Did Alice Toklas undergo conversion, or seeking Absolution?
Posted: Mon Jul 30, 2018 2:50 pm
Did Alice Toklas undergo a conversion moment, or was she seeking absolution?
For a life of sin, living with her lesbian lover and co-hort Gertrude Stein?
She and Gertrude were soul mates, who shared their lives up until Gertrude's death in 1946. Years later, Alice would check herself into a convent where she remained until her death in 1967 at the age of 89.
Both she and Gertrude were born and raised Jewish. In their day and age being a lesbian couple was not as accepted as it would be in today's era. Was it from guilt seeking absolution for her life of living in sin with Stein that led Alice to move to a convent in her final years? Or might she have had a conversion moment where she found Christ, the Catholic way?
A third and perhaps more realistic conjecture was it was based on purely financial motive. Since Gertrude's and Alice's relationship was not legal, Gertrude's family took possession of the valuable art collection Gertrude had amassed during her lifetime, leaving Alice worse off than Gertrude willed by leaving her estate to her. Stein's family literally removed them from Alice's home and spirited them to a bank vault while she was away on vacation.
Alice's later years were meager ones, compared to the days she and Gertrude had spent in their Paris salon hobnobbing with Picasso, Matisse, Ernest Hemingway, and others of the literary and art world.
She became a Roman Catholic in her old age. And died in poverty, living among nuns (who take a vow of poverty to become nuns.) She's buried next to Stein nonetheless, with her name engraved on the backside of Gertrude's tombstone.
Thoughts?
For a life of sin, living with her lesbian lover and co-hort Gertrude Stein?
She and Gertrude were soul mates, who shared their lives up until Gertrude's death in 1946. Years later, Alice would check herself into a convent where she remained until her death in 1967 at the age of 89.
Both she and Gertrude were born and raised Jewish. In their day and age being a lesbian couple was not as accepted as it would be in today's era. Was it from guilt seeking absolution for her life of living in sin with Stein that led Alice to move to a convent in her final years? Or might she have had a conversion moment where she found Christ, the Catholic way?
A third and perhaps more realistic conjecture was it was based on purely financial motive. Since Gertrude's and Alice's relationship was not legal, Gertrude's family took possession of the valuable art collection Gertrude had amassed during her lifetime, leaving Alice worse off than Gertrude willed by leaving her estate to her. Stein's family literally removed them from Alice's home and spirited them to a bank vault while she was away on vacation.
Alice's later years were meager ones, compared to the days she and Gertrude had spent in their Paris salon hobnobbing with Picasso, Matisse, Ernest Hemingway, and others of the literary and art world.
She became a Roman Catholic in her old age. And died in poverty, living among nuns (who take a vow of poverty to become nuns.) She's buried next to Stein nonetheless, with her name engraved on the backside of Gertrude's tombstone.
Thoughts?
