– verb
– to grow or raise under conditions that you can control.
– http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cultivating
– “She met Georgine Skeene there who was cultivating her voice.”
– Both main characters in this passage, Georgine Skeene and Helen Furr, both cultivated their voices and both became gay.
Helen Furr had quite a pleasant home. Mrs. Furr was quite a pleasant woman. Mr. Furr was quite a pleasant
man. Helen Furr had quite a pleasant voice a voice quite worth cultivating. She did not mind working. She
worked to cultivate her voice. She did not find it gay living in the same place where she had always been
living. She went to a place where some were cultivating something, voices and other things needing
cultivating. She met Georgine Skeene there who was cultivating her voice which some thought was quite a
pleasant one. Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene lived together then. Georgine Skeene liked travelling. Helen
Furr did not care about travelling, she liked to stay in one place and be gay there. They were together then and
travelled to another place and stayed there and were gay there.
This first paragraph talks about a woman, Helen Furr who leaves her husband, Mr. Furr, so she can be “gay” and live with Georgine Skeene. Although Helen had a “quite pleasant home” she couldn’t live in a house where she couldn’t cultivate her voice. She met Georgine Skeene at a place where they both were cultivating their voices. The first paragraph ends with Helen moving out , leaving Mr. Furr, and moving in with Georgine Skeene. Evidence of Mrs. Furr leaving Mr. Furr other then “Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene lived together then”, notice how in the beginning of the poem Gertrude Stein refers to Helen as Mrs. Furr, but after she meets Georgine, she’s referred to as Miss. Furr. These two lived with each other for a long time The obvious motif is this passage is the word gay. Gay expresses the relationship between Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene, but also expresses and glorifies the happiness shared between the two. Stein uses repetition on the word gay so readers can focus on the different meanings of the word gay. Since they lived gay for so long, their lifestyle became very gay, everything they did and say was gay, gayer then the day before. Another motif was the word cultivating, meaning to improve growth. The lesbian couple both started cultivating on their voices, then they grew to cultivate their relationship. Eventually they ended up parting ways due to their different desires. Although these two women grew to accept themselves and grew to help each other to be who they really wanted to be, their seperation wasn’t at all heartbreaking since they both benefited from the relationship.
Gay
adjective
Definition:
– sexually attracted to someone who is the same sex
– of, relating to, or used by homosexuals
– happy and excited : cheerful and lively
Found in:
“Miss Furr and Miss Skeene” by Gertrude Stein
The word “gay” is widely used throughout the text (136 times, to be more exact). Back when it was written, in 1925, the word in question had exclusively the connotation of “happy and excited : cheerful and lively”. Many people attribute Stein’s work for having baptized the term with the meaning “homosexual”, as we are used to nowadays, due to the homoerotic-charged feel of the essay.
That reminds me of the 1943 Busby Berkeley Technicolor Musical, “The Gang’s All Here” starring (my idol) Carmen Miranda. Below, you can see a clip from the movie where she says “gay” several times. Almost 20 years after “Miss Furr and Miss Skeene” was written, the word is still mentioned without its most current meaning (or is it?). She says: “Some people say I dress too gay/ but everyday I feel so gay/ and when I’m gay I dress that way/ something wrong with that?/ No!”
As the manifesto brainstorms continue to come in, a different assignment for Thursday’s class. Rather than writing a new post, please comment on 3 posts from either this most recent assignment or the prior one (the two since we last met).
Comments should be thoughtful, substantial (aim for 100 words), and should continue the thought process that the initial poster began. If your comments are shorter, consider what else you could add to them to get either the author of the initial post further along in his or her thoughts, or what might inspire someone else to comment in response to your comment and the initial post.
A few words about commenting:
I can’t wait to see how our commenting experiment goes–if it goes well, we might move to a post and comments in the week rather than two posts.
If you have any questions, please ask them as replies to this post. See you in class on Thursday and online before then!
“Helen Furr had quite a pleasant home. Mrs. Furr was quite a pleasant woman. Mr. Furr was quite a pleasant man. Helen Furr had quite a pleasant voice a voice quite worth cultivating. She did not mind working. She worked to cultivate her voice. She did not find it gay living in the same place where she had always been living. She went to a place where some were cultivating something, voices and other things needing cultivating. She met Georgine Skeene there who was cultivating her voice which some thought was quite a pleasant one. Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene lived together then.” (Miss Furr and Miss Skeene, first paragraph)
In this text, the overuse of the word gay is done purposely and repeatedly. In this simple paragraph, i can understand that Mrs. Furr was married to Mr. Furr, but decided to instead “cultivate” her voice and live with Georgine Skeene instead. This shows that she decided that although her husband was a pleasant man, she instead wanted to find herself more and be with this woman instead. The poem goes on to use the word gay very many times, and i feel like is this done so the message of the poem is blatant: they were gay and they were happy together, together both women were able to find their voices more and be happy together. However in the end, they did not end up together. I believe Steins’ point here was to show that the whole experience of them finding each other and finding their voice and living together shows that it changed them as people and made them better and braver, as after Helen Furr was able to tell people about being gay. The meaning of the word gay seems to change in the text. In the beginning, gay seemed to be used for “happy” but later on in the story, it is clear that gay now means the relationship between two of the same gender. Stein uses simple language with a much deeper rooted meaning in order to convey the story of Miss Furr and Miss Skeene.
