Lesbian heroines from history #5: Getrude Stein
July 5th, 2010
This week’s heroine is: Getrude Stein (1874-1946)
Also known as: the author of Tender Buttons, an influential art collector, and mentor to Ernest Hemingway
Our heroine’s social scene: 1920s Paris and 1930s America
Famous for: The joint art collection she and her brother Leo shared at their Paris salon, which was popular with a influential circle of avant-garde writers and artists including Picasso and Matisse. Her stream of consciousness style of writing, later attributed to the modernist movement alongside authors such as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.
Infamous for: A controversial claim made prior to WW2 that “Hitler ought to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, because he is removing all the elements of contest and of struggle from Germany. By driving out the Jews and the democratic and Left element, he is driving out everything that conduces to activity. That means peace.”
Reason she’s a heroine: Gertrude met her partner, Alice B. Toklas in 1907, and they were inseparable until Gertrude’s death nearly forty years later. They made no attempt to disguise their relationship, and Ernest Hemingway often referred to Alice as Gertrude’s wife. They doted on their poodle, Basket, and summered together in France every year.
In 1933, they pair became notorious following the release of Stein’s book The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and went on an extended lecture tour around America for most of the 30s following its publication. Stein is also widely-credited with writing the first ‘coming out’ story, about a lesbian love triangle, in 1903, although it wasn’t published until 1950.
Any famous friends/lovers: Lots of movers and shakers from the arts and literary worlds networked at the Stein salon, meaning Gertrude and Leo became influential indeed. Ernest Hemingway asked her to be godmother to his son, and Picasso, Matisse, Ezra Pound and Thornton Wilder were all regular attendees.
If she were alive today, she’d be: Sam Taylor-Wood
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