Tag Archives: Miss Furr and Miss Skeene

Ms. Furr and Ms. Skeene – Gay or Just Happy?

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Gertrude Stein’s “Miss Furr and Miss Skeene.”

The first two paragraphs on page numbered 499.

“Georgine 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 them…”

When I first read the story, I noticed a lot of reputation of words, especially the word “gay”. Knowing that this was written in 1900’s, I automatically thought to replace the word “gay” with “happy”. Towards the end of the story, I realized there was more to the story besides them just being “happy”. 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 reader’s attention and the meaning of the word “gay” 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 “cultivate their voices” might mean searching for their sexuality. In the second paragraph I felt like both women were having some kind of relationships with “dark and heavy” and “not so dark” men while they were exploring their sexuality with these men and with each other.

Assignment for Tuesday, 2/18

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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.