To me, the book read like a bildungsroman, albeit an atypical one. The story starts with a heroine's graduation from college, briefly looking back at her history and college years. But throughout the novel Carol is transformed, she matures and makes peace with her life and situation.
To many readers, this end might have seen like a failure, a giving up on her part. Carol, a woman full of enthusiasm and new transformational ideas, refuses to conform to the boring, conventional and puritanical microcosm of the small town where her marriage brings her, Gopher Prarie Minnesota. She cannot accept, she cannot and will not conform. Her thoughts and behavior elicit certain admiration from a reader. It seems like nothing can curb her enthusiasm or change her disdain for life as usual in this small town. At the same time, she is blinded to many good sides of life and people in Gopher Prarie. She gives up easily on her iniatives (which is not bad, since most of them are ill suited to the reality of her town), but she also easily gives up on people. In the later part of the novel, after her transformation and final return to Gopher Prarie, she is suprised to discover new (to her) sides of people she knew and dismissed all this time. She is even blind to the nobility and goodness in her husband most of the time. Sure, she pays lip service to respecting his work, and she is briefly impressed by witnessing an amputation performed by him, but it doesn't seem to last in her mind, or to get through to the core of her being. Her perception of her husband's inferiority to her in things artsy and literary and "cultural" trumps it all... Her value system seems unbalanced; she values what she has, a certain bookish sophistication, the results of being a good student of humanities in college. But life, and its real values, seem to go over her head most of the time.
In most of the novel, she is very sympathetic, smart and compelling woman, who is suffering in her situation, but very immature. Her immaturity is not obvious, and maybe not obvious to any reader - she is a very compelling heroine. But in the end that is what the book is about. It is a growing-up story. Carol grew up late, as a married thirty-something mother. She had to "sow her wild oats" by taking an almost two-year break from her marriage and living alone with her son in Washington DC around the time of the end of the WW1.
It is very difficult to write briefly about this book; the story is much more complex that this, and in the end Carol does keep her enthusiasm and spirit of innovation. This is her fundamental nature, that cannot and should not be changed. But she learns to temper it with compassion and understanding, and find real and helpful ways of applying her energy.
With this personality, one would think that this quality of enthusiasm and spirit would translate into Carol's personal and intimate life with her husband. However, I was suprised to realize that for most of the time her marriage was sexless. The author is never explicit about it, but just before Carol leaves for Washington, he mentions that she and her husband were lovers for the first time in many years. Her son was about 3 at the time, so it must have been about 3 years. Her husband mentions several times that she is "cold", and I now understand that it means cold to him physically. She even takes a separate bedroom, but this alone didn't necessarily signify to me the end of physical relationship between her and her husband. I wonder if her frustration with the town and with her life was not exacerbated by her being unfulfilled sexually, without even knowing about it. When I learned that Will, her husband, was cheating on her, it didn't impress me as wrong or immoral. I understood him and forgave him even before I could get upset. There aren't that many words in the novel describing the inside workings, thoughts and feelings of Carol's husband, Dr. Will Kennicot. But what we can learn about him from his actions, speaks volumes. He is consistently positive, strong, his love for his flighty wife never wavers, and he always knows what's important in life. He is wise, wiser than Carol at all times, even though he might not have read as many books as her.
What surprised me about the novel is how little attention was paid to Carol's pregnancies and the births of her children. Pregnancies are mentioned in passing, we learn about her second pregnancy two months before the baby is born: the author mentions that when she returned to Gopher Prarie in June "her second child was stirring within her". Being a woman myself, I know how central such experiences are to the woman. I find it hard to believe that these times didn't play a huge role in Carol's maturing and transformation. Especially that her husband was probably her obstetrician and attended her births (it is never mentioned in the novel, but its the only correct assumption), the experience of giving birth in the presence of the father, the experience of becoming parents together and seeing her partner act as a father is another huge stage in the life of a woman. I think the author neglected to use these events in heroine's life as more significant plot points because he was a man and didn't understand the impact of motherhood on a woman. On the other hand, Carol being "cold" and not sexually awakened, these very intense physically-spiritual experiences of pregnancy and birth might not have touched her as much. Actually, this would be totally in character for her, and add depth to understanding how unusual and "far gone" she was. Her spirit was very alive, but in the world of abstract ideas helping abstract people. Too bad the novel ends after just hinting to us how Carol now accepts and enjoys life in Gopher Prarie. It would be fascinating to learn how she continued to grow and develop all her potential.
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