Three Lives

This is Stein before the legend, before Tender Buttons, writing working-class women with a style that was called radical in 1909 and still sounds strange now. The repetition isn't decoration; it's how thought actually moves. If you want to see where modernist prose starts, or you care about women ground down by duty, this is the source. Readers who find later Stein impenetrable often finish this one.

1. 1

   Act 1

   The Good Anna: A Servant Who Runs Everything

   Anna Federner, a German servant, works for Miss Mathilda in Bridgepoint, managing her household with strict economy, order, and devotion. She scolds the young girl Sallie, trying to reform her. She pampers and scolds, in equal measure, Baby, her old, blind, shaggy terrier. And she bullies the easy-going Miss Mathilda herself into frugality, repeating her signature line: 'Miss Mathilda, you never do anything right.' Anna's need to dominate everyone she serves is the engine of her life. She even leaves Miss Mathilda once, taking a position with a doctor, but his lax household and his wife's slovenly ways drive her straight back. Anna's close friend is the widow Mrs. Lehntman, who runs a small shop and a lying-in hospital for poor pregnant women. Anna admires her completely, helping with the charity work and handing over her own money even while disapproving of how carelessly Mrs. Lehntman spends it. Then Mrs. Lehntman takes in a new, younger friend, over Anna's objections. The friendship cools. Anna, who forgives everything except disorder, gradually withdraws her support. Anna develops a painful internal illness but refuses to stop working, insisting 'I got no time to be sick.' She dies of her long illness. Miss Mathilda, away in Europe, comes home to find her dead. The story closes: 'The good Anna had led a hard and troubled life.'

2. 2

   Act 2

   Melanctha: Wandering Toward Wisdom

   Melanctha Herbert is a young mixed-race woman in Bridgepoint, daughter of James Herbert, a bitter, cruel, rough black father, and a pale, gentle mixed-race mother who dies early in the story. As a girl, Melanctha starts seeking what she calls 'wisdom' through experience. She wanders the railroad yards and the docks, drawn to the rough talk of working men, learning about life and sexuality from them. Melanctha befriends the older, rougher Jane Harden, who teaches her about 'wisdom' and the complexities of life and passion, but also leads her into a life of casual sex and drinking. Melanctha's friend Rose Johnson, a careless, selfish, lazy black woman, is married to a steady man named Sam. Rose has a baby that dies, and Melanctha helps her through it; Rose later turns against Melanctha, calling her a 'bad one' and a bad influence. Then Melanctha meets Jeff Campbell, a young, intelligent, earnest, educated black doctor who works among the poor and believes in duty, morality, and regular living. He is drawn to her restless nature and deeply troubled by it. Jeff and Melanctha take long walks and have long, repetitive, circular conversations where they probe each other's feelings about love, pain, and 'understanding.' Jeff probes: 'I certainly do wonder, Miss Melanctha, if you know yourself just what you do mean.' The courtship is a long struggle. Jeff wants a calm, ordered love and believes in 'right living' and 'being good and regular,' while Melanctha wants passion, 'excitement,' and 'real feeling.' Jeff confesses, 'I ain't never been used to much real feeling.' Melanctha finally snaps: 'You never want to do anything really, Jeff, you just want to talk and talk and talk about it.' They quarrel and reconcile, again and again.

3. 3

   Act 3

   Melanctha: The Losing of Her

   Jeff finally admits he loves Melanctha, and they are happy for a time — 'For a year... Jefferson Campbell and Melanctha Herbert lived and were together' — but Jeff's suspicion and jealousy begin to destroy the relationship. Melanctha, hurt by Jeff's suspicion, turns to Jem Richards, a gambler; he excites her but treats her with casual cruelty, loses interest after losing his money at gambling, and abandons her. Jeff and Melanctha separate for good. Melanctha, abandoned by Jeff, Rose, and her other friends, becomes ill with consumption. Before long she is dead. Melanctha dies in a hospital / home for poor consumptives, with no one to remember her.

4. 4

   Act 4

   The Gentle Lena: A Marriage Arranged, A Life Erased

   Lena Mainz is a gentle, passive, dreamy German immigrant girl brought from the old country by her aunt, Mrs. Haydon, to Bridgepoint to work as a servant for the Haydon family. Lena is described as having 'no power to be active within her.' She obeys every order without resistance and drifts through her work in a slow, placid daze. Lena's aunt, Mrs. Haydon, decides Lena should marry Herman Kreder, the son of a German tailor, to settle her; the Kreder family is known for its thrift and dullness. Lena accepts without question. Herman, equally passive and dominated by his parents, shows no desire for the marriage either. Herman Kreder's mother and Lena's aunt arrange the marriage; Lena is passive and does not resist, and the wedding takes place quietly. Herman initially runs away from the marriage, horrified, but is forced to return and marry Lena by his family. Lena stands through the ceremony gentle and patient and unmoving. Lena's married life with Herman Kreder is dull and oppressive; she lives with his parents, who are stingy and critical, and his mother dominates the household. Herman Kreder is gentle but weak; he does not defend Lena against his mother's harshness, and shows no affection toward her. Lena does all the housework, bears children in rapid succession, and shows no interest in them or in her own life. Each pregnancy leaves her thinner, weaker, more silent. She never complains. Lena dies in childbirth with her fourth baby, worn out by childbearing and drudgery, having 'never really awakened.' The story ends with the line, 'Lena died, and there was nothing more to say about her.'

