Feminism & Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons displays feminism in various ways. Stein is a lesbian in a time when being a woman puts you in an already constructed gender role and homosexuality itself is a practice that is not welcomed by most of the country. Stein is able to advocate women’s rights and the views of feminist at the times by openly talking about female sexuality through her use of sexual imagery as well as being able to openly discuss her homosexuality.

One example of Stein’s frank discussion of women’s sexuality is the poem entitled A Box. Box is a rather crude slang term for a female anatomy. This poem alone is filled with sexual imagery and lines that can are almost certainly double entendres. One example of this sexual imagery comes late in the poem, “Left open, to be left pounded, to be left closed, to be circulating in summer and winter, and sick color that is grey that is not dusty and red shows,.” There are several images here that convey a sort of sexuality. The line “left to be pounded is a reference to sexual activity and words like “circulating” and “red” is almost certainly a reference to female anatomy. Another example of Stein’s overt sexual imagery comes through the poem Red Roses which reads “A cool red rose and a pink cut pink, a collapse and a sold hole, a little less hot.” The color red again references female anatomy as does other terminology she uses like “pink cut pink” and “a sold hole.” Gertrude Stein’s heavy references to female anatomy are a way in which she is able to express feminine ideals of sexual liberation in a time when women’s sexuality has been stifled.

Gertrude Stein was also a lesbian in a time that it was not okay for a person to announce themselves as a homosexual. Her sexual preference also plays a role in these poems which is another way in which Stein is able to make herself stand out as a feminist. For example, I read the poem “This is the Dress, Aider” as a sexual experience with another woman. She says things like “why whow, whow stop touch” and “stop the muncher, muncher munchers,” which seem again like crude references to sexual activity. These things sound like some sort of sexual experience, and knowing that Stein is in fact a lesbian and that a woman is referenced later in the poem leads me to believe that this entire poem is about Stein’s sexual encounters with another woman.

Feminism is a way in which women are able to liberate themselves from a suppressive society. Stein does this in her poem in a number of ways, namely in being able to have frank sexual imagery in her poems that create vivid images in her reader’s minds. Also, being a lesbian Stein is able to write about her homosexuality in an open way and this is another way in which women (both heterosexual and homosexual) are able to find freedom in a time of repression.