Coda: Gertrude Stein Icon

The coda expands on the implications of the textual and visual artefacts of Stein’s masculine homosocial desires by cross-reading her ambivalent reflections on celebrity in Everybody’s Autobiography (1936) with her frequent appearances in the public consciousness from 2011 to 2012. Although Chapter One showed that by the early twenty-first century Stein had emerged as an icon both of modernism and of queer culture, that high standing has recently been challenged because of her homonational attitudes and masculine homosocial bonds with Vichy collaborator Bernard Fäy. If Gertrude Stein’s Masculinity uses psychoanalytic theory to present Stein as an important character in the stories of modernism and queer theory, that story will continue as she circulates into new contexts. As she does so, there will likely be further changes to the ways that her masculinity is made available for view, with unpredictable consequences for her iconicity.