Gertrude Stein: Three Lives
Informal Writing Assignment
Whose point of view is represented?
What is unconventional? Deliberately awkward?
Write down strange sentences
What is radical about this style?
Where is Stein bringing us back to?
The Good Anna: Mrs. Lehntman, being the love of Anna’s wife is by a far the greatest break from convention in the story. Beyond that, the rebellious nature of Anna in “caring for the careless” while also holding a sort of resentment that is quite traceable is also notable during the times as she is a housekeeper who is not the traditional obedient housekeeper. “"Romance is the ideal in one’s life and it is very lonely living with it lost".
"And the good Anna full of the coquetry of pleasings would bridle with her angular, thin, spinster body, straining her stories and herself to please"
Stein’s Writing: Stein’s writing is generally straightforward in both stories. She uses a present tense narration style for both pieces and in both pieces particular phrases and sentences reoccur. Though they may seem repetitive, what these sentences do is illustrate and criticize the tired, outdated social norms of the day and help shape each woman’s identity through a sort of regression that seems apparent in her description. Stein describes confrontations in The Good Anna in under very tense means. One theme is female bonding, since the narrator insists on Anna’s "romance" with Mrs. Lehntman. Anna likes to work only for passive and big women who let her take care of everything; otherwise she prefers to work for men, because "Most women were interfering in their ways." As particular phrases and sentences recur; a caustic irony emerges within the narrative that exposes Anna's absurd and usually futile attempts to repress not only the sexual behavior of young heterosexual men and women, but also Anna's own homoerotic impulses
The Gentle Lena: Less complex. Life described as “pleasant”. “Patient old world ignorance”...