1922: Alice Adams

1922

Alice Adams  

by Booth Tarkington

264 pages 

Summary 

Booth Tarkington won both the second and fifth Pulitzers ever awarded (see Entry #2, 1919: The Magnificent Ambersons). Once again, this story examines the interplay of class, ambition, and personal happiness at just the right moment, when rapid changes were transforming choices for young people. Critics have said that this book verges on being a morality play because it carries such a strong message. However, the broad appeal of this book is evident in the successful movie adaptation.

Alice Adams is the daughter of a modest Indiana business man. She is a likely candidate to attend the local secretarial school, but she disdains the idea of work. Alice and her mother harbor ambitions that cause them to act grander than the family really is. In contrast, Alice's brother goes to the other extreme. He flaunts his disregard for hypocritical conventions and keeps very low company. Alice sets her sights on a good society marriage, but disguising her family’s true station will be a difficult hurdle. Tarkington tightly controls the narrative and the characters for a very good story. My one observation is that Tarkington' seems overly critical of Alice's matrimonial plans, considering that marriage was an honorable career move for women of the time. Before I accuse him of misogyny, however, I have to remember that Tarkington gave equally harsh treatment to George Minafer, the arrogant small-town aristocrat in The Magnificent Ambersons.

Adaptations

A fragment of a silent film exists, made in 1923 and starring Florence Vidor. But the 1935 film is the one people remember. Starring Katherine Hepburn and Fred McMurray, Alice Adams was reputedly one of Hepburn’s favorite films--maybe because it was a box office hit and almost won her an Oscar. The movie ending was altered because RKO studio executives worried that their Depression-battered audiences might not accept the original ending. Seeing the movie and reading the book is fodder for a good discussion.

Related Activities

First, read this interesting Chicago Tribune article by Amy Eagle to find out how the secretarial pool started out as a male domain, but came to be largely a female profession. (https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2006-04-26-0604260160-story.html)

Then, to see how Alice Adams perceived her own social standing, visit the South Side Cultural Center, formerly the South Shore Country Club, at 71st Street and South Shore Drive. This grand dame Renaissance Revival building was established in 1905 for the pleasure of white, Protestant South Siders. The club offered members horseback riding, golf, tennis, lawn bowling, dancing under the stars, and a private beach on Lake Michigan. The City of Chicago now owns the club, meaning anyone can visit. The Chicago Mounted Police stables its horses there. Golf is offered to the public. A bird-and-flower nature trail winds along the beach front. The Washburne Culinary Institute operates a delightful restaurant, The Parrot Cage, in the main building. (Their Sunday brunch buffets are deservedly popular and comfortably elegant.) In 1992, Michelle and Barack Obama held their wedding reception at the South Shore Cultural Center. This is a piece of Chicago history not to miss. 

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