Reframe · No. 55
Alice Adams is not a Cinderella story. Booth Tarkington never wrote one.
Most readers arrive with the fairy tale already told: a poor, pretty girl in a Midwestern city, a rich young man, and a few white lies that cost her the match. Either she is a social climber who gets what she deserves, or a Cinderella whose slipper does not fit. That is the popular summary. It is not where Booth Tarkington starts the page.
Alice Adams appeared in 1921 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1922, Tarkington's second. It opens in a sickroom, not a ballroom. Virgil Adams has clerked for J. A. Lamb most of his life, and now he lies ill, fretting about night air. His wife uses the illness to push him to leave his job. In chapter 4 he defends the work to Alice: steady raises, seven years as head of the sundries department, an old man's trust. Alice is moved. Then she asks her mother to reline a white organdie dress.
The Palmer dance in chapters 6 to 8 is where the Cinderella reading starts, and Tarkington refuses to play along. Alice cannot afford orchids, so she spends an afternoon in Belleview Park and picks three hundred violets. Walter hires a tin Lizzie for seventy-five cents, and she makes him leave it at the kerb so the porte-cochere will not see it. In the ballroom her violets, stems in tin-foil, sit beside Mildred Palmer's florist bouquet. She saves a chair and taps her foot, as if a partner has just stepped away. She has had two years to learn that trick, since the night at twenty when nobody asked her to dance. No fairy godmother arrives. Mildred introduces Arthur Russell, and he dances with Alice out of kindness.
The money plot belongs to her parents. Twenty-five years ago Virgil and a chemist named Campbell worked out a glue process on Lamb's payroll. Campbell died, and Mrs. Adams has wanted the formula used ever since. In chapter 13 Alice is left off Henrietta Lamb's guest list, and her mother tells Virgil that money is family. By chapter 16 he has sold his bonds, mortgaged the house, and sent his resignation to Lamb through a friend, because he cannot face him. Alice's courtship runs alongside on the veranda, and her stories grow to fill the gaps. Pipe tobacco becomes cigars. In chapter 14 she invents a feud with the Lambs and a father about to start a glue factory. That one comes true.
Chapter 20 is the trapdoor. At lunch with the Palmers, Mr. Palmer passes on a club story about this Virgil Adams: old Lamb trusted a clerk with a glue process, kept him on the payroll through his illness, and the clerk walked off with the secret. Mrs. Palmer calls Alice a pushing sort of girl. Russell goes red, crumples his napkin, and says nothing. What reaches him first is not one of Alice's stories. It is her father's, told as a joke, with her name attached.
Chapter 22 is the dinner: a heat wave, a hired maid, wilting roses, Brussels sprouts, and caviar the family cannot afford. Russell will not meet her eyes. On the porch Alice stops performing and says it for him. You're never coming here again! When anything's spoiled, people can't do anything but run away from it. So good-bye! She runs back in for the hat he forgot. Then an old friend comes down from her father's room with the news. Walter is short in his accounts at Lamb's, and it is in the evening paper.
At dawn a sign stands across the street from Virgil's little works: LAMB LIQUID GLUE CO. In chapter 24 Lamb offers about 9,350 dollars for the plant, enough to clear the mortgage and Walter's deficit, and asks Alice to carry forgiveness both ways. In chapter 25 the house is full of boarders. Alice puts on a plain dark suit and tells her mother that we don't often make people think what we want 'em to. She meets Russell near the tobacconist's and stays calm. Then she climbs the wooden stairs of Frincke's Business College, the doorway she has always seen as the end of youth. There is an open window overhead, and the steps at the top are gay with sunshine. The popular summary keeps the girl who lost the rich man. The book keeps a girl who stopped performing and went up the stairs.
What most readers assume
“A Cinderella story: a poor, pretty girl almost wins a rich young man until her white lies give her away.”
What Booth Tarkington actually stages
Most readers arrive with the fairy tale already told: a poor, pretty girl, a rich young man, and a few white lies that cost her the match. Tarkington published the novel in 1921 and won the Pulitzer in 1922. In chapter 20 Russell hears a club story about her father and a glue formula. In chapter 22 Alice sends him away herself. The last chapter ends on the stairs of a business college.
Alice Adams · Booth Tarkington
The popular summary sells a girl who lost the rich man. The book sells a father who took the formula, a sign across the street, and a staircase with sunshine at the top.
Common Questions
Search questions this reframe installment answers about Alice Adams.
Is Alice Adams a love story?
Arthur Russell matters, and Alice's hope is real. Tarkington does not make winning him the point. In chapter 22 Alice ends it herself: you're never coming here again, so good-bye. In chapter 25 she meets him in the street, stays calm, and walks on. The book is about a family that has run on performance for years, and the morning the daughter stops.
Why does Arthur Russell stop courting Alice?
In chapter 20, at lunch with the Palmers, he hears a club story: old J. A. Lamb trusted a clerk with a glue process, and the clerk walked off with the secret. The clerk is Virgil Adams. Mrs. Palmer calls Alice a pushing sort of girl. Russell goes red and says nothing. Alice's warnings about gossip had already made him uneasy. At the dinner in chapter 22 he cannot meet her eyes.
Is Alice Adams a social climber?
She performs, and Tarkington shows the cost. She picks three hundred violets because she cannot buy orchids, hides a seventy-five-cent car from the Palmers' door, and saves a chair at the dance so she looks wanted. Her mother pushes the family upward, and Alice's white lies cover a house that cannot keep up. In chapter 25 she tells her mother she has quit dressing at the other girls.
What did Virgil Adams do wrong?
Twenty-five years earlier he and a chemist named Campbell worked out a glue process on J. A. Lamb's payroll. Campbell died, and the formula was never written down. Under years of pressure from his wife, Virgil mortgages the house, resigns by letter, and opens his own glue works. He knows it is still Lamb's process. Lamb answers with a sign across the street, then buys the little plant in chapter 24.
What does the ending of Alice Adams mean?
Alice climbs the dark wooden stairs of Frincke's Business College, a doorway she has always seen as the end of youth. She remembers a French romance where the heroine enters a convent, and finds her own path less pretty but more honest. There is an open window overhead, and the steps at the top are gay with sunshine. She is not punished, and she is not rescued. She goes to work.
Why do people misread Alice Adams?
The scenes people remember are the dance and the dinner, and both have a poor girl and a rich young man in them. The 1935 film with Katharine Hepburn gave the story a happy ending, which fixed the romance in many minds. The novel puts the money plot with her parents, the turn with a club story about her father, and the final page on a staircase.