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The Narrator
Alice Manfred is a seamstress and Dorcas’s maternal aunt. When Dorcas’s parents are both killed in the anti-Black attacks of the East St. Louis massacre, Alice steps in to take care of the newly orphaned little girl. Alice’s loss—combined with her frequent firsthand experiences of racism in New York City—makes her fearful, and she imposes strict rules on Dorcas, instructing her niece to avoid risqué clothing and jazz (which Alice calls “lowdown music”). After Dorcas’ death, Alice initially loathes both Joe and Violet. But when Violet continues to show up at Alice’s door, the two women strike up a friendship, allowing both of them to process their experiences of infidelity. Alice eventually extends a great deal of care to Violet, making her tea, mending her tattered clothes, and encouraging Violet to forgive Joe if she feels like she can.
Alice Manfred Quotes in Jazz
The Jazz quotes below are all either spoken by Alice Manfred or refer to Alice Manfred. 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:
).
Chapter 3
Quotes
She knew from sermons and editorials that it wasn’t real music—just colored folks’ stuff […]
Yet Alice Manfred swore she heard a complicated anger in it; something hostile that disguised itself as flourish and roaring seduction. But the part she hated most was its appetite. […] It made her hold her hand in the pocket of her apron to keep from smashing it through the glass pane to snatch the world in her fist and squeeze the life out of it for doing what it did and did and did to her and everybody else she knew […]
I don’t know how she did it—balance herself with two different hand gestures. But she was not alone in trying, and she was not alone in losing. It was impossible to keep the Fifth Avenue drums separate from the belt-buckle tunes vibrating from pianos and spinning on every Victrola. Impossible.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Everyone needs a pile of newspapers: to peel potatoes on, serve bathroom needs, wrap garbage. But not like Alice Manfred. She must have read them over and over else why would she keep them? And if she read anything in the newspaper twice she knew too little about too much. If you have secrets you want kept or want to figure out those other people have, a newspaper can turn your mind. The best thing to find out what’s going on is to watch how people maneuver themselves in the streets […]
But Alice Manfred wasn’t the kind to give herself reasons to be in the streets. […] If she had come out more often, sat on the stoop or gossiped in front of the beauty shop, she would have known more than what the paper said she might have known what was happening under her nose.
Chapter 4
Quotes
“Oh shoot! Where the grown people? Is it us?”
“Oh, Mama.” Alice Manfred blurted it out and then covered her mouth.
Violet had the same thought: Mama. Mama? Is this where you got to and couldn't do it no more? The place of shade without trees where you know you are not and never again will be loved by anybody who can choose to do it? Where everything is over about the talking? They looked away from each other then. The silence went on and on until Alice Manfred said, “Give me that coat. I can’t look at that lining another minute.”
Chapter 5
Quotes
Blues man. Blackandblues man. Blackthereforeblue man.
Everybody knows your name. Where-did-she-go-and-why man. So-lonesome-I-could-die-man.
Everybody knows your name.
Get the entire Jazz LitChart as a printable PDF.
Alice Manfred Quotes in Jazz
The Jazz quotes below are all either spoken by Alice Manfred or refer to Alice Manfred. 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:
).
Chapter 3
Quotes
She knew from sermons and editorials that it wasn’t real music—just colored folks’ stuff […]
Yet Alice Manfred swore she heard a complicated anger in it; something hostile that disguised itself as flourish and roaring seduction. But the part she hated most was its appetite. […] It made her hold her hand in the pocket of her apron to keep from smashing it through the glass pane to snatch the world in her fist and squeeze the life out of it for doing what it did and did and did to her and everybody else she knew […]
I don’t know how she did it—balance herself with two different hand gestures. But she was not alone in trying, and she was not alone in losing. It was impossible to keep the Fifth Avenue drums separate from the belt-buckle tunes vibrating from pianos and spinning on every Victrola. Impossible.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Everyone needs a pile of newspapers: to peel potatoes on, serve bathroom needs, wrap garbage. But not like Alice Manfred. She must have read them over and over else why would she keep them? And if she read anything in the newspaper twice she knew too little about too much. If you have secrets you want kept or want to figure out those other people have, a newspaper can turn your mind. The best thing to find out what’s going on is to watch how people maneuver themselves in the streets […]
But Alice Manfred wasn’t the kind to give herself reasons to be in the streets. […] If she had come out more often, sat on the stoop or gossiped in front of the beauty shop, she would have known more than what the paper said she might have known what was happening under her nose.
Chapter 4
Quotes
“Oh shoot! Where the grown people? Is it us?”
“Oh, Mama.” Alice Manfred blurted it out and then covered her mouth.
Violet had the same thought: Mama. Mama? Is this where you got to and couldn't do it no more? The place of shade without trees where you know you are not and never again will be loved by anybody who can choose to do it? Where everything is over about the talking? They looked away from each other then. The silence went on and on until Alice Manfred said, “Give me that coat. I can’t look at that lining another minute.”
Chapter 5
Quotes
Blues man. Blackandblues man. Blackthereforeblue man.
Everybody knows your name. Where-did-she-go-and-why man. So-lonesome-I-could-die-man.
Everybody knows your name.
