Three Lives: Mint Editions

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Three Lives(1909) was American writer Gertrude Stein's first published book. The book is separated into three stories, "The Good Anna," "Melanctha," and "The Gentle Lena."

Each of the three tales in Three Lives tells of a working-class woman living in Baltimore. 2]

"The Good Anna," the first of Gertrude Stein's Three Lives, is a novella set in "Bridgepoint" about Anna Federner, a servant of "solid lower middle-class south german stock."

Part I describes Anna's happy life as housekeeper for Miss Mathilda and her difficulties with unreliable under servants and "stray dogs and cats." She loves her "regular dogs" Baby, an old, blind, terrier; "bad Peter," loud and cowardly; and "the fluffy little Rags."

Anna is the undisputed authority in the household, and in her five years with Miss Mathilda she oversees in turn four under servants: Lizzie, Molly, Katy, and Sallie. Sometimes even the lazy and benign Miss Mathilda feels rebellious under Anna's iron hand; she is also concerned because Anna is always giving away money, and tries to protect her from her many poor friends.

"Melanctha," the longest of the Three Lives stories, is an unconventional novella that focuses upon the distinctions and blending of race, sex, gender, and female health. Stein uses a unique form of repetition to portray characters in a new way.

"Melanctha," as Mark Schorer on Gale's Contemporary Authors Online depicts it, "attempts to trace the curve of a passion, its rise, its climax, its collapse, with all the shifts and modulations between dissension and reconciliation along the way."

But "Melanctha" is more than one woman's bitter experience with love; it is the representation of the internal struggles and emotional battles in finding meaning and acceptance in a tumultuous world.

"The Gentle Lena," the third of Stein's Three Lives, follows the life and death of the titular Lena, a German girl brought to Bridgepoint by a cousin. Lena begins her life in America as a servant girl, but is eventually married to Herman Kreder, the son of German immigrants.

Both Herman and Lena are marked by extraordinary passivity, and the marriage is essentially made in deference to the desires of their elders. During her married life, Lena bears Herman three children, all the while growing increasingly passive and distant. Neither Lena nor the baby survives her fourth pregnancy, leaving Herman "very well content now...with his three good, gentle children."

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