SOURCE: Pladott, Dinnah. “Gertrude Stein: Exile, Feminism, Avant-Garde in the American Theater.” In Modern American Drama: The Female Canon, edited by June Schlueter, pp. 111-29. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1990.

In the following essay, Pladott assesses Stein's contribution to American drama in terms of her “exile” as an expatriate American woman, a Jew, and a lesbian.

How does one live and create while in exile? The life and work of Gertrude Stein, exiled several times as an expatriate American woman, a Jew, and a lesbian, make the question especially pressing. Her decision to experiment with unprecedented forms of writing gives resonance to the notion of exile formulated by Julia Kristeva, also a double exile. In A New Type of Intellectual: The Dissident, Kristeva comments that physical banishment implies a dissenting metaphysics: “Exile is already a form of dissidence, since it involves uprooting oneself from a family, a country...