Bernice Bobs Her Hair

by

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Part 1 Quotes

The main function of the balcony was critical. It occasionally showed grudging admiration, but never approval, for it is well known among ladies over thirty-five that when the younger set dance in the summer-time it is with the very worst intentions in the world, and if they are not bombarded with stony eyes stray couples will dance weird barbaric interludes in the corners, and the more popular, more dangerous girls will sometimes be kissed in the parked limousines of unsuspecting dowagers.

Related Characters: Marjorie Harvey, Warren McIntyre
Page Number: 25-26
Explanation and Analysis:

No matter how brilliant or beautiful a girl may be, the reputation of not being frequently cut in on makes her position at a dance unfortunate. Perhaps boys prefer her company to that of the butterflies with whom they dance a dozen times an evening, but youth in this jazz-nourished generation is temperamentally restless, and the idea of foxtrotting more than one full fox trot with the same girl is distasteful, not to say odious.

Related Characters: Bernice, Otis Ormonde
Page Number: 28
Explanation and Analysis:

Warren fidgeted. Then with a sudden charitable impulse he decided to try part of his line on her. He turned and looked at her eyes.

“You’ve got an awfully kissable mouth,” he began quietly.

Related Characters: Warren McIntyre (speaker), Bernice
Page Number: 28
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2 Quotes

Marjorie never giggled, was never frightened, seldom embarrassed, and in fact had very few of the qualities which Bernice considered appropriately and blessedly feminine.

Related Characters: Bernice, Marjorie Harvey
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:

“Sarah Hopkins refers to Genevieve and Roberta and me as gardenia girls! I'll bet she'd give ten years of her life and her European education to be a gardenia girl and have three or four men in love with her and be cut in on every few feet at dances.”

Related Characters: Marjorie Harvey (speaker), Bernice, Mrs. Harvey / Aunt Josephine
Page Number: 31
Explanation and Analysis:

“I think it’s that crazy Indian blood in Bernice,” continued Marjorie. “Maybe she’s a reversion to type. Indian women all just sat round and never said anything.”

Related Characters: Marjorie Harvey (speaker), Bernice, Mrs. Harvey / Aunt Josephine
Page Number: 31
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3 Quotes

“Girls like you are responsible for all the tiresome colorless marriages; all those ghastly inefficiencies that pass as feminine qualities. What a blow it must be when a man with imagination marries the beautiful bundle of clothes that he's been building ideals round, and finds that she's just a weak, whining, cowardly mass of affectations!”

Related Characters: Marjorie Harvey (speaker), Bernice
Page Number: 34
Explanation and Analysis:

“I hate dainty minds […] But a girl has to be dainty in person. If she looks like a million dollars she can talk about Russia, ping-pong, or the League of Nations and get away with it.”

Related Characters: Marjorie Harvey (speaker), Bernice
Page Number: 35
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4 Quotes

“Do you believe in bobbed hair?” asked G. Reece in the same undertone.

“I think it’s unmoral,” affirmed Bernice gravely. “But, of course, you’ve either got to amuse people or feed ‘em or shock ‘em.”

Related Characters: Bernice (speaker), G. Reece Stoddard (speaker)
Related Symbols: Hair
Page Number: 37
Explanation and Analysis:

But a few minutes before she fell asleep a rebellious thought was churning drowsily in her brain—after all, it was she who had done it. Marjorie, to be sure, had given her her conversation, but then Marjorie got much of her conversation out of things she read. Bernice had bought the red dress, though she had never valued it highly before Marjorie dug it out of her trunk—and her own voice had said the words, her own lips had smiled, her own feet had danced.

Related Characters: Bernice, Marjorie Harvey
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 5 Quotes

It was all she could do to keep from clutching her hair with both hands to protect it from the suddenly hostile world. Yet she did neither. Even the thought of her mother was no deterrent now. This was the test supreme of her sportsmanship; her right to walk unchallenged in the starry heaven of popular girls.

Related Characters: Bernice
Related Symbols: Hair
Page Number: 42
Explanation and Analysis:

It was ugly as sin—she had known it would be ugly as sin. Her face’s chief charm had been a Madonna-like simplicity. Now that was gone and she was—well, frightfully mediocre—not stagy; only ridiculous, like a Greenwich Villager who had left her spectacles at home.

Related Characters: Bernice
Related Symbols: Hair
Page Number: 43-44
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 6 Quotes

“Why, child,” cried Mrs. Harvey, “in her paper on ‘The Foibles of the Younger Generation’ that she read at the last meeting of the Thursday Club she devoted fifteen minutes to bobbed hair. It’s her pet abomination.”

Related Characters: Mrs. Harvey / Aunt Josephine (speaker), Bernice, Mrs. Deyo
Related Symbols: Hair
Page Number: 44
Explanation and Analysis:
No matches.