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Sinclair Lewis
ANN VICKERS (1933) Reviews and Comments I. By Patrick Killough II. By Mary Killough ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I. by Patrick Killough (A) REVIEW FOR HTTP://WWW.BARNESANDNOBLE.COM Here is how your review will appear on the title page: T. Patrick Killough (patrick@thekilloughs.com), growing to admire Sinclair Lewis, June 10, 2005, REVIEW TITLE: Can tenacious application of values change a depraved world? BOOK RATING: FIVE STARS * * * * * The novel ANN VICKERS carries the heroine from birth in 1889 to her early 40s around 1933. She progresses from pre-pubescent tomboy to a teen with a crush and through losing mother and father before college. Ann studies nursing, does graduate work in social work-related fields, is awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree, publishes a book on 'Vocational Training in Women's Reformatories' and becomes a columnist with a national following. Ann Vickers also becomes an envelope stuffing suffragist, spends time in jail, works in settlement houses and women's prisons, including one particularly nasty one (Copperhead Gap) in the mountains of the South. She moves in and out of private and state government civil service and appointive positions with increasing focus on women both in prison and as parolees. Ann's personal life is usually painfully subordinated to her passion to make the world a better place. She brushes off lesbian advances and is not sexually profligate, going 'all the way' with no more than three men. By the first she conceives what she concludes is an embryo daughter. A woman professor of medicine persuades Ann to be aborted for the greater good of humanity. For the rest of her life (after late 1917), Ann dreams of her lost girl, 'Pride,' and vows not to murder her a second time. She also ponders the rights of the unborn. She marries a gruff, earthy man also active in the world of philanthropy and social uplift but finds that choice a very bad mistake: for he smothers her emotionally and wants her to be little so that he can be big. Finally, Ann finds romantic love with an amiable rogue, a New York State supreme court judge. He very likely fathers her child, Matthew (Mat) before being convicted of taking favors on the bench and being sentenced to six years hard labor. He is pardoned a year later by the governor of New York (presumably Franklin D. Roosevelt). Ann, the judge and young Mat will defy conventions and make a joint life together thereafter. COMMENT: When I first read ANN VICKERS a few days ago I was dazzled and rated it FOUR STARS. Having now re-read the novel for this review I now rate the novel FIVE STARS and I expect to read it again more than once in years to come. Sinclair Lewis set out to write the story of a great woman, not without her flaws. In the novel several shrewd observers predict future greatness for Ann (e.g. 'the first woman ambassador'). Inherited home town and family values, erotic impulses and the desires to compete, achieve and do good all mingle and interact convincingly in the very American psyche of Ann Vickers. She is a doer, a manager: --'She had found nothing difficult in conducting an office, being punctual, giving directions to stenographers, imagining what her competitors would do -- all those occult rites whereby men become presidents, and bathtub manufacturers so princely that their biographies are printed in the magazines.' (Ch. 21, p.265) Ann Vickers also makes herself a craftsmanlike writer: --'There were in Ann's manner of writing no fines herbes, neither tarragon nor chervil. It was the honest corned-beef hash of literature. But she was so much in earnest, she labored so ceaselessly, that she impressed some scores of thousands from Bangor to San Jose, and certainly she did win that sure proof of achievement, the disapproval of her acquaintances.' (Ch. 47) This is a long (562 pp.), detailed study of a slice of Americana at a time America was moving to world leadership. ANN VICKERS grabs you and will not let you go until you have read the last page. *** Also recommended: Sinclair Lewis, MAIN STREET, THE JOB. ARROWSMITH. Mary Daly, THE CHURCH AND THE SECOND SEX. =-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- (B) REVIEW FOR HTTP://WWW.AMAZON.COM REVIEW TITLE: When America writes, America sounds like Sinclair Lewis. BOOK RATING: FIVE STARS * * * * * You are Ann Vickers "of Waubanakee, Illinois, a little south of the center of the state" ( Ch 1, p. 7). You are 17 years old. Your mother died when you were ten. You are an only child. Your father was local school superintendent. But he died a year ago leaving you a legacy of $1,000. What do you do next? You draw on your father's and Waubanakee's values and walk with open eyes into the ripening American world ahead from 1907 to 1933. You wait tables to put yourself through Point Royal College for Women in Connecticut. You grow through the amorous advances of a lesbian roommate and a playboy male professor. You study nursing. You stuff envelopes for years so that American women can vote. You go to jail for the cause and later become an expert on women's prisons. You write a learned book and are a popular national columnist. You have made love to three men over the decades, had one abortion greatly regretted, and after age 40 lovingly birthed a son whose father may either be your cloying husband or a charming rogue who sits on the New York State supreme court until he is convicted of being on the take and sentenced to six years in jail. When the judge is pardoned by the Governor (FDR?) after only a year behind bars, you, he and your son plan to defy convention and make a life together. You are the same Ann Vickers, onetime tomboy of Waubanakee, onetime devotee of the YWCA and Presbyterian Sunday School. You have taken things as they came, made your choices and lived with them. And you were written up in a novel by Sinclair Lewis which I defy a reader in 2005 to put down prematurely. Themes in the novel to be pondered: --A mother is persuaded by a professor of obstetrics to have an abortion she does not want and who dreams ever after of her "murdered" girl, "Pride." A mother who will never murder Pride again and who knows that "coming children" have rights. --A feminist who never hates men utterly. Most males are "solid, stolid, unpicturesque citizens who liked breakfast, went to their offices or shops or factories at seven or eight or nine, admired sports connected with the rapid propulsion of small balls ... quarreled with their wives and nagged their children yet were fond of them and for them chased prosperity..." ( Ch. 21, p. 256) --A married liberal woman goes to parties and hears so much TALK in