectors of fantasies, rather than doers
whose circumscribed imagination keeps them stable and
steady. On the train heading East, Carol addresses her
son:
"Darling, do you know what mother and you are going
to find beyond the blue horizon rim?"
"What?" flatly.
"We're going to find elephants with golden how-
dahs from which keep young maharanees with necklaces
of rubies, and a dawn sea colored like the breast of
a dove, and a white and green house filled with books
and silver tea-sets" (p. 424).

As a government clerk, Carol eventually shares an
apartment with two other women, enjoying the graciousness
and style of living in Washington. But "Carol recognized
in Washington as she had in California a transplanted and
guarded Main Street," and

a thousand Sam Clarks and a few widow Bogarts were to
be identified in the Sunday motor procession, in
theater parties, and at the dinners of State Societies,
to which the emigrés from Texas or Michigan surged that

they might confirm themselves in the faith that that
their several Gopher Prairies were notoriously "a whole

311

lot peppier and chummier than this stuck-up East"

(pp. 426-427).
The pest of mediocrity seems to annoy Carol even in the
capital. She hears Of other hopeless towns where her many
new acquaintances used to live before arriving in Washing-
ton. These new insights, however, invest Carol with per-
spective and "that amiable contempt called poise." The
sanctimonious opinions of the citizens of Main Street,
Gopher Prairie, did not seem so intimidating, by compari-
son.

Having sent Carol to Washington, though, Lewis
seems undecided about the significance of her work or resi-
dence there. She does not really enjoy office work, and
her job is mentioned only cursorily. Her new associates
are represented not as autonomous individuals with charm
or weaknesses, but as stimuli, or exploitable resources or
"experiences" for Carol. Lewis throws her among the
suffragettes, to suggest an air of militancy in her de-
fiance of GOpher Prairie's received values. But Carol's
Washington interlude is not a daring scamper into feminist
freedom; it is a reactionary protest, a selfish, petulant
sulk following her tantrum against Will, the man who holds
power over her and who represents the unacceptable father-
substitute, as well as the spirit of Gopher Prairie in-
carnate. Carol becomes very familiar with Washington, but
she and Hugh establish no roots there. Since a protracted

stay there would be pointless, it is obvious that Carol

312

must return to Gopher Prairie. What then does this
Washington episode mean?

There seems to be a handsome measure of self-
destructiveness in Carol's calculated removal of herself
from the Main Street scene. Her departure would make a
scandal, but she could leave that behind to punish Will
and the town for their insensitivity. On the other hand
Carol takes a great risk in traveling to an unfamiliar
city, to lose herself among thousands of clerks in govern-
ment offices. To defend herself against the terror of
being a newcomer among hostile strangers, Carol employs
the mechanism of imputing universal Gopher Prairie charac-
teristics to new bodies and faces, finding those other
Sam Clarks and Widow Bogarts among Washingtonians. Such
stereotyping seems to satisfy both Carol and Lewis, who
does not hint that people could be otherwise than basic
Minnesotans dipped in different experiences. But then,
if Washington is peopled with fugitives from the villages
like Carol herself, there has been very little purpose in
leaving Gopher Prairie at all, except as a symbolic act of
self-destruction which offered Carol the chance for parad-
ing as Someone Else for a time. In this respect Carol's
Washington adventure has about the same value as Hike
Griffin's, or Bill Wrenn's sojourn in England, when piqued
by chance conversation with the homesick American tourist
from Sleepy Eye, Minnesota: Carol is now ready to be

reconciled to her former life style. Lest convincing

313

reasons be lacking, a "generalissima of suffrage" supplies
Carol with a patented rationale for returning to the
"double-Puritan" Middlewest to ask impolite questions,
with the aim of speeding the advent of true civilization.
With these moralistic armaments, Carol's recon-
ciliation to Will and Main Street is not appreciably diffi-
cult. Kennicott moves in, fortified with humble under-
standing and photographs. Boyishly shy, he suggests a

plan.

" . . . Call it a second wooing. I won't ask anything.
I just want the chance to chase around with you. I
guess I never appreciated how lucky I was to have a
girl with imagination and lively feet to play with.
So--Could you maybe run away and see the South with
me? If you wanted to, you could just--you could

just pretend you were my sister and--" (pp. 438-439).

Again Lewis employs his "playmates" and "brother-sister"
conventions, those curious ploys of protested childish
innocence which are abnegations of adult sexuality. The
desired effect of these role-feints appears to be the
allaying of fears from male aggression--fears seemingly
shared by both parties. Thus beguiled, Carol consents to
a sentimental "honeymoon." She discovers that her hos-
tility toward Gopher Prairie has softened, her attitude
mellowed. She views herself in a new role.
She fancied that her life might make a story. She
knew there was nothing heroic or obviously dramatic
in it, no magic of rare hours, nor valiant challenge,
but it seemed to her that she was of some signifi-
cance because she was commonplaceness, the ordinary
life of the age, made articulate and protesting. It

had not occurred to her that there was also a story
of Will Kennicott, into which she entered only so

314

much as he entered into hers; that he had bewilder-
ments and concealments as intricate as her own, and
soft treacherous desires for sympathy (p. 439).
This is about as deep an insight into personality as one
may read in Lewis's early novels. The passage signals a
threshold crossing for Carol. If it is not yet evidence
of her compassion, it shows her first appreciation for
the silent struggles of a specific human being outside
herself, instead of classified masses of people or sym-
bolic figures like Miles Bjornstam or old Champ Perry.
After Carol's return to Gopher Prairie, the
barber-shop sages comment upon her appearance and peculi-
arities, as they always have about everything else. The
consensus, phrased by Dr. Westlake, is "now that Mrs.
Kennicott's been away, maybe she's got over some of her
fool ideas. Maybe she realizes that folks simply laugh
at her when she tries to tell us how to run everything"
(p. 446). Gopher Prairie has not changed. Whether or not
Carol's new insights into the humanity of Will and Aunt
Bessie and Mrs. Bogart have prompted a basic alteration in
her behavior is problematic. It appears that new per-
spectives have made Carol more subtle, more patient. Still
she sees herself in the role of a reformer and protester.
She looked across the silent fields to the west.
She was conscious of an unbroken sweep of land to the
Rockies, to Alaska; a dominion which will rise to un-
expected greatness when other empires have grown
senile. Before that time, she knew, a hundred gener-
ations of Carols will aspire and go down in tragedy

devoid of palls and solemn chanting, the humdrum in-
evitable tragedy of struggle against inertia (p. 450).

