The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Although laws at the time did not officially permit women to marry each other, Toklas was in essence Gertrude Stein’s wife and fulfilled many of the roles performed by the wives of artists, including domestic work, typing Stein’s manuscripts, and keeping other artists’ wives company. Toklas’s actual autobiography, which she kept threatening to write, would have partly been a fly-on-the-wall account of her life with Stein and the influence her partner had on the biggest names in Modernism. However, as Toklas hadn’t gotten around to writing her autobiography and Stein wanted to produce a lucrative book, Stein took it upon herself to write Toklas’s autobiography and used her partner as a mouthpiece from which to narrate her own experiences. Although the opening chapters do report Toklas’s early life, Toklas largely fades into the background as the text shifts to focus on Gertrude Stein, who is always referred to by her full name. Thus, in The Autobiography, Toklas’s subjectivity is subordinate to Stein’s.

At the end of The Autobiography, Toklas asserts, “I am a pretty good housekeeper and pretty good gardener and a pretty good needlewoman and a pretty good secretary and a pretty good editor and a pretty good vet for dogs and I have to do them all at once and I found it difficult to add being a pretty good author” (214). Her list reads like the words of a harried housewife who cannot create because she is bogged down with all the ancillary tasks that facilitate another’s creativity. In A Room of One’s Own (1929), British Modernist writer Virginia Woolf imagines that William Shakespeare had an equally talented sister who was nevertheless thwarted by her domestic responsibilities and the societal expectations for people of her sex. While Toklas, who was deeply in love with Stein and believed in her genius, was happy to promote her partner’s work, this came at the expense of telling her own story.

On the other hand, Toklas’s favorite pursuits, which included needlework and knitting, were creative in themselves and suited her calm, meditative personality. Stein was interested in the “normal” above the “abnormal” because the latter was too assertive in its wish to be interesting, and she would have found the subject of Toklas’s more normal life interesting (70). The focus on a woman engaged in the everyday tasks of her life was a continuation of the theme in Stein’s earlier work Three Lives (1909), which told the stories of three women whose lives were restricted by their social position. The Autobiography reports that while Stein and her artists discussed serious artistic and intellectual matters, Toklas and the wives would talk about traditionally feminine, everyday topics. For example, The Autobiography describes Toklas shadowing Fernande as she talks about hats and walking around Paris to show off fashionable headgear. However, as Stein cannot offer Toklas’s feelings on the matter, the reader gets little of her perspective, and she remains an elusive figure. In later chapters, the narrative refers less frequently to Toklas’s independent personal experiences, and Toklas is mentioned mostly as an accessory to Stein.

Toklas went to Paris of her own accord, wooed by the promise that the world of modern art was being built there. However, once she met Stein, she was happy to let the latter be tastemaker. Instead of creating her own publishable art, she preferred to learn about Modernism through dusting the paintings and typing Stein’s texts. In this daily engagement with the work, Toklas educated herself, opened herself to new influences, and broadened her taste. Overall, while Stein was alive, Toklas gave up her autobiography to her. Only two decades after Stein’s death did Toklas tell her own story in her own words in her real autobiography, What Is Remembered (1963).