The story i choose to read was called “All I know About Gertrude Stein” written by Jeanette Winterson. Found in the Granta Magazine; Granta115: The F Word, in Summer of 2011
The story is an examination of love. The narrative of the story is given by Louise who is traveling to Paris to understand something about love. In Paris she considers the great love story of Alice Toklas and Gertrude Stein. The love question is harder to solve than the Grand Unified Theory of Everything. It examines how love has changed as women changed to have careers. Alice was from San Francisco but she remained in Paris where Leo moved out of his sister’s home and Alice moved in. They had a great love story that lasted 40 years. They made love new every day. Louise struggles with love as she is supposed to be an independent career woman, but she is a romantic person who strives to make her relationship work. Louise writes “F” is for fear. Louise writes that she and her lover will fail, get frustrated, fall out, fight, all the F words. She also wants him to remember another f word “forgive”. Gertrude Stein wrote The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas which became a huge best-seller and they travel to the United States to promote the book. In 1946 Gertrude Stein developed stomach cancer and Alice held her hand as she died. Louise’s concludes that women will have to fight and take up arms for love.
Characters:
Louise
Louise’s Lover (Not named in the story)
Alice Toklas (Lover of Gertrude Stein, the thin one cut like a chisel)
Alice’s Mother (who died young)
Gertrude Stein (writer, “the fat one built like a boulder)
Gertrude’s Mother (also died young)
Gertrude’s Brother Leo (painter who lived with Gertrude until she and Alice became lovers)
Pierre Balmain (designer who made suits for Gertrude and Alice)
From this network graph you can see how the characters are connected. Lines that are closer together are characters with stronger bonds. You can see who knows each other in the story. But it had many limitation. You can tell the names of the Characters, but don’t know anything about them. Don’t know any background on the characters, personality traits, or what their stories are. The network graph just expresses the connections.
I couldn’t figure out exactly how to make all the connections i wanted to.