315

Her final rejoinder to Will has a peculiar, defiant ring:
" . . . I've never excused my failures by sneering
at my aspirations, by pretending to have gone beyond
them. I do not admit that Main Street is as beautiful
as it should be! I do not admit that Gopher Prairie
is greater or more generous than Europe! I do not
admit that dish-washing is enough to satisfy all
women! I may not have fought the good fight, but I
have kept the faith" (p. 451).
Such rhetoric could be uttered at bedtime only by a woman
accustomed to sleeping alone, who had the willful desire
to be a martyr. It is worth remarking further that Carol
senses she can not win a victory over the barbarities of
Main Street; the scope of her "aspirations" and the head-
long tactlessness of her reformer's zeal have assured her

failure, almost as in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Main Street presents certain implicit perplexities

 

to the reader, which go deeper than the problem of whether
Carol or Will, or perhaps their marriage or even Gopher
Prairie itself should be the proper object Of his sym-
pathy. One difficulty is that Carol's conflicts with
Gopher Prairie are not essentially those of manners, morals,
or education; they are differences of taste, not of phi-
lOSOphy. Carol assumes that in being different, she is
better, and that her standing as an "outsider" in Gopher
Prairie somehow endows her with the credentials of an ob-
jective critic, qualified to be an agitator for reforms
because her ideals seem broader, her aims higher. But
compared to Sam Clark or Will, or even Percy Bresnahan,

Carol is an overeducated snob whose appreciation of

316

democracy is primarily theoretical. Her motivation for
reforms seems mainly to be that she was first to conceive
the changes, and that the town should defer to her taste
and judgment. Her campaigns for innovations in Gopher
Prairie make as much sense as punitive adolescent power
plays, which they resemble. The spuriousness of Carol's
high standards for upright life on Main Street, and the
arbitrary cast of her sense of justice preempt Carol from
the dignity of martyrdom and render her merely opinionated,
self-indulgent, and slightly absurd.

Another related difficulty may be put as a
question: Why does Carol fear to be loved? She who seemed
brimful of solicitude for the likes of Miles Bjornstam and
Bea Sorensen and Erik Valborg could not accept the prof-
fered love of Will Kennicott, nor the affections of Guy
Pollack or Erik or Percy Bresnahan, with human sympathy
or self-possession. While in Washington, presumably
relishing freedom, Carol chose no man to share per passion-
ate abandonment of home and husband. To omit showing Carol
enjoying love (as distinguished from being thrilled at the
threat of love) is a serious defect to Lewis's characteri-
zation of his heroine. It is not plausible to the reader
that a woman represented as young, vibrant, and alive,
must invest so many of her energies in tricked-up causes
which have no palpable effect on her village; unless, of
course, Carol has simply been a role player from the out-

set of her career as a busybody.

317

If this last condition of role performer is her
true one, then it is useless to talk of character develop-
ment in Carol Kennicott. Lewis reveals his heroine aging
and mellowing, but not developing wisdom or insight or a
significant alteration in her regulation-issue value
system. Instead of growth, Lewis offers emphasis in
stasis. It is true that Lewis permits Carol the perception
that there might be a "story" in Will's life, as well as
her own, an attribution handed down without evidence of
preamble or process, like the Revolutionary Ideas sent to
Mr. Wrenn or Seth Appleby. But it is evident that after
her return to Gopher Prairie, Carol slips back into her
old role. There Lewis's story leaves off, although strictly
it does not end.

Examined fairly dispassionately, the characteri-
zation of Carol is not strong enough to have sustained by

itself the high popularity of Main Street. A thorough re-

 

reading of the novel indicates that the success of heTh
Street depends on prejudice generated in the reader as
co-conspirator with the author, a role which Lewis forces
his audience to play, from the Opening paragraphs of his
ironic introduction. The reader, naturally a hater of
filth and ignorance and injustice, aligns himself with the
critics of the prairie town where these conditions have
been reported to flourish; thereupon, trapped by his own

bias, he seems to find a sympathetic champion in Carol

318

Kennicott, a martyr who ignites her own fires at the stake
where no chains bind her except those of her husband's love.
There is a pattern to the illogicality Of heTh
Street if one views it primarily as an emotion-filled
litany of all Lewis's dearest causes, and especially as the
dramatization of a fantasy of retribution, which began as

reprisal and ended in rapprochement. The authorial tone,

 

which betrays an edge of irritable accusation up through
Chapter XXVII, becomes less strident as Carol's behavior
becomes more melodramatic. The recitation of significant
detail, for which Lewis is renowned, becomes less a proof
of realistic reportage and more an exercise of fault-
finding.

For Lewis, however, Main Street appears to have

 

been a necessary novel, the one in which he needed to
exorcise his childhood ghosts from Sauk Centre, and bid
them inhabit their Gadarene hosts in Gopher Prairie. In
the process, Lewis discovered the seminal characters who
were to populate, in fuller detail, his novels of the
future.

