We’re All Strangers, But It’s Okay: The Experience of Modernity in Gertrude Stein’s Portrait of Constance Fletcher and Dorothy Parker’s Such a Pretty Little Picture
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2013
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Haverford College. Department of English
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
We’re all strangers, but it’s okay. That is essentially what I argue Gertrude Stein and Dorothy Parker are proclaiming through Portrait of Constance Fletcher (1911) and Such a Pretty Little Picture (1922), respectively. Despite their being contemporary women authors known to lead progressive lifestyles, their shared connection with Europe (France in particular), and their mutual friends (such as Hemingway and Fitzgerald), Stein and Parker have yet to be discussed alongside one another. The vocabulary employed to talk about their work within academic circles could not be more different, yet my essay seeks to show that not only is their work less dissimilar than one might initially think, but also that one gains insight into their work when examined alongside one another. More specifically, I am interested in Stein and Parker’s shared preoccupations concerning the impact of modernity on human experience, and in particular the loss of meaningful interactions modernity has provoked. Parker’s Picture sheds light on the humorous and playful undertones in Stein’s Portrait, and I argue that humor in Stein and Parker’s texts propose acceptance as an answer to the drastic changes brought about by modernity and the resulting feeling of loss. Jonathan Flatley’s Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism (2008) provides me with the framework to elaborate on the concept of acceptance as an aesthetic approach to dealing with such losses, and Georg Simmel’s theories on the pathologies and social behaviors that arose in the first few decades of the twentieth century are essential to my argument throughout the essay.