Gertrude Stein, Alice Toklas, and Albert Barnes: Looking Like a Jew in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Abstract

This paper explores the symbolism of "Jewish looks" in the writing of Jewish-American Gertrude Stein (1874–1946). Beginning with Stein's early college writing about Jews as a distinct race, and her literary treatise on human categorization, The Making of Americans (written 1903–1911), I trace the shifts in Stein's thinking about Jews forward to her most famous work, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933). Written in fairly conventional prose that was a dramatic break from an already immense oeuvre of extremely experimental writing, The Autobiography presents readers with numerous enigmas nonetheless. In particular, the references to Jews in the book, both crude and carefully coded, provide a textual puzzle that sheds light on Stein's striving to fully understanding human nature and her concerns about how such understanding might be compromised by the practice of portrait writing.