Why Does The “Main Street” Metaphor Live On?
According to my stopwatch, it has been exactly seven minutes and thirty-nine seconds since I’ve heard a “Main Street” versus “Wall Street” reference. And what a glorious 7:39 it has been. I’m not sure about you, but I neither live on Main Street nor Wall Street, and I’m getting tired of the gross oversimplification.
According to the United Nation’s World Urbanization Report (2007), 249 million Americans - 81% - live in urban areas. Of those, the majority live in very large cities or their surround suburbs. So if we don’t live on Main Street, why is the metaphor appear to be so powerful?
For an answer we turn to literature, and more specifically, Sinclair Lewis’ satirical novel Main Street. Published on October 23, 1920, Main Street was an enormous success, estimated to have sold nearly two million copies within two years of publication. The novel centers around Carol Milford, a feminist (before the term existed) reared in big-city Minneapolis who marries and is convinced to move to small town Gopher Prairie with her husband Will. Suffice it to say that she doesn’t fit in, leaves her husband and moves to Washington, DC for a time before returning (but not relenting).
I’m not a literary critic, but the popularity of the book shocked many at the time. Main Street was banned in many cities and terribly offended many across the nation. The novel was initially awarded the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, but the Board of Trustees overturned the decision and gave the Pulitzer to another author.
The metaphor, however, has lived on. For an explanation of the power of the Main Street metaphor, I turn to the good people from NovelGuide:
“Sinclair Lewis goes to great rhetorical lengths to impart to the reader his intention that the Main Street of Gopher Prairie in his novel should be taken to symbolically represent the Main Street of all small towns and their common characteristics. “Its Main Street is the continuation of Main Streets everywhere,” writes Lewis in the prefatory note to the novel.
As such, Lewis uses the phrase “Main Street” not simply to refer to the specific road but to a cultural nexus of the time that placed the values of small town society at a premium and eschewed any outside views. In Lewis’ fiction, the values of small town America are encapsulated within the world of “Main Street” and those who seek to challenge those values are doomed to face extreme censure.
With a characteristic note of cynicism Lewis concludes his preface: “Would he 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?”"
So wherever you live, at least you can now appreciate why the comparison consumes the modern airwaves. I, for one, am ready for a break in the rhetoric. Let’s keep the conversation going.