• AAnna FedernerA German servant who rules Miss Mathilda's Bridgepoint household with scolding and strict economy. She gives everything to her friend Mrs. Lehntman until the friendship cools, then works herself to death through a painful illness she refuses to acknowledge.
• MMelanctha HerbertA young mixed-race woman with a cruel father and a hunger for 'wisdom' and real feeling. Her troubled courtship with Dr. Jeff Campbell collapses under his suspicion, and she dies of consumption, abandoned and unmourned.
• JJeff CampbellAn earnest, educated black doctor who believes in duty and regular living. He loves Melanctha's wildness and fears it at once, and his jealousy finally drives her away.
• MMrs. LehntmanAnna's adored friend, a widow running a shop and a lying-in hospital for poor pregnant women. Careless with money, warm with people, she breaks Anna's heart by taking a younger friend.
• RRose JohnsonA careless, selfish, lazy black woman married to steady Sam. Melanctha helps her through her baby's death, and Rose repays her by calling her a bad one and abandoning her.
• LLena MainzA gentle, dreamy German immigrant with no power to be active within her. Married off to Herman Kreder, she is ground down by drudgery and childbearing and dies with her fourth baby, never having complained.
• HHerman KrederThe tailor's gentle but weak son, as passive as his bride. He runs from the wedding, is forced back, and never once defends Lena from his mother.
• MMiss MathildaAnna's easy-going employer, bullied into frugality and devoted to her anyway. She is away in Europe when Anna dies and returns to find her dead.

Baby, the blind old terrier

Anna's dog is the only creature she loves without trying to reform. She pampers and scolds Baby in equal measure, which is Anna's whole way of loving compressed into one shaggy body. A blind dog tended by a woman who cannot see her own illness: the care goes everywhere except where it is needed.

The wandering

Melanctha's restless walking, through railroad yards and docks and long talks, stands for her search for wisdom and real feeling. Every path leads somewhere colder. Her wandering ends in a hospital bed, and the town she wandered through does not remember her.

The lying-in hospital

Mrs. Lehntman's small charity for poor pregnant women is where Anna's money and devotion flow. It stands for the only warmth in Anna's disciplined life, and its loss, when Mrs. Lehntman takes a younger friend, marks the beginning of Anna's end. The place of births frames a book where childbirth kills Lena.

The wedding Lena stands through

Lena stands gentle and patient and unmoving at her own wedding, after her groom has run away and been dragged back. The ceremony is the image of her whole life: arranged by others, endured in stillness, leading nowhere she chose. Her stillness there is the stillness she dies in.

The book ends three times, and each ending refuses consolation. Anna's last line, that she led a hard and troubled life, is almost an obituary written by the world that worked her to death. Melanctha's death from consumption in a home for poor consumptives, with no one to remember her, reads as the book's true climax: the woman who wanted real feeling dies of a wasting disease, feeling nothing much at all, unmourned. Lena's ending is the starkest, 'Lena died, and there was nothing more to say about her,' a sentence that performs the erasure it describes. One reading: Stein is showing lives that society valued so little it could not narrate their deaths with feeling. Another: the flat endings are mercy, a refusal to sentimentalize women who were never given the material for a dramatic life. There is also the reading that the prose itself, with its circling repetitions, is the only memory these women get, the book remembering them when nobody in Bridgepoint does. It lands because the flatness is not coldness; it is the sound of a world that never learned to notice these women while they were alive.

1. 1.Stein wrote Melanctha as a white author portraying a Black woman's interior life; the reception split, with Richard Wright hearing the speech of his grandmother and Claude McKay finding nothing striking about Negro life. What can this story do, and what can it not, given who wrote it and when?
2. 2.Compare the three endings: Anna's summary judgment, Melanctha's unmourned death, Lena's 'nothing more to say.' Why does Stein flatten each ending instead of dramatizing it, and what does that flatness ask of the reader?
3. 3.The circular conversations between Jeff and Melanctha are the book's most famous passages. Does the repetition make their failure to understand each other more real, or does it make the reader stop listening, as Jeff stops listening?

Readers who want to see modernist prose being born, and anyone drawn to stories of women worn down by duty and desire alike. If later Stein intimidates you, this is the accessible way in.

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