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  • Men in Love? Male Friendship in Gertrude Stein's Early Portrait
  • Rolf Lundén (bio)

Portraits of men and women and children are differently felt in every generation …

—Gertrude Stein, "Portraits and Repetition"

In comparison to most of Gertrude Stein's texts, her early portrait "Men"1 has been neglected by critics, and the few readings that do exist are insufficient, to say the least. One can easily find possible explanations why "Men" has been overlooked. It is not representative of Stein's early portraits from the period 1908–1911: it is a group portrait and not one of a single person like Picasso, Matisse or Purrmann; it is not static like most of the other portraits but characterized by its narrative form; it is not about "succeeding" or "being living"—in the other early portraits Stein was "obsessed with the various ways in which a person may fail to mature."2

The one-sided readings referred to above and discussed below are due to a lack of background information both concerning the particular events on which Stein based her portrait and concerning the general social and cultural climate of the turn of the twentieth century. James R. Mellow claimed in 1974 that "Men" "clearly describes a homosexual situation involving three men" who get into a fight. He goes on to state that the man knocked down was, as a result of the fight, "initiated into homosexuality" and that the end of the portrait was "Gertrude's attempt to describe … what it meant to each of them 'in being such a one'." With the help of Stein's manuscript of "Men" he then identifies these three homosexual men as Hutchins Hapgood, [End Page 335] David Edstrom, and Maurice Sterne.3 Since then, other critics, such as Wendy Steiner, Bruce Kellner, and Patricia R. Everett, have uncritically repeated Mellow's conviction that "Men" is about the "homosexual trio" of these three.4 As a consequence, "Men" has now become incorporated into the canon of gay literature. The Gay and Lesbian Heritage states:

Stein's less well known portrait of homosexual men, simply and tellingly titled "Men," makes the erotic content of such "gay" alliances clear and opens with the statement: "Sometimes men are kissing." The remainder of this evocative portrait explores the interpersonal dynamics of erotic longing and fulfillment, communication and estrangement, and winning and losing among gay men.5

The problem with this reading is that not one of the men in question was a homosexual, a fact that Stein was well aware of since she was a close friend of all three. In addition, given the fact that in conversation Stein often impugned male homosexuals,6 why would she want to identify three of her friends as gay?

The purpose of this article is twofold: first, to clarify the background events that Stein had access to and thereby hopefully lay the foundation for new readings of the portrait; secondly, to suggest, on the basis of the above presentation, that "Men" is not primarily about homosexuality, but, as the title "Men" rather implies, more about masculinity, male friendship, and homosocial bonds at the turn of the twentieth century.

Let me first address the issues of masculinity and male friendship as they were constructed in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. As many scholars have shown, the concept of masculinity in the nineteenth century was not static but shifted rather significantly from the early to the late decades. According to E. Anthony Rotundo, the concept of American manhood went from Communal Manhood at the beginning of the century to Self-Made Manhood which lasted until the 1890s when Passionate Manhood became dominant. It is primarily the last of these concepts that concerns us here. Passionate Manhood meant a focus on the male body; on manly passions such as ambition, competitiveness, and aggression; on primitiveness and martial virtues, but also sexual desire. Building physical strength, it was believed, led to strength of character and moral improvement. Great admiration was expressed for the strong-willed, forceful man, and disdain for the man of little vigor. The "brutish" side of man's nature also expressed his manliness...

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