Mrs. Harvey

Character Analysis

Mrs. Harvey is an old-fashioned lady – when she was growing up, a girl just had to be pretty and come from a good family to have a nice time. She's understandably bewildered by her bold, daring daughter, and can't quite see why Marjorie dislikes Bernice so much. Basically, Mrs. Harvey stands in for the whole older generation, who's genuinely puzzled by the developments of the younger crowd. Her horror at Bernice's big haircut echoes the beliefs of the parental generation in general, who found some of the styles that emerged in the 1920s both distasteful and all-out indecent.