which people per Roget's Thesaurus "cry, roar, shout, bawl, halloo, whoop, yell, bellow, howl, scream, screech, screak, shriek, shrill, squeak ... yawp, vociferate ... rend the air..." (Ch. 35, p. 421f) --Ann Vickers squeezes her lover's wife's hand when the judge is sentenced to jail. This is not the first novel in which Sinclair Lewis puts two women with claims on the same man face to face. --America came of age in the early and middle lifetime of Ann Vickers. What a time! "Hijackers murdering bootleggers. ... Aviators crashing on cottages and burning up old ladies in them. Babies kidnaped and murdered. ... Methodist bishops accused of stock-gambling and rigging elections. ... Five-year-old boys in nice suburbs playing gangster and killing three-year-old boys. ... A skinny little Hindu that drinks only goat's milk baffling the whole British Empire. ... A nation of one hundred and twenty million people letting a few fanatics turn it from beer to poison gin." (Ch. 46, p. 541f) See if you can resist temptation to read and love ANN VICKERS. -OOO- Black Mountain, NC, USA 06/10/2005 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= II. By Mary K. Killough
Ann Vickers: Notes and Passages to Be Read Using Bison Book Paperback reprint of1994 ISBN 0-8032-7947-7 (pbk.) [NOTE:
In this version I have interspersed my comments and readings into
Patrick Killough's earliers extended reviews. MKK 10/24/2005]
The novel ANN VICKERS carries the heroine from birth in 1889 to her early 40s around 1933. She progresses from pre-pubescent tomboy to a teen with a crush and through losing mother and father before college. Unlike some other of Lewis' novels, ANN VICKERS does go into some detail about the young heroine. Ann gets her first taste of socialism from the German immigrant shoemaker Oscar Klebs in her home town of Waubenakee, Illinois, just south of the middle of the state. [Read p. 12] Ann attends college at Point Royal College for Women above the Housatonic River in Connecticut. There she flirts with her history teacher, rebuffs her roommate's homosexual advances, is very active for a time in the YWCA then quits, and forms a socialists' club. She becomes a debater and spouts a good bit of feminist idealism. [Read p. 47 ..."they talked, they trilled] After graduation in 1912 Ann spends 10 years on a variety of jobs. Ann studies nursing, does graduate work in social work-related fields, is awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree, publishes a book on 'Vocational Training in Women's Reformatories' and becomes a columnist with a national following. Ann Vickers first job is as an envelope stuffing suffragist [read p. 116] Her time as a suffragist is mostly in Clateburn, Ohio [description of the suffragist leader Mamie Bogardus, p. 106, one of Lewis' countless description of a variety of characters] , she spends time in jail for participating in a riot, works in settlement houses and women's prisons, including one particularly nasty one (Copperhead Gap) in the mountains of the South. She moves in and out of private and state government civil service and appointed positions with increasing focus on women both in prison and as parolees. During her time working at a Settlement House she has an affair with a soldier who is supposed to go off to Europe to fight in WWI. She becomes pregnant [By the first boyfriend she conceives what she concludes is an embryo daughter. A woman professor of medicine persuades Ann to be aborted for the greater good of humanity. For the rest of her life (after late 1917), Ann dreams of her lost girl, 'Pride,' and vows not to murder her a second time. She also ponders the rights of the unborn.] There is a rather detailed account of how she goes to her good friend, Dr. Malvina Wormser for an abortion -- carried out at Dr. Wormer's Long Island home in relative comfort. This is in contrast to the abortion she arranges for a woman at the Settlement House done by a less expensive somewhat unreputable doctor. [p. 239, description of work at Settlement House] . For the rest of the novel Ann regrets that she did not give birth to what she was sure would be her daughter Pride. In her prison work she notes that women are imprisoned for getting abortions and she felt she deserved punishment for it. Ann encounters "the intellectual parasites of NY." [p.222] Ann's time at Copperhead Gap Penitentiary could easily become a novelette [pp.279-374] in itself- it is a brutal expose of life in prisons, complete with whippings of female prisoners, solitary confinement sleeping on cold cement floors, leering guards, bread and water diet, imposed silence, hangings. There are detailed characterizations of the smooth prison warden Dr. Slenk, the grotesque prison guard Cap'n Waldo Dringale [read p. 285], the drunken prison doctor who commits suicide because he can no longer bear what he sees there, a great variety of women prisoners who are there from very minor crimes up to murder. Ann is in charge of educational programs for the women and tries in every way to make the prison more humane. Everyone else seems to be against her. She tries to free a desperately sick women from solitary confinement and is denounced by the other workers there and finally quits. There are so many graphic, dramatic portrayals of life in prison that it would be hard to do justice to all of them. Besides the long section on her prison work, the early segments on the woman's movement and Ann's work at settlement houses form a large portion of the work. There is continuing social commentary and criticism of the role of women and many other aspects of the society of the day. Ann finally gets to put her modern reform ideas to work in a city prison for women, the Stuyvesant Industrial Home for Women. Ann's personal life is usually painfully subordinated to her passion to make the world a better place. She brushes off lesbian advances and is not sexually profligate, going 'all the way' with no more than three men. [Ann's view of men, p. 256]. She marries a gruff, earthy man also active in the world of philanthropy and social uplift but finds that choice a very bad mistake: for he smothers her emotionally and wants her to be little so that he can be big. Lewis is a master of describing the ordinary street scene in NY. [p. 370] Finally, Ann finds romantic love with an amiable rogue, a New York State supreme court judge. He very likely fathers her child, Matthew (Mat) before being convicted of taking favors on the bench and being sentenced to six years hard labor. He is pardoned a year later by the governor of New York (presumably Franklin D. Roosevelt). Ann, the judge and young Mat will defy conventions and make a joint life together thereafter. -OOO- Black Mountain, NC 10/24/2005 |