Gertrude Stein Off Center in Spain (1901–1916)

In 1903, American writer Gertrude Stein established herself as an expatriate in Europe’s cultural center, Paris. Most modernist studies scholarship on Stein emphasizes her time in France: her role as a social influencer, doyenne of her famous salon, and contributor to the literary vanguard. Spain, however, had an equally transformative impact on Stein’s creative development. She toured within and settled for extended periods in Spain across the early twentieth century. Spain proved to be a refuge as well as a site for literary explorations that had a profound effect on Stein’s experimental style. She claimed that the energy of Spanish music, dance, and public spectacle defined the “modern”; additionally, breaks from Paris offered Stein the privacy to experiment and to intensify her relationship with her companion, Alice Toklas. This chapter advances Spain as a critical locus for Stein’s studies by analyzing Stein’s Spanish Period (echoing Picasso’s) and the transformative role that “Spain” served for Stein: as destination, aesthetic category, and platform for larger themes—nationality, language, culture, sexuality, power. In Spain—off center, as it were—Stein innovates her signature literary style. For this important modernist writer, crossing borders meant crossing boundaries (imposed by gender and convention) and zones (geographic, generic, erotic).