Relationship To Stein's Personal Life
The novel is entirely connected to Stein's personal life. She begins the novel with her earliest memories of Paris and anything French she experienced throughout her childhood in San Francisco. She lived in Paris, France her entire adult life and it is quite obvious that she is deeply connected to the city, country and entire culture. She has made several stereotypes about the French culture that may have helped aided with her obsession with France.
There are constant statements about how the French are logical and fashionable while also saying that they are civilized and everything is exciting and calm. The war is a significant part of her life in France; there are constant references to it throughout the book. At one point she refers to war 14 times in four pages. The book does not make it quite clear what time during the war she is talking about, because the book was published in 1940 and the war made official in France in 1940 but Poland was invaded in 1939. It is clear that the war had a great impact on her life, but with only a year in between the invasion of Poland and publishing of the book there is no real way to determine what parts of it she is referring to.
Read more about this topic: Paris France (novel)
Famous quotes containing the words relationship, stein, personal and/or life:
“Only men of moral and mental force, of a patriotic regard for the relationship of the two races, can be of real service as ministers in the South. Less theology and more of human brotherhood, less declamation and more common sense and love for truth, must be the qualifications of the new ministry that shall yet save the race from the evils of false teaching.”
—Fannie Barrier Williams (1855–1944)
“There is no passion more dominant and instinctive in the human spirit than the need of the country to which one belongs.... The time comes when nothing in the world is so important as a breath of one’s own particular climate. If it were one’s last penny it would be used for that return passage.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The terrible thing is that one cannot be a Communist and not let oneself in for the shameful act of recantation. One cannot be a Communist and preserve an iota of one’s personal integrity.”
—Milovan Djilas (b. 1911)
“It is a momentous fact that a man may be good, or he may be bad; his life may be true, or it may be false; it may be either a shame or a glory to him. The good man builds himself up; the bad man destroys himself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)