H212 Street is significant as a demonstration of
cultural shock, a social phenomenon with which thousands
of Lewis's readers could identify then, and can now, having
had acquaintance with the comparative dullness of village
life. But despite the accusations of Oppression and in-

sensitivity directed toward the citizens of towns, one can

319

not help seeing in Carol Kennicott a more fearful sort of
oppressor, a more insidious strain of insensitivity; be-
cause her efforts, however strongly felt, seem fitful and
perfunctory, as if her causes were put on and off like a
character actor's parts. That is why, although there
seems to be so much business going on in Gopher Prairie,
nothing really happens. It is because, as the dramati- f

zation of a fantasy, Main Street is a novel of gesture,

 

 

not of act. {

CHAPTER IX

THE VITAL FUNCTION OF ROLE PLAYING

IN LEWIS'S WORK -

 

The astounding reception accorded Main Street by

 

the public seems to have disconcerted Lewis, as he indi-
cates in a letter to Hergesheimer, to whom with Cabell he
had dedicated the novel. In a tone which equivocates be-
tween mystification and despair, Lewis seems to fumble for
an appropriate pose suited to a man embarrassed and
frightened by the implications of success.

Me, of course I am ruined. With the large sale
of Main Street I am convinced of my essential common-
placeness. (Quite honestly!) Even once in a while
some friend indignantly tells me that some bunch of
young jeunes--say those at the Cafe Rotonde on the
rive gauche--assert that if the damned book has sold
so well, I must be rotten. But I agree with them . . .

Then he continues, with deprecatory distance, speaking of
himself in the third person,
An earnest young man Yankee of physical type, comic
and therefore the more humorless, writes a long book

to slap the bourgeois--the bourgeois love it, eat it!
It would make an excellent short story.1

 

1James J. Napier, "Letters of Sinclair Lewis to
Joseph Hergesheimer, 1915-1922," American Literature,
XXXVIII (May, 1966), 245-246. The letter is dated
"February 14," probably in 1922.

 

320

321

Of course this tone does not tally with the optimism and
excitement evident in Lewis's concurrent correspondence
with Harcourt over the literary and commercial success of

Main Street, a fact which urges the conclusion that Lewis

 

adopted a special self-effacing and deferential role when
addressing a man he felt to be his superior in the writer's
craft. Yet the note of apprehension, the recognition of
the awkwardness of smashing success, seem genuine. With
Lewis, each audience that he faced elicited from him a
tailored word choice or dramatic presentation, prompted
exhibition of a selected facet of his complex personality,
measured for a calculated effect to ingratiate, entertain,
or to antagonize.2

These and other evidences of Lewis's lifelong
habit of role playing are an aspect of the self-limitation
and self-defeat he seemed compelled to work upon himself.
In his own life, as well as in the accounts of protagonists
in his early works, there was ambivalence toward success
and a compulsion for extraordinary risk-taking. When the

remarkable achievements of Main Street and later Babbitt,

 

made Lewis a celebrity, he seemed to become careless of
the damage he could do to himself--in his broken marriages,

his refusal to seek psychiatric help when disintegration

 

2Schorer's biography is replete with examples.
For one evaluation by Dr. Morris Fishbein, see Sinclair
Lewis: he American Life, p. 305.

 

 

322

began to interfere with his productivity, and particularly
in his alcoholism. Lewis became what Orrin Klapp has
identified as a "symbolic leader."

The attraction of fame is a built-in part of the
American dream. Yet one of the most characteristic
symptoms of having actually become a celebrity is a
certain disillusionment, which sets in--after the first
thrill of seeing one's name in headlines--upon dis-
covering the Obligations and inconveniences of being
known by everybody everywhere. . . .

Along with loss of privacy there some pressures
to live up to various public expectations that are
irksome, unreasonable, and even impossible. . . .
When an intellectual becomes famous, he is expected
to assume a public role--to make speeches, defend his
position, attend social gatherings--even if doing so
is inconsistent with his own personality or an inter-
ruption of his creative work.

In Lewis's case, becoming a public personality seemed to
facilitate his escape from a private self, Harry Lewis
from Sauk Centre, who had been the source of so much un-
happiness. One may suggest that the same role playing
abilities which brought Lewis fulfillment also destroyed
him. Again, Klapp:

. . . very often a performer "finds himself" by using
cues from audience responses and making himself into
what people want. He may do so by painful trial and
error, or he may hit it quickly. In any case, sensi-
tivity is crucial--sensitivity to the feedback that
helps him perfect his style. In thus interacting with
the public, he is performing a public service; he is
searching out latent functions that need to be ful-
filled.4

 

35 lic Leaders: Public Dramas and Public Men
(Chicago, 1964;, pp. 14, 16.

41bid., p. 32.

HWY ‘

-F‘l

323

It was Lewis's fate to discover that his two antithetical
desires, both the achievement of fame and self-defeat,
could be accomplished by the same technique of escapist
role playing and projecting. That is why, in the lives
of his early protagonists, one may detect the insistent
theme of fascination for the martyr's role--martyrdom be-
ing the most conspicuous means to achieve both impeccable
fame and extinction. That is how Lewis could seem simul-
taneously a savage critic of society's mediocrity and a
defender of the average man: he could command attention
and fame in a public role assilaing the commonplace figure
he privately feared himself to be. Dr. Karen Horney's
reflections on projection and a Lewis characterization are
illuminating.
The psychic value of projecting one's own abusing
tendencies on others is obvious. It is far more
pleasant to feel a righteous indignation at others
than face a problem of one's own. Moreover, hysterical
persons often use accusations as a means of intimi-
dation, or bullying the other into feeling guilty and
thus letting himself be abused. Sinclair Lewis has
given a brilliant description of this kind of strategy
in the character of Mrs. Dodsworth.5
With the filmiest of disguises, Grace Lewis
("Susan") has represented how her husband ("Timothy Hale")

exhibited this behavior in their marriage--she who has

been identified as a possible model for Fran Dodsworth.

 

5The Neurotic Personality e; Our Time (New York,
1937), p. 186.

