A light skinned black woman from the south, Geraldine considers herself and her family superior to other black families. She keeps her house immaculately clean and is obsessed with the physical appearance of her home and family. As a mother and wife she is cold, and feels true affection only for her cat.
Geraldine Quotes in The Bluest Eye
The The Bluest Eye quotes below are all either spoken by Geraldine or refer to Geraldine. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Vintage edition of The Bluest Eye published in 2007.
Chapter 5
Quotes
White kids; his mother did not like him to play with niggers. She had explained to him the difference between colored people and niggers. They were easily identifiable. Colored people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and loud… The line between colored and nigger was not always clear; subtle and telltale signs threatened to erode it, and the watch had to be constant.
Related Characters:
Geraldine, Louis Junior
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Bluest Eye LitChart as a printable PDF.
Geraldine Character Timeline in The Bluest Eye
The timeline below shows where the character Geraldine appears in The Bluest Eye. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5
Geraldine is one of these black women. She moved with her husband and her cat to...
(full context)
...but his mother calls them "niggers" and only allows Junior to play with "colored" children. Geraldine explains to Junior that there is a difference between colored people like himself and "niggers"....
(full context)
Immediately after the altercation, Geraldine arrives home and Junior accuses Pecola of killing the cat. Geraldine picks up the cat's...
(full context)