Reframing the Modern City: Gendered Networks in Stein’s and Loy’s Urban Landscapes

Abstract

This essay compares Gertrude Stein’s Three Lives and selected poetry from Mina Loy’s The Lost Lunar Baedeker to visual art of their corresponding movements (Cubism and Futurism). It argues that literature reveals a window into female social networks in urban environments which visual art obscures, emphasising female interiority as crucial to this process. Yet, where Stein argues rigidly to Cubist principles to achieve a remarkably different result to the visual art examined, Loy adapts with Futurist principles in order to doso.