Gertrude Stein’s Experience of Expatriation and Settlement in the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Abstract

The article examines The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, by Gertrude Stein. Filtered through the eyes of her lover, the text’s focus is on Stein’s artistic growth. Published in 1933 and written from “the happily distant perspective of the 1930s” (Benstock, 1986, p. 144), The Autobiography shows how Stein copes with the isolation and despair of her first years of expatriation in Paris. The paper argues that Stein was only able to perform in-depth acts of self-analysis once she had settled down in her troubled subjective geography.

Keywords

• gertrude stein
• transnationalism
• transnational identity
• expatriation
• autobiography