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'Ann Vickers' Made It Her Way

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By ROGER K. MILLER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 14, 2008

"Ann Vickers," by Sinclair Lewis (originally published by Doubleday, Doran in 1933, it is not in print, but can be found in the hundreds on antiquarian book Web sites for as little as $2.50 a copy)

Seventy-five years ago, one of the most galvanizing manifestos of American women's equality, the novel "Ann Vickers," came from the pen of one of its most fervent, if idiosyncratic, supporters, Sinclair Lewis.

As a portrait of a woman determined to make her way in the world in her own way, it was so far ahead of its time that Lewis' 75-year-old feminist sympathies are still amazingly up-to-date.

First published by Doubleday, Doran on Jan. 25, 1933, "Ann Vickers" is, like Lewis' other books, a series of philippics and secular sermons. When Lewis discovered a subject he wanted to go after, he didn't pussyfoot around. He whacked it good upside the head with a verbal skillet. Then he whacked it again. And again.

"Ann Vickers" takes its eponymous hero from about age 9 in 1899 in Waubanakee, Ill., through her early 40s in New York City, an exciting life of work and scrapes that would not be unfamiliar to a reader of Danielle Steel - if, that is, Steel could write even as well as Lewis, not the most sophisticated of American stylists.

Ann goes to college, where, among other adventures in progressivism, she receives lesbian advances from which she recoils. After graduation, she works for the suffrage movement, then goes to New York to work in a settlement house (social work), and from there into prison reform, at first in a hellhole of a prison, then at a model women's prison back in New York. Each step allows Lewis to rail against injustices and intolerable conditions.

As a heroine, Ann is intriguingly complicated. Whatever feminism she has within her is not passionate, for she recognizes the cause has attracted too many do-little dilettantes and socialites. She wants to do good, but she also wants to do it well.

But it is in Ann's personal life - which includes love affairs, an abortion, marriage, and an illegitimate child - that Lewis shows, as Ann says, "Women should be allowed to govern their own destinies." He also shows us something that often we prefer to ignore: that governing our own destinies can have unintended consequences.

Lewis' views are complex. In part, that is due to the love-hate relationship he had with his subject matter. He had a sneaking affection for the Main Streets and Babbitts he excoriated. He stood up for justice, as Ann did, but he distrusted reformers, which Ann was.

The complexity of his views is partly due to his refusal to fetter his thinking. No one could accuse him of being unprejudiced (the novel "The Prodigal Parents" is patent ax-grinding), but neither could they say he believed a thought could go this far and no further.

Which, these days, is a refreshing thought.

Roger K. Miller is a freelance writer and author of the novel "Invisible Hero."

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