324

. . . Tim's mind had developed too fast, like his body,
and the proportions were all wrong. . . . Susan had
once played little games to shut out the frightening
thought of poverty, and later to shut in and keep warm
their love for each other. Now it was Tim who was so
constantly play-acting that she could not find the man
she had married. He became successively the book
characters he created: the hard-boiled business man,
the neurotic woman, the aloof scientist. He was also
what his various reading publics wanted him to be:
hearty, morose; boyish, pedantic; a reg'lar feller, an
Anglophile with an eyeglass; generous, penurious;
realist, fantastic; curly-headed as young David, bald
as an eagle. If most women complained of the dull
sameness of a husband's personality, Susan longed for
a less polyandrous existence. Especially since Tim
showed every sign of clinging indefinitely to his
latest roles: Famous Author, Misunderstood Husband,
Cheated Lover. . . . If he craved fresh praise, fresh
understanding, fresh love, a fresh face, there was no
biological reason for their remaining together.6

This insistence by "Tim" that "Susan," and even their son
"Roger" (Wells Lewis) were mortgages upon his freedom and
creativity corresponds to that extension of projecting
which, in another place, Dr. Horney calls "externalization,"
that

tendency to experience internal processes as if they
occurred outside oneself and, as a rule, to hold these
external factors responsible for one's difficulties.
When a person feels that his life for good or ill
is determined by others, it is only logical that he
should be preoccupied with changing them, reforming
them, punishing them, protecting himself from their
interference, or impressing them. In this way exter-
nalization makes for dependence on others--a depen-
dence, however, quite different from that created by
a neurotic need for affection. It also makes for over-
dependence upon external circumstances.7

A

6Grace Hegger Lewis, Half e Loaf (New York, 1931),
p. 344.

7Our Inner Conflicts: é Cohetructive Theory eh
Neurosis (New York, 1945), pp. 115-117.

 

325

Such a kind of obsessive fear of external determinism may
account, in both Lewis and his characters, for the per-
vasiveness of the strong compensatory themes of personal
freedom, of breaking out, and of escape. It may also ex-
plain why, when the vicarious Lewises are free, they do

not know how to utilize their liberty meaningfully, but
remain in a sort of psychic bondage. Finally, it suggests
a reason for Lewis's own "overdependence upon external cir-

cumstances" in character description and delineation by

 

 

role playing and role attribution; in his contrivance of
significant symbolic details, sets and props; and in his
repeated use of the fortuitous happening (as a casually
noticed newspaper or magazine article, or chance remark)
as a determinant for characters' behavior.

In response to these motivating forces for
projection-externalization and self-dramatization, Lewis's
creative method in fiction writing seems clearly identifi-
able as a direct consequence. Certainly, characterization
through role playing and role-and-name attribution is an
authorial convenience; for Lewis it appears to have been
indispensable. This technique, though admittedly super-
ficial, offers characters who have glitter, color, move-
ment, and a wealth of plausible, circumstantial detail.
They can be moved about to several differing locations at
varying speeds; they may gain new ideas, make sensational

impressions, come back to their points of origin, and bow

326

to the applause of the reader. Particularly this style was
convenient for Lewis because he could maintain tight con-
trol.

Lewis's critics have wrestled with the problem Of
identifying the reasons why the novelist's characters,
both great and small, seem somehow spurious or mere-
tricious, like figurines in ormolu. Michael Millgate
suggests that Lewis was unable to surmount the middle-class

modes which had captured him.

 

Lewis both mirrored and spoke to the American
lower-middle-class because he was so intimately and
thoroughly of that class himself and knew from experi-
ence the ambitions, frustrations and insecurities of
his obscure heroes. That is his great strength. His
great limitation is that he never transcended the
limits of that class. Although he sometimes achieves
considerable vigour of expression, it is always within
a very narrow range. Although his observations of
American society are often incisive, they are always
made in terms of a very restricted point of view. NO
one has known better the obscure heroes of American
commercial society and no one has described so closely
the minutiae of their lives, but lewis was not suffi-
ciently an artist to transpose his knowledge into
completely satisfying fictional terms.3

Millgate seems to feel that Lewis as a craftsman was less
the artist and more a reporter or folk-journalist. It is
difficult to deny such an assessment, except to appeal for
more depth and detail to the criticism. What Millgate

writes is true enough, but is it sufficiently comprehensive?

 

8"Sinclair Lewis and the Obscure Hero," Studi
Americani, VIII (1962), 126-127.

 

327

Martin Light sees Lewis's characterizations primarily as
effusions of the author's peculair mimetic gifts.

The pattern of Lewis's minor characterization,
which is intended to expose large numbers of types
and individuals that surround a central figure and
social situation, has also another function. Lewis
had a great repertoire of variations on the central
types, each ready to perform at a moment's notice
when the action got dull or when a satiric mood was
needed. He could, at such times, trot out a booster,
a businessman, a preacher, an evangelist, a feminist,
a clubwoman, or a college professor, and set the
character to talking. And at times, particularly in
his later works, Lewis deliberately fitted such epi-
sodes and speeches into his novels for virtuoso
reasons. It pleased his sense of humor, of farce,
to set his powers of mimicry free once again.

Along a similar line of criticism, Thomas K. Whipple sees
Lewis's fictional creatures as victims of their own mis-
apprehension of their environment, doomed to paroxysms of

feverish acting. These characters, Whipple notes,

. . . especially those in the early books, are always
wondering what people will think, always suspecting

that they are the objects of observation and comment
--and in Lewis's novels they are generally right. They
are constantly posing and pretending, for the benefit '
even of waiters and elevator-boys. They do not dare to
be natural; they are self-distrustful, uncertain, and
insecure. They are self-analytical and self-contemptu-
ous for their lack of sincerity; yet they continue to
pose to themselves, adopting one attitude after another.
That is to say, they conceive the object of life to be
to pass themselves off as something they are not. This
idea the author himself seems to share; he seems to
think that the solution of all problems and difficulties
is to find the one right pose, the one correct atti-
tude. . . . one would be inclined to call Lewis a man

of multiple personality--save that all these person-
alities have the look of being assumed for effect.10

 

9"A Study of Characterization in Sinclair Lewis's
Fiction," unpublished Ph:D. dissertation, University of
Illinois (Urbana, 1960). P. 125.

loSpokesmen, pp. 220-221.

