Historical Context
Stein perceived herself as bridging the two centuries she inhabited, feeling connected to the often conflicting values of both eras. This duality is evident in "Melanctha," where there is an initial clash between Jeff's admiration for a "quiet" and "regular" life and Melanctha's desire for unjudged, aimless experiences. If one were to distill the centuries into basic contrasts—as many of Stein’s contemporaries did—Victorian morality could be set against the rebellion of the twentieth century. The nineteenth century cherished social propriety and tradition, while the twentieth century adopted the mantra, "make it new." While the nineteenth century relied on certainties like religious belief and a rational social order, the twentieth century embraced numerous discoveries and ideas that Victorians found unsettling.
For instance, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, presented in Origin of the Species, challenged Victorian beliefs about divine design and the significance of human life. Political ideologies that emerged during the nineteenth century, such as Marxism and anarchism, fueled twentieth-century uprisings that disrupted notions of social order and governance legitimacy. Concepts regarding gender and racial roles began to erode in the nineteenth century, paving the way for movements like the Harlem Renaissance and women's suffrage, alongside the harsh racist reactions seen in eugenics—a pseudoscientific theory linking behavior to physiology and race—and Nazism.
These broad cultural dynamics are present in "Melanctha." Traditional Victorian morality, with its noble and proactive heroes, appears only briefly and is overshadowed by a depiction of life lacking purpose, judgment, morals, or a clear message. Stein’s bold stylistic experiments not only challenged nineteenth-century literary norms but also questioned established hierarchies. By removing distinctions between foreground and background, Stein created what she called a "democracy" of words. Additionally, her groundbreaking choice to depict supposedly universal human emotions through African-American characters mirrored the slowly increasing political and social influence of American blacks, even though she reduced these characters to racial stereotypes influenced by eugenics.
Among the numerous transformations that connected the two centuries, the most significant for "Melanctha" were changes in psychology and visual arts, both of which Gertrude Stein was intimately familiar with. Many critics have extensively explored the story's connection to William James, a psychologist with whom Stein studied during her time at Radcliffe. Two aspects of James's theories stand out in "Melanctha": his perspectives on human nature and perception. James essentially proposed that individuals experience the world through an unfiltered flow of sensory stimuli, a "stream of consciousness." However, to prevent mental chaos, the mind selectively processes this information, determining what is important and should be prioritized, and what is irrelevant and can be ignored. The way one filters these impressions largely depends on their position on the personality spectrum, ranging from highly passionate to highly logical types. James, with his moral outlook, preferred the logical, heroic type. Yet, Stein's narrative also partly reflects the influence of Sigmund Freud, James's younger contemporary, whose theories dramatically altered twentieth-century psychology. Unlike James, who valued logic and the conscious structuring of thoughts, Freud highlighted the irrational aspects of human behavior. Freud contended that desire is the driving force behind all human actions and that individuals possess a rich interior life filled with emotions, many of which are socially unacceptable and hard to admit.
Freud's psychological theories depicted individuals as having an inner world brimming with suppressed emotions that defy social norms, concealed beneath a surface that adheres to societal rules. This idea fed into the growing belief that external appearances did not necessarily align with "reality" or "truth." This perspective was evident among early twentieth-century painters, whom Stein befriended and drew inspiration from. The nineteenth-century concept of "realism" in...
(This entire section contains 663 words.)
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art relied on verisimilitude, the precise replication in visual art or literature of an object's appearance. This logical, accessible world was thought to represent reality. However, avant-garde painters began to distrust verisimilitude, believing that reality lay beneath the surface and could be non-logical and subject to the viewer's perspective. They sought to create a new form of realism.
Style and Technique
Modernism
When Gertrude Stein wrote "Melanctha" in 1905, the literary movement known as modernism was just starting to take shape in the twentieth century. Many of the prominent works of modernism emerged in the subsequent years, including James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," Jean Toomer's Cane, and D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love. Literary critics examining the early twentieth century often characterize modernism by certain themes, such as alienation, or by the stylistic techniques used in these works. Although Stein's style was distinct from Joyce's and Woolf's, she challenged many of the same literary norms, creating a text that was more challenging for readers accustomed to the straightforward and seemingly transparent prose of nineteenth-century fiction.
Narrator
"Melanctha" does not present a sequence of events that unfolds clearly from start to finish, nor does it establish a consistent and identifiable point of view. Like any fictional work, there is a narrator, and in this case, it is a third-person narrator because it is not a character in the story. This narrator employs free, indirect discourse, which allows the narration of a character's thoughts without direct quotation, but not in the straightforward manner typical of most nineteenth-century authors. Readers may find that, at certain moments, a character like Jeff Campbell or Jane Harden "takes over" the narrative voice, shifting the point of view to reflect their perspective. Their thoughts merge with the narrative, forming interior monologues. In "Melanctha," this technique compromises the narrator's omniscience—the all-knowing ability that characterizes a third-person narrator. Unable to immediately and clearly reveal causes and reasons, and lacking complete knowledge of the characters, the narrator seems to share the same ambiguity that troubles the main characters.
