Untitled Document

"Daughter" -a poem by Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein original Expat Member

1874-1946

To read more on Stein and her selected works click here

portrait of Gertrude Stein by Picasso

"Why is the world at peace.
This may astonish you a little but when you realise how
easily Mrs. Charles Bianco sells the work of American
painters to American millionaires you will recognize that authorities are constrained to be relieved. Let me tell you a story. A painter loved a woman. A musician did not sing. A South African loved books. An American was a woman and needed help. Are Americans the same as incubators. But this is the rest of the story. He became an authority."

Read Book Review "Paris France" by Gertrude Stein

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese,
Emory University

On Chopin and modernism:

She was very important as one of the earliest examples of modernism in the United States or, if you wish, the cutting edge of modernism in American literature. . . .She was very much interested in Guy de Maupassant. She was a pre-eminent stylist and she was as much interested I think in how you told the story as the story itself. In that sense—perspective, point of view, craft, use of imagery, multiple perspectives— this legacy of appearance in reality which can be seen to come somewhat out of the New Orleans experience that things are not always what they seem and they seem different to different players. All of these then formed her style, the way in which she wrote and I think one reason that some of her stories were very short was because she was self-consciously experimenting with stylistic concerns every bit as much as thematic ones.

A native of Missouri, Kate O'Flaherty married Oscar Chopin, the son of a wealthy Louisiana cotton grower, in 1870 and moved to New Orleans. They later relocated with their six children to the Chopin family home near Cloutierville in Natchitoches Parish. In 1882 Oscar died of swamp fever, and Kate and the children moved back to St. Louis, where she began writing to support the family.

Nearly all of her work is set in the areas around New Orleans, Grand Isle and Natchitoches, and provides a vivid window into Louisiana life near the turn of the century.

Her early stories were well-received nationally and earned her literary fame as a "local colorist," even appearing in the first issue of Vogue. However, her career was devastated when The Awakening was published in 1899. It drew a storm of criticism for its "shocking, morbid, and vulgar" story and quickly went out of print. The novel was not resurrected until the 1950s, when its importance was recognized by participants in the growing women's movement. Today The Awakening is among the five most-read American novels in colleges and universities and is considered an early example of American realism.