Gertrude Steinâs âMiss Furr and Miss Skeene.â
The first two paragraphs on page numbered 499.
âGeorgine Skeene and Helen Furr were living where they were both cultivating their voices and they were gay there. They visited where Helen Furr had come from and then they went to where they were living where they were then regularly living.
There were some dark and heavy men there then. There were some who were not so heavy and some who were not so dark. Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene sat regularly with them. They sat regularly with the ones who were dark and heavy. They sat regularly with the ones who were not so dark. They sat regularly with the ones that were not so heavy. They sat with them regularly, sat with some of them. They went with them regularly went with themâŚâ
When I first read the story, I noticed a lot of reputation of words, especially the word âgayâ. Knowing that this was written in 1900âs, I automatically thought to replace the word âgayâ with âhappyâ. Towards the end of the story, I realized there was more to the story besides them just being âhappyâ. The second time I read it I used the word gay as it is. I felt like it did have something to do with homosexuality and Getrude Stein purposely repeat the word to catch the readerâs attention and the meaning of the word âgayâ really to strike out.
From my understanding, in the first paragraph George Skeene and Helen Furr moved to where Helen Furr was from. There, they were able to âcultivate their voicesâ might mean searching for their sexuality. In the second paragraph I felt like both women were having some kind of relationships with âdark and heavyâ and ânot so darkâ men while they were exploring their sexuality with these men and with each other.
“Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene were regularly living where very many were living and cultivating in themselves something. Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene were living very regularly then, being very regular then in being gay then. They did then learn many ways to be gay and they were then being gay being quite regular in being gay, being gay and they were learning little things, little things in ways of being gay, they were very regular then, they were learning very many little things in ways of being gay, they were being gay and using these little things they were learning to have to be gay with regularly gay with then and they were gay the same amount they had been gay. They were quite gay, they were quite regular, they were learning little things, gay little things, they were gay inside them the same amount they had been gay, they were gay the same length of time they had been gay every day.” Found on page 499 of Gertrude Steins “Miss Furr and Miss Skeene”.
I believe that the main idea of Steins passage was happiness. I believe this because as I was reading the passage Stein spoke about the things and ways that Hellen Furr and Georgine Skeene were happy. I’m not really sure what their relationship was, but they lived together for a while and were happy. In this passage Stein says, “Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene were living very regularly then, being very regular then in being gay then.” Stein says that at this point they were living regular lives. They were nuetral, not happy. After that Stein says that they would look for things that made them happy. The author says that at one point they were happy both inside and out. The author also says that they were learning new ways of being happy. Its pretty interesting that Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene were always happy. They were never feeling anything but happy in this story. They were also both singers and that made them pretty happy also. At the end, Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene lived separately. The author tells the reader that Mrs. Furr goes on living in the same place and being happy as always, but we hear nothing about Georgine Skeene.
We have several readings for this long week: selections from Chapter 1 and Chapter 3 of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, as well as “Professions for Women,” also by Woolf, plus Mina Loy’s “Feminist Manifesto” and Gertrude Stein’s “Miss Furr and Miss Skeene.” I distributed copies of all of these readings in class on Thursday. If you want a copy and weren’t able to come, please let me know. You can try stopping by my office, N520–I’ve left copies in a folder on the corner of my desk. I recommend that you do, since I noted which parts of A Room of One’s Own we’ll focus on.
Rather than dividing the readings by day, I encourage you to read them in whatever order you choose. I’m curious to hear about what is difficult for you, what intrigues you, what inspires you, what you disagree with.
For your posts, choose a passage from one reading that you think contains the (or one) main idea from that reading. Include the entire passage (tip: you can copy and paste it from the online texts linked from our Readings page), give an indication of where in the text it comes from by noting what the paragraph begins (the first few words or sentence), and the title and author of the reading. Then include your understanding of the passage, pointing to particular words or phrases that you read to develop your understanding. Try to go slowly through particular words or images. What is the main point of the passage, and how does it connect to the overall reading? What do you have to say to support or refute it?
Use the category Homework Responses (not Homework Assignments, which should be reserved for the actual instructions), and the category of the author’s name. Choose the tag for the title of the specific text you wrote about. If you’re writing about A Room of One’s Own, choose that title and the tag that reflects the chapter you wrote about, Chapter 1 or Chapter 3, as well as any tags that indicate the theme or topic you chose to write about–you might need to add that tag, rather than choosing from among the already-used tags.
If you have questions, please ask them in reply to this post. This group of readings is challenging, so I hope that we can work together to understand and discuss each text. These readings are also some of the boldest of the semester and will help shape the framework of our course. That means that we’ll refer back to them throughout the semester, so it’s really important that we discuss them carefully and understand them thoroughly.
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