Alice Adams

(1921)

This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Booth Tarkington was first adapted as a film in 1923 by Rowland V. Lee, and in 1935 by George Stevens.

The Main Characters

Alice Adams – The protagonist. An ambitious and vivacious young woman of 22 years whose optimism belies her lower social status, and who uses a pattern of lies and misleading signals to obscure her family's true status.

Arthur Russell – An upper-class young man smitten with Alice, who is not entirely aware of the Adams family's status in town.

Virgil Adams – Alice's father. A man of integrity who lacks ambition. He feels pressured to violate his loyalty to his employer by his wife's insistence on providing for their children.

Mrs. Adams – Alice's mother. A woman who always wants more than her husband provides, who is blind to her children's faults, and is the primary goad to her husband's ill-fated venture.

Walter Adams – Alice's brother. A young man who prefers to consort with the lower classes (particularly African-Americans), and whose prodigal ways create trouble for him.

J. A. Lamb – Virgil's boss. A generally honorable old man who runs a very successful business, and Virgil and Walter's employer.

The narrative centers on the character of a young woman, Alice Adams, who aspires to climb the social ladder and win the affections of a wealthy young man named Arthur Russell. The story is set in a lower-middle-class household in an unnamed town in the Midwest shortly after World War I.

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