the second wave of the Great Migration after the First World War. Geraldine prides herself on being a good Christian wife--that is, one who dutifully has sex with her husband but never exhibits any fondness for the act. She is particular about cleanliness and good presentation, priding herself on her home. Junior uses the comforts within the house to tempt Pecola into keeping him company.

Geraldine is also a lighter-skinned Black woman and, like everyone else in the novel, has negative associations with Pecola's very dark skin. She sees Pecola, with her uneven socks and nappy hair, and feels a disgust for an aspect of Blackness that Geraldine has worked hard to refute by establishing herself as "decent." She expels Pecola—the epitome, for Geraldine, of slovenliness and all things lower-class—by calling her a "Black bitch."

Geraldine is also likely outraged that Pecola was in the house alone with Junior, suggesting the possibility of sexual impropriety. She is the type of woman who would have been more likely to have blamed Pecola for trying to corrupt her son. This also plays into the stereotype that darker-skinned Black girls and women were more likely to be "loose" sexually.

Geraldine curses at Pecola through the fur of her dead cat and never looks at the girl, whom she deems unworthy of her gaze. Geraldine's loftier status within the Black community depends, she thinks, on rejecting Pecola. Morrison illustrates how Geraldine, like so many others in the novel, forces Pecola to bear the weight of her self-hatred so that she can eke out a more comfortable space for herself within a racist society.