“I always wanted to have earned my first dollar but I never had”

This chapter offers a textual analysis of Gertrude Stein’s works in relation to money, from Three Lives (1907) to Wars I Have Seen (1945). It is argued that in Stein’s writing, money is compared metaphorically to the literary text, both being treated as representative forms of writing with negotiable values. The paper follows the contention that modernist literature should be analyzed in the context of a wider socio-economic framework, rather than being considered part of a distinct aesthetic realm.