An archive of modern medical culture: the critique of turn-of-the-century medical discourses in Gertrude Stein's Three Lives

Through a close reading of Gertrude Stein's depiction of illness in Three Lives (1909), this article argues that the text addresses the emerging problems posed by the advancement of modern medicine and critiques some of the dominant medical discourses at the turn of the century. This article discusses the text's challenge to the dominant medical discourses of the time from three perspectives: its problematisation of modern medicine's tendency to ignore the context in which the patient is situated; its exposure of the hierarchical relationship between the physician and the patient; and its questioning of medical ideals such as objectivity, certainty, and cure. The article also demonstrates Stein's fusion of feminist and medical critiques and her integration of racial, ethnic, and national dynamics into her reflection on turn-of-the-century medical culture. It thus proposes Three Lives as an archive of turn-of-the-century medical culture, particularly modern medicine's entanglement with gender, racial, ethnic, and national tensions.