Three Lives

Enjoyed two of the lives!
By sally tarbox on 19 October 2017
Format: Kindle Edition
Three stories about three very different working-class American women; I enjoyed the first and last. The middle (longest- almost a novella at 95p) was a literary achievement but rather a chore to read.
My favourite was 'The Good Anna' - humorous in places, a great character study of a strong-minded German immigrant; a devoted servant but one who liked to rule the roost.
The final 'The Gentle Lena' follows a much weaker character, another German servant but this time a simple-minded girl whose aunt determines to arrange a marriage with a quiet and dutiful - and unwilling - friend's son...
The challenging one was 'Melanctha', whose protagonist is a young show more African-American woman. She has a slightly dodgy past, and when she takes up with a clean-living doctor, he starts to doubt the wisdom of their relationship; his girlfriend seems a mass of contradictions. Stein writes in a style all her own; a conversational style, repeating many statements, laying it on layer after layer to build up an understanding in the reader.

"Melanctha acted now the way she had said it always had been with them. Now it was always Jeff who had to do the asking. Now it was always Jeff who had to ask when would be the next time he should come to see her. Now always she was good and patient to him, and now always she was kind and loving with him, and always Jeff felt it was, that she was good to give him anything he ever asked or wanted, but never now any more for her own sake to make her happy in him. Now she did these things, as if it was just to please her Jeff Campbell, who needed she should now have kindness for him. Always now he was the beggar with them. Always now Melanctha gave it, not of her need but from her bounty to him. Always now Jeff found it getting harder for him." show less

The novel covers the lives of three women: Anna, a German-American servant, Melanctha, a single black woman, and Lena, a German immigrant who marries a tailor.

Through the use of repetition, the author draws you so thoroughly into the lives of the characters that it is somewhat uncomfortable for the reader. The middle and longest section about Melanctha in particular made me feel almost like I was engaged in a bad relationship myself. Brilliant proof that poetry and realism mix well, or that at least they can when Gertrude Stein is the writer.

I've been reading some of Stein's essays, which are pretty interesting. And I read a William Gass essay about 3 Lives, which was also pretty interesting, and I thought, well, why not?

Why not? Because this book is not particularly interesting. Gass reports reading it in one fevered sitting, then re-reading it obsessively, so deep was his ardor and fascination for the language. I can imagine that, I guess, if it were about one sixth as long (i.e., the length of an average Stein essay). Instead, it's Flaubert with more repetition and an intentionally restricted vocabulary. That's fine. It's important historically. But after I finished (skimming) the last life, I re-read the Gass essay. I would much, much rather read the Gass essay, show more because his writing (in that essay) is better than Stein's (in this text).

That said, Gass is a pretty high bar, and I can imagine returning to 3 Lives later in my life. Perhaps. Perhaps I'd rather just read other bits of Stein, like her essays. show less

As seen in the title, Stein narrates the lives of three very different women, not in itself original, but it is the writing style that puts it on the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list.

The first part follows the live of Anna, a German immigrant who works for Miss Mathilda, though is really the one in control of the household, making herself indispensible to her mistress. As the narrative moves forward, we find out more about Anna, her childhood and move to the States, as well as her family connections. She moves between positions, usually if her control is challenged by another woman, a wife for example. She is a kind woman, giving more than she has.

The second woman, Melanctha, couldn't be more different. It has a very different show more feeling, Melanctha is a young woman with a black father and mixed race mother, race and gender roles are very important in this part, as is sex. Melanctha is not content with her life, she is looking for more than what fate casts as her lot. This is the hardest part to read, not because of the material, rather the way it is presented, it is like listening to someone talking to you, going over the story, repeating details.

Last up is Lena, the saddest of the three women. Another German immigrant, she has the least control over her life, pushed towards an equally reluctant husband.

Took a while to read because of the writing style, which is more of an oral style with a lack of punctuation. I did enjoy it though, it is a rather sad book, especially for a female reader. show less

Please note that I DNF this book at 40 percent. I should have called it at 10 percent actually because this book was a struggle for me to even get into from the start.

I managed the Good Anna's story in this book and started to read Melanchta and had to quit.

The Good Anna storyline was about a German housekeeper. I found it to be repetitive and the constant reusing of the word "good" everywhere almost killed me. Reading about what made Anna the "Good Anna" just felt like I was reading a how to manual. There was no color to anything. It was the Good Anna did X and the Good Anna did Y. Stein tries to talk about Anna's background a bit to explain her, but I just felt bored throughout it.

Melanchta dealt with a young woman who had a black show more father and a mixed race mother. I have no idea where Stein was going in this story since I quit after I started to notice a lot of what I considered racist commentary about "Negroes" in the book. I have no idea if Stein was trying to talk about what she saw as an issue that white Americans had towards blacks or mixed race people at time, or if this is what she really felt, either way I was not in the mood for it and just DNFed after I got to this point. show less

Stein writes about the lives of three women, hence the title. The first and third section worked for me. I thought that the use of repetition added emphasis and a certain cadence to the writing that worked. The middle life did not work as well for me. In addition to repetition of words and phrase, the middle story included quite a bit of recursiveness of plot. This became tedious after awhile. There comes a point where you know everything that you need to know to understand a character and what makes them who they are, and it is time at that point to move on and tell the reader some more. This didn't happen soon enough to make that section not be frustrating.

It takes a bit to re adjust to the old fashioned, passive 3rd person omniscient author writing style, but when I got used to that I began to enjoy the stories. She uses a kind of strange repetition in her writing that at times left me thinking I was reading the same sentence over and over again, still it was an interesting convention. I guess my biggest hurdle with this book is the racial elements. It's not negative for the most part, but the constant labeling is a hard for the modern reader. At lest this modern reader.