Alice Adams Is a Debbie Downer
Let me start with Alice Adams’s main good point: it’s an extremely effective book. If its aim is to make the reader cringe, that is. Alice’s self-conscious striving and her mother’s prideful obliviousness make for a heady brew of uncomfortable situations. Observe this passage, wherein Alice must kill time while looking invulnerable during the dance that forms the first major set-piece in the book:
She had now to practice an art that affords but a limited variety of methods, even to the expert: the art of seeming to have an escort or partner when there is none. The practitioner must imply, merely by expression and attitude, that the supposed companion has left her for only a few moments, that she herself has sent him upon an errand; and, if possible, the minds of observers must be directed toward a conclusion that this errand of her devising is an amusing one; at all events, she is alone temporarily and of choice, not deserted. She awaits a devoted man who may return at any instant.
Other people desired to sit in Alice’s nook, but discovered her in occupancy. She had moved the vacant chair closer to her own, and she sat with her arm extended so that her hand, holding her lace kerchief, rested upon the back of this second chair, claiming it. Such a preëmption, like that of a traveller’s bag in the rack, was unquestionable; and, for additional evidence, sitting with her knees crossed, she kept one foot continuously moving a little, in cadence with the other, which tapped the floor. Moreover, she added a fine detail: her half-smile, with the under lip caught, seemed to struggle against repression, as if she found the service engaging her absent companion even more amusing than she would let him see when he returned: there was jovial intrigue of some sort afoot, evidently. Her eyes, beaming with secret fun, were averted from intruders, but sometimes, when couples approached, seeking possession of the nook, her thoughts about the absentee appeared to threaten her with outright laughter; and though one or two girls looked at her skeptically, as they turned away, their escorts felt no such doubts, and merely wondered what importantly funny affair Alice Adams was engaged in. She had learned to do it perfectly.
…The device of the absentee partner has the defect that it cannot be employed for longer than ten or fifteen minutes at a time, and it may not be repeated more than twice in one evening: a single repetition, indeed, is weak, and may prove a betrayal. Alice knew that her present performance could be effective during only this interval between dances; and though her eyes were guarded, she anxiously counted over the partnerless young men who lounged together in the doorways within her view.
Thank you, Mr. Tarkington, for recalling to me some of the more awkward moments in my past. (Not that I’ve ever been a turn-of-the-century cotillion wallflower, but let’s just figure that most book bloggers have suffered through at least one school dance holding up the wall. Perhaps, for example, an 8th-grade dance in which one’s quasi-date only danced with one for half of “Lady in Red” and one spent most of the evening drinking fifty-cent cups of orange soda and subsequently running to the bathroom. But one digresses.)
You have to imagine that Tarkington was a pretty damn fine observer of human foibles to be so spot-on here, but I wish he’d deployed it with greater sympathy towards his characters. I don’t get the sense that he finds Alice’s situation tragic, but rather appropriate comeuppance for a girl trying so blatantly to enter the upper class. It seems uncharitable to present the reader with so clearly painted an object of derision as poor Alice. So, alas, Tarkington’s ability to portray this kind of discomfort in attempted upward mobility also makes his book an extremely doleful read.
April 30, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Bingo. And the irritating thing is, at least to me, Tarkington’s lack of sympathy did not become clear until the end; after putting it down I felt like the only way to enjoy it would have been if I was a horrible snob to begin with. If one enters into the thing thinking of Alice as a pitiable fool — plus being a fairly thoroughgoing racist, viz. the “comic” character of the hired maid — then the dinner scene becomes a masterpiece of social discomfort curdling into laughter a la The Office. If you actually like these characters, or at least aren’t predisposed to dislike them, then the whole thing is intensely distasteful…
October 9, 2009 at 7:32 am
Yes! One of the things I found most bizarre was that Tarkington really seemed to think he was writing farce in that last dinner scene. Whereas I found it one of the most excruciating passages I’ve had to read in a long time.
May 1, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Class condescension seems to be a major theme in the first lot of Pulitzer winners, or at least, class anxiety as the rich and poor become more intermingled through urbanization. From His Family‘s disdain for immigrants to Tarkington’s snobbery, we’re swimming in class paranoia so far.
October 9, 2009 at 7:30 am
I totally agree with your take on this book–the ending was so mean-spirited, it almost made me ill. In one of my reviews, I commented (in retrospect, I should have been even more direct about this) on the incongruity of Tarkington’s ability to create likable characters (frankly, I liked Alice, despite her faults) while simultaneously treating them with condescension, contempt, and cruelty. He wanted to write ambitious fiction, but had no sense of sympathy for his characters to let him push that envelope.