Three Lives by Gertrude Stein
Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
Three Lives is a set of three discrete stories - The Good Anna, Melanctha, and The Gentle Lena - and each story follows the life of the titular person. The lives are distinct, if in many ways unremarkable, and do not seem (imho) to be connected at all.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here
If it was not clear from my extremely short summary, I did not care for this book. I wanted to like Gertrude Stein, perhaps for no other reason than a romantic memory of her oft-quoted, "America is my country, and Paris is my hometown."
The first story was fine, if uninspiring, but the second story was so blatantly racist it took me WEEKS to get through it. The whole thing together is only 200 pages, and we know I've tackled FAR longer works than that in less time, but it was just so painful to read it was excruciating. This is probably the closest I've come to not finishing a book for this blob.
And sure, yes, Gertrude Stein, like anyone, was a product of her time, and there are some who say that as a lesbian and a Jew, her outsider's perspective on race is more nuanced than a simple ascription of 'that's so racist'. But let's just say I'm not one of those people. The middle story, Melanctha, is about a mixed race woman who is Black and white, and it's chock full of denigrating comments and preposterous broad statements about 'colored people' and other offensive terms, and I can't for the life of me understand why Stein felt compelled to tell the story of someone whom she held in such obvious disregard FROM HER POINT OF VIEW. Weirdly all three of these stories were intimate but not fully letting you in to the person being described, which made them (a) BORING and (b) hard to connect to. So sure, maybe it was revolutionary and all, and I'll have to check out The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which is about Stein's partner, but on the whole, I am left feeling deeply un-wowed.
Here are a few snippets from each 'life':
The Good Anna
- It was some months now that Anna had been intimate with Mrs. Drehten. I thought the casual lesbianism was cool, and I'm sure very revolutionary in its time.
- It was wonderful how Mrs. Lehntman could listen and not hear, could answer and yet not decide, could say and do what she was asked and yet leave things as they were before. I thought this was a great sentence.
- She hired Lizze for a second girl to be with her and soon they were all content. All except the parrot, for Miss Mathilda did not like its scream. lololol. I lived briefly in a house with parakeets, and I must admit I was also not a fan of their screams.
- Melanctha Herbert was always losing what she had in wanting all the things she saw. Melanctha was always being left when she was not leaving others.
- Melanctha Herbert was always seeking rest and quiet, and always she could only find new ways to be in trouble.
- Melanctha Herbert had always had a break neck courage.
- Melanctha needed badly a man to content her. Melanctha also needed badly to have a name that felt less trip-worthy on the tongue, imo. I mean, everyone should have a name that feels right to them and I support all names and cultures around naming, etc. etc., but that C in the middle just kept gumming up my mental pronunciation and it did NOT help the whole already hating the racism of the story thing.
The Gentle Lena
Am I the only one who noticed that Lena and Anna, anglo-Europeans, get positive adjective descriptors, and Melanctha just gets her name in the title?
- Lena was patient, gentle, sweet, and German.
- Poor Lena was so scared and weak, and every minute she was sure that she would die.
- Lena went home all alone, and cried in the street car. Oh yeah, did I mention that on top of being mostly boring, both Melanctha and Lena were just MISERABLE for basically their whole lives and frequently discussed suicide or 'disappearing into death'? So that was super fun, too.
- Lena never seemed to hear what anyone was saying to her.
Terms That Were New To Me:
Struldbrug - Okay, so I read Gulliver's Travels for this blog, so I must have known this term at some point, but I had forgotten. Stein makes a casual reference to it, so I'm sharing the reference below:
"In Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels, the name struldbrug is given to those humans in the nation of Luggnagg who are born seemingly normal, but are in fact immortal. However, although struldbrugs do not die, they do nonetheless continue aging. Swift's work depicts the evil of immortality without eternal youth. They are easily recognized by a red dot above their left eyebrow. They are normal human beings until they reach the age of thirty, at which time they become dejected. Upon reaching the age of eighty they become legally dead, and suffer from many ailments including the loss of eyesight and the loss of hair. Struldbrugs are forbidden to own property. As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are looked on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to their estates; only a small pittance is reserved for their support; and the poor ones are maintained at the public charge. After that period, they are held incapable of any employment of trust or profit; they cannot purchase lands, or take leases; neither are they allowed to be witnesses in any cause, either civil or criminal."
Well, blob friends, here's hoping that by the time we connect again the world looks a bit more open and still safe. I'm off to Richard Wright, and have much higher expectations of enjoyment of his work. Happy reading!
