Such a society functions admirably in the large production of cheap automobiles, dollar watches, and safety razors. But it is not satisfied until the entire world also admits that the end of a joyous purpose of living is to ride in flivvers, to make advertising-pictures of dollar watches, and in the twilight to sit talking, not of love and courage, but of the convenience of safety razors. The end of “Main Street” is disappointing. Carol Kennicott’s generous plans for the reformation of Gopher Prairie failed and she confessed herself helpless. She lost all hope in social improvement and bowed to accepted standards without renouncing entirely critical sense. After all, an intelligent and zealous woman can devote herself to many useful tasks, even in a retrograde community. There is the home, the church, the bank, the school. If things cannot be changed, they can at least be studied. Carol decided to try to understand what she could not reform. Her career ends in a compromise. She goes “round-about,” like Ibsen’s button-molder. It is suicide by sociology. This is pathetic when one remembers the romantic longings of the heroine of “Main Street.” A poet was asleep in her and tried in vain to flap his wings. She had a quick imagination and an inborn sense of the beautiful, like all romantic characters. When, for instance, she presided over the meetings of the Campfire girls of Gopher Prairie, she could hardly help wishing to change her “personality picture.” Her imagination soared and she believed herself among the Indians. Those common-looking girls on Main Street became transfigured to her eyes, as soon as they had put on their Sioux costumes. As Carol looked at them dancing and performing the rites of the Redskin she felt as if she were one herself.[33] Let him who doubts Carol’s kinship with Emma Bovary read the pages of the book where she practices landscape gardening at the little station of Gopher Prairie and Sinclair Lewis’ comments on her experiment: She felt that she was scrubbing a temple deserted by the gods and empty even of incense and the sound of chanting. Passengers looking from trains saw her as a village woman of fading prettiness, incorruptible virtue, and no abnormalities; the baggageman heard her say, “Oh, yes, I do think it will be a good example for the children”; and all the while she saw herself running garlanded through the streets of Babylon. Planting led her to botanizing. She never got much farther than recognizing the tiger lily and the wild rose, but she discovered Hugh (her son). “What does the buttercup say, mummy?” he cried, his hands full of straggly grasses, his cheek gilded with pollen. She knelt to embrace him; she affirmed that he made life more full; she was altogether reconciled ... for an hour.