Psychoanalytic Representations of “The Gentle Lena” by Gertrude Stein
Fabrício Bernardini Schweitzer | 2016
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was a North-American modernist writer expatriate in France, whose work has been mainly associated with Cubism due to her engagement with the avantgarde movement and some of its forerunner artists, such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Juan Gris. Stein’s salon in Paris became a place where artistic and intellectual gatherings took place. The present study analyses “The Gentle Lena”, a short story published in Three Lives, in 1909, in the light of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis. From this perspective, I seek to demonstrate that Stein’s idea of repetition has parallels in Freud’s thought too. Moreover, I intend to discuss that, like Freud, Stein observed the impacts of culture on subjects and society.