Mary E. Galvin (Essay Date 1999)

SOURCE: Galvin, Mary E. "'This Shows It All': Gertrude Stein and the Reader's Role in the Creation of Significance." In Queer Poetics: Five Modernist Women Writers, pp. 37-50. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999.

In the following essay, Galvin analyzes the purpose and significance of Stein's subversion of traditional assumptions about literary language, form, and precedents in terms of her position as lesbian writer.

Next to Sappho, Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) is probably the most famous lesbian writer in recorded literary history. However, although the nature and duration of her relationship with Alice B. Toklas has long been common knowledge, until recently most Stein critics when considering her work have chosen either to disregard politely Stein's sexual "difference" or to act as if this "difference" in Stein really made her no different from other "men of genius": that she simply assumed the male role and...