328

To this theme of pose and pretense, Robert Cantwell adds
his voice, suggesting that Lewis's characters assume roles
to escape from painful reality into the relative narcosis
of fantasy.

They are self-dramatists whose imaginations flower
from their evasions of conflict--they are always
posing before themselves and others, not in order to
fulfill a consistent Byronic role, and to take the
responsibility for it, but in order to conceal their
true reactions and to hide the concerns that oppress
them. . . . They dramatize themselves in order to en-
dure the demands of a society that they have no hope
of bettering and whose reality they cannot face, and
they imagine themselves in all kinds of roles--except
the ones they actually occupy--because they cannot get
through their days without the help of such fantasy.ll

Furthermore, Lewis's deftness at dramatization and
his instinct for capitalizing on the telling, symbolic de-
tail in narrative description may indicate weakness in the
author's craft, hints Morley Callaghan: Lewis seemed too
eager to ingratiate himself with his audience, too anxious
to manage his reader's loyalties.

. . . it seemed to me that [Lewis's] grand success was
based on one of his weaknesses as an artist: he gave
the reader a chance at too quick a recognition. This
kind of writing always puts the writer and the reader
in a comfortable relationship, neither one being re-
quired to jar himself, or get out of his groove of
recognition. A writer who has this gift is always
meeting his reader and reviewers on their terms, and
it should be always the other way around.12

 

11"Sinclair Lewis," Sinclair Lewis: 5 Collection
of Critical Essays, ed. Mark Schorer (Englewood Cliffs,

1’96‘25, pp. '117-1 8.
12

 

 

That Summer Th_Paris (New York, 1964), p. 63.

 

329

These, and several other critics, have remarked
upon the versatility of Lewis's mimicry and role playing
in real life, and have noted projections of the author into
his characters, and vice versa. Some, like Whipple, have
noted how the characters themselves improvise and masquer-
ade in roles, but they have come short of recognizing two
fundamental points: (1) that role playing and role pro-
jecting, in their several manifestations, constitute
Lewis's prime mode of characterization in his early novels,
accounting both for the impression of superficial, photo-
mosaic-montage and for the "hollow center" phenomena among
his fictional personalities; and (2) that in Lewis's work,
as in his life, role playing, projecting, fantasy-weaving
and incessant traveling are evidences of a self-abnegating
and self-destructive personality. The compulsive qualities
obvious in the author's marriage to two punishing women,13
in his irremediable quarreling with old friends, and in
his alcoholism reinforce this latter View. In his novels
there is a basic theme of unsuccess. The warmth and ful-

fillment of mature love is denied; sexual triumph is

shunted aside when it is within grasp; and the protagonists'

 

13Charles Angoff remembers a remark by H. L.
Mencken: "Poor Red," repeated Mencken. "Men who marry
more than one woman always make the same mistake. The only
difference is the woman's name." See "A Kansan in West-
chester," University Review, XXXI (Summer, 1965), 283.
Of course it is not inconceivable that Lewis manuevered
his wives into their roles as his persecutors, as if into
a ritualistic Punch-and-Judy game.

330

deep satisfaction in vocation or other accomplishments can
not survive without skittering away into fantasy.

What has been particularly lacking in criticism
of Lewis, however, is a plausible correlation between the
antics of the novelist's characters and the behavior of
Lewis himself; there has been extensive analysis of the
acts and speech of both, but not enough synthesis of the
processes which caused each to behave in these particular
ways. It now seems reasonable to say that Lewis evolved
his characters to be representational value systems, rather
than prepossessing manlike beings that could sweat and
chew and sneeze. That is why their codes of conduct seem
so programmatic and restrictive, and their modes of be-
havior so reactionary and repetitive. Even the characters'
exhibitions of language peculiarities, as forms of role
investment, now seem as stylized and contrived as routines
by Will Rogers or W. C. Fields. Vocabulary, allusions, and
grammatical errors in their speech clothe Lewis's people
with eccentricities, and at the same time conceal the
bareness of their respective imaginations.

A review of Sinclair Lewis's major works between
1912 and 1920 points up the paradox that, as the French
have it: "112». 92 __9_<=han 6: else 2128.2 19. rises. 2122-"

From Hike and the Aeroplane through Main Street, one can

 

see that Lewis gradually refined his creative technique--
not by broadening and mellowing his insights into the

comedy and pathos of the human condition in attempts to

331

relate them to his audience with more authority--but by
collecting more varieties of experience and scene, and
editing them more surely. Hike Griffin has in common with
Carol Kennicott the same neurotic need to excite amazement
and demand attention from a host of gawking spectators by
performing reckless grandstand plays. Fame, wealth,
success--all seem synonymous with capturing an audience,
inspiring admiration, or reading one's name in the news-
papers; these are the motivating forces in the lives of
Hike, William Wrenn, Hawk Ericson, Una Golden, Seth Appleby,
Milt Daggett, and Carol Kennicott. One senses in these
seven books a sequential dramatization of Lewis's personal
struggle to find his audience. There are qualities or
urgency and insistence in them that one does not detect in
the later Babbitt; as if Lewis, after having tried every
possible combination of role and situation, with many a
wasted word and gesture, had at last found his métier, and
at the same time the throng of devoted readers he had al-
ways sought. In Babbitt the note of querulous supplication

is gone. Awash in the approval that rained on Main Street,

 

Lewis (like Hike Griffin soaring aloft for a still better
trick, this time with "no hands") wrote his next great
novel as a veteran performer assured of his audience; once
he had them fascinated, he could regale them with many
more exhibitions of his artistic versatility.

