{"id":4438,"date":"2026-01-21T09:54:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T17:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=4438"},"modified":"2026-01-21T09:54:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T17:54:17","slug":"miss-vickers-does-not-regret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2026\/01\/21\/miss-vickers-does-not-regret\/","title":{"rendered":"Miss Vickers Does Not Regret"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week got away from me (or I thought it was last week, or something. In these times, who knows?). So here is a post from a few years ago, from my website. I still love Ann Vickers.
\n<\/em>
\nI love the work of Sinclair Lewis. \u00a0Even though I know better. Even when his prose is didactic and braying and he can\u2019t make up his mind who he most disdains: country folk, city folk, religious folk, doctors, lawyers, academics, politicians. Ever since high school I have felt like I needed to apologize, maybe even join a 12-step program, for my fascination with Lewis. And yet fascinated I am.<\/p>\n

Why apologize? Lewis is respectable, albeit not much in fashion these days. He gave us the terms \u201cMain Street\u201d and \u201cBabbit.\u201d He won a Nobel Prize for Literature. He was passionate and passionately observant. \u00a0He had a sharp ear for dialect, for the self-congratulating boosterism of early 20th century America, for the moral compromises that even his most heroic characters (I\u2019m thinking of Martin Arrowsmith in particular) find themselves making. And his portrait of America in the toils of a fascist take over, It Can\u2019t Happen Here<\/em>, is dated, folksy, and scary as hell. Every time I have found myself thinking of an incoming politician I distrust, \u201cHey, it\u2019s only a few years, what damage can he really do?\u201d It Can\u2019t Happen Here<\/em>swims before my eyes.<\/p>\n

Sinclair Lewis wrote Main Street<\/em> and Babbit<\/em> and Elmer Gantry<\/em> and Arrowsmith<\/em>, all of which I love. But my favorite of his books is one that no one I know has ever heard of: Ann Vickers<\/em>. It\u2019s not that Ann is Lewis\u2019s only heroine. Carol Kennicott of Main Street<\/em> was his first; and he\u2019s got some remarkable women in Elmer Gantry<\/em>and Arrowsmith<\/em> (I love Martin Arrowsmith\u2019s wife Leora; I don\u2019t think he really deserved her, and I\u2019m not sure Lewis did either). But Ann Vickers<\/em>\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a book that follows Ann from tomboy to Sunday School teacher, to college, to work; she stumbles into a career that works for her, becomes successful\u2013and on the way manages to make mistakes, build a whole life for herself, love the wrong men. Ann is smart but not brilliant; stubborn and strong but not unbreakable; she\u2019s got a powerful moral center but doesn\u2019t always have the strength or direction to change things, but when she does, she raises Hell. And she doesn\u2019t have a plan, not really\u2013she acts sometimes before she considers, and she sometimes wanders onto the easiest course. I found Ann Vickers<\/em> immensely comforting when I first found it, because when I was in college I didn\u2019t have a clue what I was going to do with my life, and Ann Vickers<\/em> suggested that I\u2019d figure it out in time.<\/p>\n

Reviewers loathed\u00a0Ann Vickers<\/em> when it was published in 1933. \u00a0Not only does Ann have an affair with a soldier, but she becomes pregnant (and the guy drops her\u2026did I say she loves the wrong men?). \u00a0And has an abortion, performed by a doctor who essentially says I hate abortion, but hate even more what the society we live in would do to Ann as an unmarried mother. \u00a0The abortion has an effect on Ann\u2013she imagines the child she might have had, even (rather revoltingly) names her \u201cPride\u201d\u2013but it doesn\u2019t stop her. \u00a0She isn\u2019t punished<\/em>. \u00a0Consider how that went over in 1933. \u00a0She goes on to be successful\u2013very successful\u2013in her career. \u00a0She has an affair with a married man, marries herself, has a child\u2026and at a point when it seems like her world is falling apart (the man she marries is a manipulative creep, the man she loves has been arrested for corruption which might spill over into her work) she finds the strength we\u2019ve seen in her all along.<\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t apologize. \u00a0She\u2019s a tremendously human person. \u00a0Where Carol Kennicott of Main Street<\/em> ends the book at a standoff with her husband and her life in the tiny city of Gopher Prairie, the Ann Vickers Lewis leaves us with at the end of the book is heroic\u2013The Woman, as Lewis styles her. Lewis can get a little icky when he\u2019s moved or lyrical\u2013he\u2019s much better when he\u2019s angry, pointing out hypocrisy. \u00a0But I can forgive his style for love of Ann.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week got away from me (or I thought it was last week, or something. In these times, who knows?). So here is a post from a few years ago, from my website. I still love Ann Vickers. I love the work of Sinclair Lewis. \u00a0Even though I know better. Even when his prose is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4439,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4438\/revisions\/4439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}