The Round House

by

Louise Erdrich

Geraldine Character Analysis

Geraldine is a Chippewa woman whose brutal rape catalyzes the events of the novel. Joe's mother and Bazil's wife, Geraldine is a tribal record keeper who is widely considered to be smart, beautiful, and highly competent; a good worker, mother, and wife. Geraldine's rape changes her, however, leaving her jumpy, lethargic, and constantly afraid. Geraldine rarely leaves her room in the weeks that follow the rape and she refuses to give up information about her rapist, Linden Lark, for fear of endangering herself and Mayla, a woman that Linden has kidnapped and threatened to kill. As Geraldine's experience renders her unable to mother Joe, her absence also catapults Joe into adulthood. Although Joe and Bazil try to help Geraldine, Geraldine feels that they are unable to understand her pain, suggesting the limits of men's understanding of the effects of gendered violence. Geraldine's rape exemplifies the real-life sexual assault patterns that plague many Native reservations.

Geraldine Quotes in The Round House

The The Round House 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:
Women, Bigotry, and Sexual Violence Theme Icon
).
Chapter 2 Quotes

We were not churchgoers. This was our ritual. Our breaking bread, our communion… But now they stood staring at each other helplessly over the broken dish… If we'd sat down together that night, I do believe things would have gone on… Anything would have been better than the frozen suspension of feeling in which she mounted the stairs… My father and I had followed her to the doorway, and I think as we watched her we both had the sense that she was ascending to a place of utter loneliness from which she might never be retrieved.

Related Characters: Joe Coutts (speaker), Geraldine, Bazil
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

We read with a concentrated intensity. My father had become convinced that somewhere within his bench briefs, memos, summaries, and decisions lay the identity of the man whose act had nearly severed my mother’s spirit from her body.

Related Characters: Joe Coutts (speaker), Geraldine, Bazil
Page Number: 45
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

Now you listen to me, Joe. You will not badger me or harass me. You will leave me to think the way I want to think, here. I have to heal any way I can. You will stop asking questions and you will not give me any worry. You will not go after him. You will not terrify me, Joe. I’ve had enough fear for my whole life. You will not add to my fear. You will not add to my sorrows. You will not be part of this… All of this… It is all a violation.

Related Characters: Geraldine (speaker), Joe Coutts, Linden Lark
Page Number: 89-90
Explanation and Analysis:

I should have told you I am proud of you… But do you understand that if something should happen to you, Joe, that your mother and I would … we couldn't bear it. You give us life…
You gave me life, I said. That’s how it's supposed to work. So let me do what I want with it! I ran for my bike…He tried to catch at me with his arms but I swerved at the last moment and put on a burst of speed that put me out of his reach.

Related Characters: Joe Coutts (speaker), Bazil (speaker), Geraldine
Page Number: 93-94
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

Now the crane Mom used to watch, or its offspring, flapped slowly past my window. That evening it cast the image not of itself but of an angel on my wall…Through some refraction of brilliance the wings arched up from the slender body. Then the feathers took fire so the creature was consumed by light.

Related Characters: Joe Coutts (speaker), Geraldine
Page Number: 148
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

I suppose I am one of those people who just hates Indians generally… my feeling is that Indian women are—what he called us, I don't want to say… He said we have no standing under the law for a good reason and yet have continued to diminish the white man and to take his honor… I won't get caught, he said… I know as much law as a judge. Know any judges? I have no fear… The strong should rule the weak. Instead of the weak the strong! It is the weak who pull down the strong.

Related Characters: Geraldine (speaker), Linden Lark (speaker), Joe Coutts, Bazil, Mayla Wolfskin
Page Number: 161
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

I should have felt happy watching them across the table, but instead I was angered by their ignorance. Like I was the grown-up and the two of them holding hands were oblivious children. They had no idea what I had gone through for them.

Related Characters: Joe Coutts (speaker), Geraldine, Bazil
Page Number: 305
Explanation and Analysis:

Behind them in the next room the shelves of old books stood… Meditations. Plato. The Iliad. Shakespeare… There was William Warren, Basil Johnston, The Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner, and everything by Vine Deloria Jr… I looked at the books as if they could help us. But we had moved way far past books now into the stories Mooshum told in his sleep. There were no quotations in my father’s repertoire for where we were, and it was beyond me at the time to think of Mooshum’s sleeptalking as a reading of traditional case law.