Structure
"Melanctha" starts in the middle of events, a technique known as in medias res, which is a common approach in many renowned literary works. However, it not only begins in the middle but also takes the reader back to the protagonist's childhood, then returns to the starting point, and proceeds to Melanctha's demise. This unconventional structure disregards the typical linear progression of storytelling. As a result, the perception of time becomes chaotic, with moments feeling both stretched and compressed. Stein's unique structural choices, mirrored in her sentence construction, aim to evoke a sense of a "prolonged present." Stein's instructor at Radcliffe, psychologist William James, proposed that people experience the world not in distinct time segments—past, present, future—but as an ongoing awareness of the current moment. Thus, even though the narration is in the past tense, the sense of "now" consistently overshadows traditional concepts of past and future. To achieve this, Stein frequently uses words that convey immediacy, such as "now" and "always," along with present participles, which are verbs in their "-ing" form.
Writing Style
Stein's writing style in "Melanctha" may challenge or even frustrate readers accustomed to fiction with clear, direct, and grammatically correct language. Her main experimental technique is repetition, which appears in both the narrative and sentence structures. This repetition, combined with her limited vocabulary, impacts how readers experience the story. The narrative is composed of abstract terms like "wisdom," "wanting," and "knowledge," alongside simple colloquialisms that hint at black dialect. Stein's restricted word choice, repeated frequently, underscores the limitations of language. Even the most articulate character, Jeff Campbell, grapples with expressing himself, illustrating language's failure to fully capture complex thoughts and emotions.
Despite Stein's own extensive education and vocabulary, she similarly restricts the narrator's voice. This results in a limited selection of words, repeated with variations, bearing the story's many layers of meaning. In her essay "Composition as Explanation," Stein described her purpose for this intricate wordplay as a demonstration of how meaning shifts based on "relation." A word's meaning can change depending on the context of surrounding words. Through this method, language's limitations are transcended, and words regain their richness in meaning. This idea of relativity also applies to people: an individual's behavior alters with their context, just as Melanctha acts differently with Jeff than with Jem.
Ultimately, the repetition and complexity of Stein’s sentences compel readers to engage with the words as mere words and the sentences as mere sentences. This approach serves to remind the reader that they are interacting with a book. Stein, much like the modernist painters she admired, sought to transcend the late nineteenth-century style of realism. This style often allowed audiences to become absorbed in the depicted story or scene, causing them to overlook the fact that someone was crafting this representation. Similarly, early twentieth-century artists conducted experiments to remind their audiences that they were viewing paintings or reading text, highlighting that the "realism" they relied upon was actually an illusion.
Compare and Contrast
Early 1900s: Numerous authors depend on the financial backing of patrons—affluent individuals who support the arts—enabling them to dedicate all their time and effort to their craft.
1990s: While arts funding from institutions like the National Endowment for the Arts is available, many writers turn to teaching, freelance writing, and similar activities as their primary sources of income.
Early 1900s: Victorian-era morals impose limits on writers' ability to explore themes of homosexuality in literature. Some critics propose that "Melanctha" subtly addresses a lesbian relationship and that Stein felt compelled to disguise this aspect.
1990s: Numerous authors, such as Adrienne Rich, Rita Mae Brown, and Allen Ginsberg, prominently feature homosexuality as a central theme in their literary works.
Bibliography
Sources
Bridgman, Richard. Gertrude Stein in Pieces, Oxford University Press, London and New York, 1970.
DeKoven, Marianne. A Different Language: Gertrude Stein’s Experimental Writing, University of Wisconsin Press, 1983.
Dubnick, Randa. The Structure of Obscurity: Gertrude Stein, Language, and Cubism, University of Illinois Press, 1983.
Hoffman, Michael J. The Development of Abstractionism in the Writings of Gertrude Stein, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966.
Stein, Gertrude. ‘‘Composition as Explanation,’’ in What Are Masterpieces, Conference Press, 1940.
Van Vechten, Carl. Introduction to Three Lives, Modern Library, 1933.
Walker, Jayne L. The Making of a Modernist: Gertrude Stein from Three Lives to ‘‘Tender Buttons’’, University of Massachusetts Press, 1984.
Further Reading
Haas, Robert Bartlett, editor. A Primer for the Gradual Understanding of Gertrude Stein, Black Sparrow Press, 1971. This anthology features short works by and about Stein, intended to introduce her to new readers.
Mellow, James R. Introduction to Three Lives, New American Library, 1985. Offers a concise, easy-to-read overview that outlines Stein’s life story and the background of ‘‘Melanctha.’’
Stein, Gertrude. Fernhurst, Q.E.D., and Other Early Writings. Edited by Donald Gallup. Liveright, New York and London, 1971. A compilation of Stein’s early literary works.
