Three Lives (Identities and Issues in Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: Gertrude Stein
- First Published: 1909
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction, Naturalistic literature
- Subjects: African Americans, United States or Americans, Love or romance, Sex or sexuality, Twentieth century, Nineteenth century, Class consciousness, Immigration or emigration, Women’s issues, Servants, Tuberculosis
- Locales: Bridgepoint (fictive)
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’...
[The entire page is 977 words long]
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