As if in the fractional distillation of his cruder

personal experiences, with the more volatile spirits the

332

first to boil away, Lewis's first six books represent
byproducts in the refinement of his creative process. As

a fantasy of sensational heroic achievement, and of imperial
domination over peers and betters by a boy genius, £152.222

the Aeroplane seems simultaneously a farewell to the im-

 

petuous freedoms of boyhood and a compensation for the
awkwardness and solitude of Lewis's youth. The story of
93; he. Weehh is a speculative representation of a "little
man," the undistinguished office clerk that Lewis may have
felt fated to be, reconciled to uxorious domesticity and
modest success after an impulsive and frightening sally
abroad.

Carl Ericson in The Trail eh the Hawk receives

 

much more thorough development than previous protagonists.
Lewis follows the Hawk's life from young boyhood through
periods of psychological and economic crisis to national
fame, sputtering marriage and prospects of qualified suc-
cess in big business. Although Lewis does not depict
Carl's life unfolding and mellowing in consequence of
dynamic interaction with his surroundings and internalized
experiences, he does show his hero transformed by time and
chance from a little child to a big child who still aspires
to be a sort of Galahad. In The_geh Lewis uses an almost
identical line of development, except that, unfamiliar
with the authentic circumstances of young girlhood, he
omitted describing Una Golden's formative years, and began

by producing her as a mature young lady with feelings of

333

unconscious feminism. The Job is more polished, not as

uneven as The Trail eh the Hawk, but the story of Una con-

 

cludes at almost the same level and intensity of anxious
optimism as the Hawk's story. Lewis's characterization of
Una lacks sharp definition, ostensibly because the author
intended her to represent a "typical" girl on the job, not
one whose appearance, personality or actions were dis-
tinctive or memorable. But The geh, even when it seems
the Una-Grace complement to Hawk-Lewis, represents the
novelist's best planned and executed fiction before heih
Street.

The Innocents, having its genesis in the days of

 

apprehension which followed Lewis's marriage, is a frag-
mented story with many intriguing features. Since it
appears to have been written rapidly, the number of Lewis's
ideas and attitudes which it contains lie near the surface,
without much artistic subtlety of camouflage. Two dis-

coveries apparent in The Innocents seem noteworthy for a

 

more comprehensive interpretation of Lewis and his early
work. The first is the authorial intrusion cited earlier
which proclaims that "The greatest philosophical theory in
the world is that 'people are people.'" The second is
Lewis's explanation that "In his attempt to let people
bluff themselves and accept him as a person to be taken
seriously, Father kept on trying to adhere to the truth."

Read in context, these passages seem surprisingly like

334

portentous pronouncements on the conduct of life. One may
wonder if these utterances, taken together, bespeak Lewis's
fundamental attitudes in his relationships with other
people--if the first, with its assumptions of human equal-
ity and equivalent identities, represents the rationali-
zation of a lonely, shy, and rejected youth that he de-
served equal consideration with his peers everywhere, a
guarantee implicit in the socialistic democracy he often
advocated so noisily; and if the second, with its impli-
cation that the credulity of strangers begs a performance,
represents the behavior of an insecure and self-hating man
whose mimetic gifts allowed him to perpetrate all kinds of
bluffs, acts, and roles that would be accepted as authentic.
After all, if a man feels scorned for being himself, he
should be allowed to play Someone Else. Further, The EEEQ’
eehhe, having been written speedily and with little refine-
ment, offers a whole congeries of role-playing opportuni-
ties for the Applebys, and a view of Lewis's prime tech-
nique for characterization at its crudest and most obvious.
When one considers the superiority of 222.£22 over Lewis's
less presentable work (like his short stories or The Thee-
eehhe), it becomes apparent that, although he relied on
role playing and projecting in almost every case, these
techniques are not so intrusive, or so patently exploited
as vehicles for swift transitions and character "develop-

ment," in his better writing.

335

Free Air is an improvement, but not a major one,

over The Innocents. For all its awkward transitions and

 

improbable situations, Milt Daggett's pursuit of Claire
Boltwood possesses gaiety and freshness which derive from
frequent shifts of episode and scene, in the manner of a
travelogue. As an experimental model for Carol Kennicott,
Claire is too affected a mannequin, and the Gopher Prairie

of Free Air, compared to that of Main Street, is barely a

 

muddy rut. It is evident, however, that in the magazine
serials which were to compose Free Air, Lewis was clearing
his imagination of the last impurities which had clogged

his determination to write Main Street.

 

John T. Flanagan has noted that the time and the
opportunity were both propitious for Lewis's first great

work.

The ripeness of the time was a major factor in
the success of Main Street. The novel appeared at
the precise hour when readers suddenly freed from
the tensions of a world war and conscious of the need
for self-examination were willing and almost avid to
learn the truth about themselves.14

 

Whatever "truth" the reader might learn, however, depended
mightily upon his acceptance of Lewis's exposé posture as

narrator of Carol Kennicott's history. Generously casting
himself as the "alien cynic" who will explode the Old

notions cherished by small-town chauvinists, Lewis earns

 

14"A Long Way to Gopher Prairie: Sinclair
Lewis's Apprenticeship," Southwest Review, XXXII (Autumn,
1947), 403.

 

336

credit as a liberal critic of provincial mores through a
trick of dialectics: by making his opponents seem absurd
and petty, he can assume the air of an intellectual liber-
ator, while not differing very significantly from those he

accuses of Toryism. Beyond this, however, Main Street is

 

Lewis's triumph of externalization--a hindsighted rebuke
to his native town for having made Harry Lewis neurotic
and eccentric, and a sneer from a recently urbanized prig
that the village lacked manners and taste. One realizes
that most of Carol's quarrels with Gopher Prairie are
'based more on disagreement over tastes than upon moral
values and priorities; that Carol is not so much better
informed or civilized than the Jolly Seventeen, but that
she is a more stubborn and impudent bluffer.

