ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses life history of Gertrude Stein, a feminist thinker, who was one of the most important figures in the modernist movement centered in Paris during the first four decades of the twentieth century. In recent decades, Stein has become recognized as a major talent in her own right, a "pre-postmodernist" whose highly experimental writing continues to have a profound influence on contemporary literature, poetics, drama, and digital media. She has also been named a feminist or queer icon, celebrated for writing an expressive poetics of lesbian-feminist identity. At the same time, Stein's lifelong political conservatism and aversion to "the cause of women" has troubled any easy or comfortable assessment of her feminism. Stein's innovative body of work has been extremely interesting to recent feminist and poststructuralist critics and theorists. The "difference" Stein's writing both embodies and celebrates directly speaks to core tenets in feminist and deconstructionist theory, particularly the emphasis upon non-unitary, anti-hierarchical writing.
