Representation Of Nationalities In The Autobiography Of Alice B. Toklas By Gertrude Stein

From the first page of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein characterizes people in terms of their national identities. Although Alice introduces herself as an American, ‘‘I was born in San Francisco, California,’’ she explains that the quality that best defines her mother is her character, ‘‘my mother was a quiet charming woman named Emilie’’. While her father is best defined by his national identity: ‘‘my father came of polish patriotic stock’’. Here, Toklas’s father is so thoroughly identified by his nationality that she does not even bother to give the reader his name, as she does with her mother. Throughout the book, national labels often replace names. For example, Alice’s descriptions of Stein’s Saturday evenings repeatedly respond to the question she knows is on the reader’s mind of “who were they all?” with a list of nationalities. She explains, ‘‘groups of hungarian painters and writers did get there,’’ and ‘‘quantities of germans. ’’ She adds that ‘‘there was a fair sprinkling of americans.’’

Individuals are often known only by their nationalities: ‘‘the other german who came to the house in those days was a dull one’’; ‘‘there was another german whom I must admit we both liked. ’’ Although both of these men are named elsewhere in the text, they are introduced and recognized first and foremost by their ‘‘german’’ identities. Another example is the British painter, Francis Rose, whom is known only as ‘‘the englishman’’ for much of chapter 7. Alice makes a point of identifying the ‘‘three great dancers’’ she has known and the ‘‘three geniuses’’ she has known as each of a different nationality. Everywhere Stein and Toklas go, they conduct a nationality count, describing the atmosphere of a place according to the numbers of different nationalities there. In Palma de Mallorca, for example, Alice notes that ‘‘a great many americans seem to like it now but in those days William Cook and ourselves were the only americans there were a few english there were several french families.’’ Of course, referring to a person’s nationality in order to characterize him or her assumes that people of that nationality share elemental traits. Stein lets the reader know that she is drawing on a number of essential qualities about French, Spanish, American, and German peoples. She explains that the essential character of the French is so indisputable that it determines the types of architecture they build: ‘‘human nature is so permanent in France that they can afford to be as temporary as they like with their buildings. ’’ This remark could be dismissed as one of Stein’s witty sayings were it not for the number of stereotypes that pile up in this book. For example, Russians tell ‘‘the usual russian stories’’; because Picasso is Spanish ‘‘life is tragic and bitter and unhappy’’; the ‘‘american character’’ is essentially ‘‘abstract’’; and ‘‘germans. . . are not modern, they are a backward people. ’’ Like many other characters who make a brief appearance in the book, Germaine Pichot is immediately identified by her national identity: ‘‘she was quiet and serious and spanish. ’’ Moreover, her nationality manifests itself in her physical appearance: ‘‘she had the square shoulders and the unseeing fixed eyes of a spanish woman. ’’ We learn that Pichot ‘‘had taken a young man to the hospital, ’’ but what seems more significant to an understanding of this woman is the fact that she has many sisters, all ‘‘married to different nationalities, even to turks and armenians. ’’

However, while nationality is often treated as a physical attribute in this text, at the same time, one’s nationality is also described as an identity one takes on at certain moments. Nowhere is this clearer than in the conflicts between Stein and Picasso as they pore over Stein’s photographs of the Civil War: Picasso ‘‘would suddenly remember the spanish war and he became very spanish and very bitter and Spain and America in their persons could say very bitter things about each other’s country. ’’ Here, nationality is not only described as an internalization of one’s country, it is also personified as Alice explains that the ‘‘Spain and America in their persons’’ give voice to their patriotism. But while Picasso, as a Spaniard, embodies Spain, Stein also describes his nationality as a transformative process: while looking at Stein’s photos, Picasso ‘‘became very Spanish. ’’ Picasso’s nationality is natural in both cases, however, as a country ‘‘living’’ inside his body and as an identity he ‘‘becomes’’ when reminded of traumatic national events in Spain.

Throughout The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, in the core of her catalogues of essentially German, Spanish, American, Russian, Hungarian, and English peoples, Stein repeatedly demonstrates the flexibility of national identity. One can, according to Stein, ‘‘lose’’ one’s national identity and replace it with another: Gertrude Stein always says that chicagoans spent so much energy losing Chicago that often it is difficult to know what they are some lower their voices, some raise them, some get an english accent, some even get a german accent, some drawl, some speak in a very high tense voice, and some go chinese or spanish and do not move the lips. Here, simply by changing the way they speak, ‘‘chicagoans’’ are so successful at changing their national identity that they become hard for Stein to recognize; ‘‘it is difficult to know what they are. ’’ Thus, a change that has been described as organic in the text becomes a calculated construction of identity: even though they are Americans, Chicagoans can ‘‘go Chinese or Spanish. ’’ In the same way, Wyndham Lewis, who is British, can look ‘‘rather like a young Frenchman on the rise, perhaps because his feet were very french, or at least his shoes. ’’ Hemingway not only looks ‘‘rather foreign’’, but as an American journalist for a Canadian newspaper he provides ‘‘the Canadian viewpoint. ’’ Although The Autobiography emphasizes the idea that there is something essentially French about a Frenchman, and there is a discernible ‘‘canadian point of view, ’’ as these examples suggest, this national core can be captured or reflected by those who are not ‘‘produced’’ by that nation.

Even this attempt to locate an essence for each nationality, determined by where one is ‘‘born and bred, ’’ falters at various times in the text. Additionally, in The Autobiography one can ‘‘be’’ a certain nationality without any relationship to anyone who was ‘‘born and bred’’ there. For example, Stein explains that because Constance Fletcher’s stepfather was an Englishman, ‘‘Constance became passionately an English woman. ’’ Although Constance Fletcher is not from England, she ‘‘became’’ English. Therefore, being ‘‘born and bred’’ gives no more access to a nationality than any other connection. Constance Fletcher defies the entire concept of an essential national identity in that she is simultaneously English and Italian, without having any mixed blood. Stein explains that ‘‘she was more italian than the italians. She admired her step-father and therefore was English, but she was really dominated by the fine italian hand of Machiavelli. ’’ This example demonstrates that not only can sheer ‘‘admiration’’ cause one to adopt a national identity, but also that one can adopt the national identity of a foreign country, an identity that is even more authentic than that of the people ‘‘born and bred’’ in that country.

Stein’s repeated emphasis in The Autobiography on the role national identity plays in personal relationships, politics, and the production of art must be attributed to the internationalism of the modernist movement in Paris at the time. Not only does Stein stereotype each nationality, but she leads the reader to make the same assumptions. Citizens come out of the country that ‘‘produces’’ them and they are simultaneously born with their country ‘‘in their persons. ’’ This resemblance between the language Stein uses to describe personal and national subjectivity demonstrates that in The Autobiography she continues to ‘‘address the relationship between personal and national narratives of identity. ’’