Related Characters: Joe Coutts (speaker), Mooshum, Geraldine, Bazil
Page Number: 307
Explanation and Analysis:

In all those miles… there was nothing to be said. I cannot remember speaking and I cannot remember my mother or my father speaking. I knew that they knew everything. The sentence was to endure… I do remember, though, the familiar sight of the roadside café just before we would cross the reservation line. On every one of my childhood trips that place was always a stop for ice cream, coffee and a newspaper, pie… But we did not stop this time. We passed over in a sweep of sorrow that would persist into our small forever. We just kept going.

Related Characters: Joe Coutts (speaker), Cappy Lafournais, Geraldine, Bazil
Page Number: 317
Explanation and Analysis:
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Geraldine Quotes in The Round House

The The Round House 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:
Women, Bigotry, and Sexual Violence Theme Icon
).
Chapter 2 Quotes

We were not churchgoers. This was our ritual. Our breaking bread, our communion… But now they stood staring at each other helplessly over the broken dish… If we'd sat down together that night, I do believe things would have gone on… Anything would have been better than the frozen suspension of feeling in which she mounted the stairs… My father and I had followed her to the doorway, and I think as we watched her we both had the sense that she was ascending to a place of utter loneliness from which she might never be retrieved.

Related Characters: Joe Coutts (speaker), Geraldine, Bazil
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

We read with a concentrated intensity. My father had become convinced that somewhere within his bench briefs, memos, summaries, and decisions lay the identity of the man whose act had nearly severed my mother’s spirit from her body.

Related Characters: Joe Coutts (speaker), Geraldine, Bazil
Page Number: 45
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

Now you listen to me, Joe. You will not badger me or harass me. You will leave me to think the way I want to think, here. I have to heal any way I can. You will stop asking questions and you will not give me any worry. You will not go after him. You will not terrify me, Joe. I’ve had enough fear for my whole life. You will not add to my fear. You will not add to my sorrows. You will not be part of this… All of this… It is all a violation.

Related Characters: Geraldine (speaker), Joe Coutts, Linden Lark
Page Number: 89-90
Explanation and Analysis:

I should have told you I am proud of you… But do you understand that if something should happen to you, Joe, that your mother and I would … we couldn't bear it. You give us life…
You gave me life, I said. That’s how it's supposed to work. So let me do what I want with it! I ran for my bike…He tried to catch at me with his arms but I swerved at the last moment and put on a burst of speed that put me out of his reach.

Related Characters: Joe Coutts (speaker), Bazil (speaker), Geraldine
Page Number: 93-94
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

Now the crane Mom used to watch, or its offspring, flapped slowly past my window. That evening it cast the image not of itself but of an angel on my wall…Through some refraction of brilliance the wings arched up from the slender body. Then the feathers took fire so the creature was consumed by light.

Related Characters: Joe Coutts (speaker), Geraldine
Page Number: 148
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

I suppose I am one of those people who just hates Indians generally… my feeling is that Indian women are—what he called us, I don't want to say… He said we have no standing under the law for a good reason and yet have continued to diminish the white man and to take his honor… I won't get caught, he said… I know as much law as a judge. Know any judges? I have no fear… The strong should rule the weak. Instead of the weak the strong! It is the weak who pull down the strong.

Related Characters: Geraldine (speaker), Linden Lark (speaker), Joe Coutts, Bazil, Mayla Wolfskin
Page Number: 161
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

I should have felt happy watching them across the table, but instead I was angered by their ignorance. Like I was the grown-up and the two of them holding hands were oblivious children. They had no idea what I had gone through for them.

Related Characters: Joe Coutts (speaker), Geraldine, Bazil
Page Number: 305
Explanation and Analysis:

Behind them in the next room the shelves of old books stood… Meditations. Plato. The Iliad. Shakespeare… There was William Warren, Basil Johnston, The Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner, and everything by Vine Deloria Jr… I looked at the books as if they could help us. But we had moved way far past books now into the stories Mooshum told in his sleep. There were no quotations in my father’s repertoire for where we were, and it was beyond me at the time to think of Mooshum’s sleeptalking as a reading of traditional case law.

Related Characters: Joe Coutts (speaker), Mooshum, Geraldine, Bazil
Page Number: 307
Explanation and Analysis:

In all those miles… there was nothing to be said. I cannot remember speaking and I cannot remember my mother or my father speaking. I knew that they knew everything. The sentence was to endure… I do remember, though, the familiar sight of the roadside café just before we would cross the reservation line. On every one of my childhood trips that place was always a stop for ice cream, coffee and a newspaper, pie… But we did not stop this time. We passed over in a sweep of sorrow that would persist into our small forever. We just kept going.

Related Characters: Joe Coutts (speaker), Cappy Lafournais, Geraldine, Bazil
Page Number: 317
Explanation and Analysis: