Three Lives by Gertrude Stein

First published: 1909

The Work

Three Lives, Stein’s collection of three biographical portraits of lower-class women, combines French literary realism with American psychological theory. Two stories describe the monotonous lives of Anna and Lena, two German servant girls in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Williams James’s psychological theories inspired Stein’s episodic style, which transports the reader directly into the characters’ consciousness, especially in “Melanctha,” the longest of the three stories. The psychological drama of Three Lives consists in the protagonists’ search for the right words to express their identities. Trapped in their socially realistic, simplistic vocabulary and in perpetually repetitive speech patterns, these women fail to communicate their dreams of love and emotional fulfillment.

Anna, of “The Good Anna,” is a soft tyrant with a firm Old World sense of “the appropriate ugliness” of things. Her “hard and arduous life” rests on her overdeveloped sense of mothering others: Miss Mathilda, her friends, and the maids, whom she perpetually “scolds” to improve their characters. Her friend Mrs. Lehntman—“the only romance Anna ever knew”—exploits Anna’s desire to give money and affection but then leaves her. Shortly afterward, Miss Mathilda moves from the town into the country. Thus abandoned by the women who had governed her life, Anna opens a boardinghouse but charges her guests too little to cover her expenses. Financially, physically, and emotionally exhausted, Anna dies during an operation.

The graceful, intelligent, and attractive mulatto woman Melanctha comes from a background of poverty and seeks “peace and gentleness and goodness” and independence. Assaulted by her father when she was sixteen, she realizes that she must employ her “power as a woman” to get by in life. After a period of sexual exploration, she falls in love with Jeff Campbell, an introverted black doctor afraid of discovering his emotionality. Their slowly unfolding love deteriorates painfully after endless futile attempts at communicating their desires and hopes. Jeff abhors Melanctha’s former promiscuous life, which reminds him of his own racial stereotype. Melanctha, with her intuitive and passionate nature, cannot handle Jeff’s slow and ruminative personality. They part, and Melanctha becomes involved with the gambler Jem Richards, who, too, cannot cope with her intense emotionality. Alone and depressed, Melanctha dies of consumption.

In contrast to Anna and Melanctha, “The Gentle Lena” has no voice, nor will, of her own. Unwittingly, she gives in to her aunt’s pressure to marry a man who “liked to be with men,” “was obedient to his mother, but he did not care much to get married.” After a chaotic wedding, Lena suffers under her in-laws’ stinginess and filth. She becomes “lifeless” and depressive when she notices that her husband cares more about their three children than about her. She dies in childbirth.

After its first publication in 1909, Three Lives was astonishingly well-received, although less for its subject matter than for its revolutionary style. Through its psychological realism, Three Lives tells more than three stories; it develops three identities from within, from the depths of the loving and desperate human mind.

Bibliography

Bloom, Harold, ed. Gertrude Stein. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. Part of the Modern Critical Views Series, this work includes fifteen essays on Stein, a chronology, and a bibliography. Donald Sutherland’s essay on Three Lives and Richard Bridgman’s on Things as They Are and Three Lives are instructive.

Bridgman, Richard. Gertrude Stein in Pieces. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. Bridgman asserts that all three women in Three Lives are “victimized by fate” and says that Stein is concerned more with thoughts than with actions.

Doane, Janice L. Silence and Narrative: The Early Novels of Gertrude Stein. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986. Discusses the artists who influenced Stein, explaining that Stein is not constrained by convention. Some of Doane’s arguments, such as the assertion that in Three Lives Stein shows that marriage destroys women and uplifts men, are provocative but not always easily supported.

Hobhouse, Janet. Everyone Who Was Anybody: A Biography of Gertrude Stein. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1989. This book gives a good run-down of the significant people who frequented 27 rue de Fleurus. Well illustrated.

Hoffman, Michael J. Gertrude Stein. Boston: Twayne, 1976. Compares Three Lives with Stein’s roman à clefThings as They Are (1950; later Quod Erat Demonstrandum). Hoffman provides good discussions of Stein’s “wise-child” style and of the narrator of Three Lives.

Mellow, James R. Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company. New York: Praeger, 1974. Mellow’s thorough treatment of Stein’s literary and artistic circle includes an examination of the autobiographical undertones of Three Lives and circumstances of its publication.

Souhami, Diana. Gertrude and Alice. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. The most thorough account of Gertrude Stein’s long lesbian relationship with Alice B. Toklas, this book shows how strong Toklas was and how she dominated many aspects of her forty-year association with Stein.

Souhami, Diana. Introduction to Three Lives. New York: Bantam Books, 1992. In her thirteen-page introduction, Souhami provides a strong feminist reading of Three Lives.

Sprigge, Elizabeth. Gertrude Stein: Her Life and Work. New York: Harper Brothers, 1957. Like Mellow’s book, this well-written biography is replete with excellent illustrations. Tells much about the genesis of Three Lives.

Sutherland, Donald. Gertrude Stein: A Biography of Her Work. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1951. Sutherland examines the almost scientific precision of Stein’s description and style in Three Lives.