Apparently the many readers of Main Street recog-

 

nized Lewis's huff, but not Carol's effrontery. After his
successful eeep with dramatic role playing through Carol
as symbolic spokesman of a value system, Lewis set his
novelistic style to produce what his audience had told

him was successful. Despite the undeniable merits of

Babbitt, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, and Dodsworth, one can

 

 

not avoid glimpsing Lewis projecting himself into each one
of his protagonists, relying confidently in every case
upon his peculiar descriptive talents to overwhelm the
reader's incredulity with cascades of circumstantial de-
tail, which purport to reveal Character and Taste, but can

not authenticate compassion or a heartbeat.

337

A last look at Sinclair Lewis's first seven books
supports the View that, although he found the vast audience
he sought, and taught himself to write with accurate and
trenchant facility, he did not remedy his most regrettable
flaw. Perhaps his desire to reach many readers persuaded
him to design his novels around universal types with wider
appeal and merely token trappings of individuality. But
Lewis's almost insistent reliance on narrative detail and
role playing as prime devices for characterization tend to
belabor his protagonists, rather than explain them. This
seeming evasiveness begs the question, "What, then, was
Lewis's concept of personality?" Both internal evidence
from his early works, and external support from his well-
documented life suggest that Lewis never really understood
what made each man unique. If in his youth a man assumes
that all men are essentially the same, and never revises
his opinion because continued belief assures his status as
a man, he will always remind himself that he is as good
as anyone else, and that the occasional man who seems
different is either lucky, unlucky, or bluffing. This
appears to have been the attitude which the novelist
carried throughout his life; and though he wrote a half-
dozen mighty books and many inferior ones, he never doubted
his assumption that his mode of characterization was
authentic and realistic, or that his vision was the uni-
versal perception of mankind--so preoccupied was he with

the many roles of Harry Lewis.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Primapy Sources

 

Lewis, Sinclair. "Adventures in Automobumming," Saturday
Evening Post, CLXLII (December 20, 1919), 142 ff.

 

. "A Minnesota Diary," introd. Mark Schorer,
Esguire, L (October, 1958), 160-162.

. Babbitt. New York, 1922.
. "Danger--Run Slow," Saturday Evening Post,

CLXLII (October 18, 1919), 3 ff.; (October 25,
1919), 22 ff.

 

. "Foreword," Henry Handel Richardson [Henrietta R.
Robertson], The Fortunes e£_Richard Mahogy.
New York, 1941, v-vii.

 

 

. "Free Air," Saturday Evening Post, CLXLI
(May 31, 1919), 3 ff.; (June 7, 1919), 22 ff.;
(June 14, 1919), 21 ff.; (June 21, 1919), 21 ff.

 

. Free Air. New York, 1919.

 

. Hike and the Aeroplane. New York, 1912.*

 

 

. "The Innocents," Woman's Home Companion, XLIV
(February, 1917), 7-10 ff.; (March, 1917),
15-18 ff.

. The Innocents. New York, 1917.

 

. The Job. New York, 1917.

. Main Streeh: The Story e£ Carol Kennicott.
New York, 1920.

 

 

 

 

 

*Published under the pseudonym "Tom Graham."

338

339

Lewis, Sinclair. Our HE: Wrenn. New York, 1914.

. Selected Short Stories. Garden City, N. Y.,
1937.

 

. The Trail eh the Hawk. New York, 1915.

 

Maule, Harry E. and Melville H. Cane, eds. h Sinclair
Lewis Reader: The Man from Main Street:
Selected Essays and Other Writings: 1904-1950.
New York, 1963.

 

 

 

Smith, Harrison, ed. From Main Street he Stockholm:
Letters eh Sinclair Lewis: 1919-1930. New York,
1952.

 

 

 

 

II. Secondary Sources

 

Books

Callaghan, Morley. That Summer Th Paris: Memories eh
Tangled Friendshipe with Hemingwey, Fitzgerald,
and Some Others. New York, 1963.

 

 

 

 

Dooley, David J. The Art eh Sinclair Lewis. Lincoln,
1967.

Geismar, Maxwell. "Sinclair Lewis: The Cosmic Bourjoyce,"
The Last eh the Provincials. Boston, 1949, 69-150.

Grebstein, Sheldon N. Sinclair Lewis. New York, 1962.

 

Horney, Karen. Our Inner Conflicts: h Constructive
Theory eh Neurosis. New York, 1945.

 

. The Neurotic Personality eh Our Time. New York,
1937.

Jordan, Elizabeth. "Enter Sinclair Lewis," Three Rousing
Cheers. New York, 1938, 337-357.

Klapp: Orrin E. Symbolic Leaders: Public Dramas and
Public Men. Chicago, 1964.

 

Kramer, Maurice. "Sinclair Lewis and the Hollow Center,"
The Twenties, Poetry ehe Prose: ‘TQ Critical
Essays, eds. Richard E. Langford and WiIliam E.
Taylor. Deland, Florida, 1966, 67-69.

Lewis, Grace Hegger. Half a Loaf. New York, 1931.

340
Lewis, Grace Hegger. With Love From Gracie. New York,
1951.

Nathan, George Jean. "Sinclair Lewis," The Intimate Note-
books eh George Jean Nathan. New York, 1932, 8-21.

Schorer, Mark, ed. Sinclair Lewis: h Collection eh
Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, I962.

 

 

Schorer, Mark. Sinclair Lewis: eh American Life. New
York, 1961.

 

. "The Burdens of Biography," Te the Teung Writer,
ed. A. L. Bader. Ann Arbor, 1965, 147-165.

Sheean, Vincent. Dorothy and Red. New York, 1964.

 

Warner, Samuel J. Self-Realization and Self-Defeat.
New York, 1966.

West, Rebecca. "Sinclair Lewis Introduces Elmer Gantry,"
The Strange Necessity. New York, 1928, 295-308.

 

 

 

 

Whipple, Thomas K. "Sinclair Lewis," Spokesmen: Modern
Writers Th American Life. New York, 1928, 208-
229.
Periodicals
I
Angoff, Charles. "A Kansan in Westchester," University

 

Review, XXXI (Summer, 1965), 283-288.

