The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans (published in 1925) contains lesbian themes that are characteristic of her work, though they’re presented in her distinctive experimental style that often makes direct interpretation challenging.

The lesbian content in the novel includes:

1. Semi-autobiographical elements reflecting Stein’s own experience as a lesbian woman. Stein lived openly with her partner Alice B. Toklas for many years.
2. The character of Martha Hersland, who shares some similarities with Stein herself, exhibits attractions and relationships with women that can be interpreted as lesbian.
3. The novel explores non-traditional family structures and relationships that depart from heteronormative expectations of the early 20th century.
4. Stein’s characteristic repetitive and abstract writing style allowed her to discuss same-sex desire in coded ways that could bypass censorship while still being understood by readers familiar with such coding.

What makes The Making of Americans particularly significant in terms of lesbian literature is that it doesn’t present lesbian identity as pathological or as a problem to be solved, which was common in literature of that era. Instead, same-sex attractions are presented as part of the complex fabric of human experience and family dynamics.

The book’s experimental nature—with its repetitive sentences, stream-of-consciousness style, and focus on the psychological rather than plot—allowed Stein to explore lesbian themes in ways that were less obvious to censors but still meaningful to readers who could interpret the subtext.

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