Colum, Mary M. "A Critical Credo," Scribner's Magazine,
LXXIX (April, 1926), 387-392.

Easson, William M. "Projection As An Etiological Factor
in 'Motiveless' Delinquency," The Psychiatric
Quarterly, XLI (April, 1967), 228-232.

Flanagan, John T. "A Long Way to Gopher Prairie: Sinclair
Lewis's Apprenticeship," Southwest Review, XXXII

Gurko, Leo and Miriam. "The Two Main Streets of Sinclair
Lewis," College English, IV (February, 1943),
288-292.

McLuhan, Marshall. "Fashion: A 'Bore War,'" Saturday
Evening Post, CCXLI (July 27, 1968), 29.

341

Millgate, Michael. "Sinclair Lewis and the Obscure Hero,"
Studi Americani, VIII (1962), 111-127.

Napier, James J. "Letters of Sinclair Lewis to Joseph
Hergesheimer, 1915-1922," American Literature,
XXXVIII (May, 1966), 236-246.

 

Schorer, Mark. "My Life and Nine-Year Captivity With
Sinclair Lewis," New York Times Book Review
(August 20, 1961), 7, 26.

 

Thompson, Dorothy. "Sinclair Lewis: A Postscript,"
Atlantic Monthly, CLXXXVII (June, 1951), 73-74.

. "The Boy and Man from Sauk Centre," Atlantic
Monthly, CCVI (November, 1960), 39-48.

III. General References

 

Books

Angoff, Charles. "Sinclair Lewis," The Tone eh the
Twenties and Other Essays. South Brunswick, N. J.,
1966, 69-73.

Beach, Joseph Warren. The Twentieth Century Novel:
Studies Th Technique. New York, 1932.

 

 

Biddle, Bruce J. and Edwin J. Thomas, eds. Role Theory:
Concepts and Research.. New York, 1966.

 

Derleth, August. Three Literarngen: h Memoir e£_Sinclair
Lewis / Sherwood Anderson 7 Edgar Lee Masters.
New York, 1963.

 

Grebstein, Sheldon N. "Sinclair Lewis: American Social
Critic." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied
Science, 1954.

Kazin, Alfred. eh Native Grounds: eh Interpretation eh
Modern American Prose Literature. New York,
1942.

 

. Contemporaries. Boston, 1962.

Light, Martin. "A Study of Characterization in Sinclair
Lewis's Fiction." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Illinois (Urbana), 1960.

342

Parrington, Vernon L. Main Currents he American Thought:
hh_Interpretation eh_American Literature from
the Beginnings he 1920, 3 vols. New York, 1939.

 

 

 

 

 

Spiller, Robert E. The Cycle eh_American Literature: eh
Essay 12 Historical Criticism. New York, 1955.

 

 

 

Van Doren, Carl. Sinclair Lewis: h_Biographical Sketch.
Garden City, 1933.

 

 

Periodicals

 

Alder, Benne B. "Sinclair Lewis: The Novelist Who 'Hated'
Lecturing," Quarterly Journal e£_Speech, LI
(October, 1965), 276-285.

Coard, Robert L. "Names in the Fiction of Sinclair Lewis,"
Georgia Review, XVI (1962), 318-329.

 

Conti, Giuseppe Gadda. "Sinclair Lewis," Studi Americani,
IX (1963), 249-286.

 

Duffey, Bernard I. "Progressivism and Personal Revolt,"
Centennial Review, II (Spring, 1958), 125-138.

 

Genthe, Charles V. "The Damnation pf Theron Ware and
Elmer Gantry," Research Studies, XXXII (December,
1964), 334-343.

Grebstein, Sheldon N. "Sinclair Lewis' Minnesota Boyhood,"
Minnesota History, XXXIV (Autumn, 1954), 85-89.

 

. "Sinclair Lewis's Unwritten Novel," Philo-
logical Qparterly, XXXVII (October, 1958), 400-
409.

Guthrie, Ramon. "The 'Labor Novel' That Sinclair Lewis

XXVIII (February 10, 1952), 1, 6.

Light, Martin. "A Further Word on Sinclair Lewis' Prize-
Consciousness," Western Humanities Review, XV
(Autumn, 1961), 368-371.

 

. "H. G. Wells and Sinclair Lewis: Friendship,
Literary Influence, and Letters," English Fiction
Th Transition, V (1962), iv, 1-20.

. "Lewis' Finicky Girls and Faithful Workers,"
Universihpreview, XXX (Winter, 1963), 151-159.

343

Light, Martin. "Lewis's 'Scarlet Sign': Accommodating
to the Popular Market," Journal eh Popular Culture,
I (Fall, 1967), 106-113.

 

Lockerbie, D. Bruce. "Sinclair Lewis and William Ridgway,"
American Literature, XXXVI (March, 1964), 68-72.

 

Manfred, Frederick. "Some Notes on Sinclair Lewis's
Funeral," Minnesota Review, III (Fall, 1962),
‘ 87-90.

Miller, Perry. ”The Incorruptible Sinclair Lewis,"
Atlantic Monthly, CLXXXVII (April, 1951), 30-34.

Nathan, George Jean. "Memories of Fitzgerald, Lewis and
Dreiser: The Owner of Main Street's Soap Box,"
Esguire, L (October, 1958), 149-151.

Rosenberg, Charles E. "Martin Arrowsmith: The Scientist
as Hero," American Qearterly, XV (Fall, 1963),
447-458.

Schulberg, Budd. "Lewis: Big Wind from Sauk Centre,"
Esguire, LIV (December, 1960), 110-114.

Stolberg, Benjamin. "Sinclair Lewis," American Mercury,
LIII (October, 1941), 450-460.

Tanselle, G. Thomas. "Sinclair Lewis and Floyd Dell:
Two Views of the Midwest," Twentieth Century
Literature, IX (January, 1964), 175-184.

   

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