This Side of Paradise

by

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Beatrice Blaine Character Analysis

Beatrice Blaine is Amory’s mother. Born Beatrice O’Hara, she grows up traveling around Europe and learning about art and culture. She has a love affair with Monsignor Darcy but declines to marry him because of his lower-class background. Instead, she marries Stephen Blaine, Amory’s father, for money and status, and they have a loveless marriage and spend much of their time apart. Beatrice raises Amory in the manner of her own upbringing, and Amory attributes much of his haughty disposition to his mother’s influence. When Amory is a young teenager, Beatrice has a nervous breakdown and sends Amory to Minneapolis to live at her father’s Lake Geneva estate. When they reunite two years later, Beatrice reveals that her health problems were the result of excessive drinking. She also laments Amory’s Americanized, bourgeois disposition, wishing that he could have attended traditional schools in England instead of St. Regis. Toward the end of her life, Beatrice invests the remainder of her money in railroads, which proves to be an unwise investment. She donates the rest of her money to the Catholic Church, leaving Amory with no inheritance except for the Lake Geneva estate. Beatrice dies during the war. Amory later compares the women he loves to Beatrice, who seems to provide a model of feminine love that influences Amory’s romantic pursuits.

Beatrice Blaine Quotes in This Side of Paradise

The This Side of Paradise quotes below are all either spoken by Beatrice Blaine or refer to Beatrice Blaine. 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:
Youth, Innocence, and Coming of Age Theme Icon
).
Book 1, Chapter 1: Amory, Son of Beatrice Quotes

All in all Beatrice O’Hara absorbed the sort of education that will be quite impossible ever again; a tutelage measured by the number of things and people one could be contemptuous of and charming about; a culture rich in all arts and traditions, barren of all ideas, in the last of those days when the great gardener clipped the inferior roses to produce one perfect bud.

Related Characters: Beatrice Blaine
Page Number: 3-4
Explanation and Analysis:
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Beatrice Blaine Quotes in This Side of Paradise

The This Side of Paradise quotes below are all either spoken by Beatrice Blaine or refer to Beatrice Blaine. 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:
Youth, Innocence, and Coming of Age Theme Icon
).
Book 1, Chapter 1: Amory, Son of Beatrice Quotes

All in all Beatrice O’Hara absorbed the sort of education that will be quite impossible ever again; a tutelage measured by the number of things and people one could be contemptuous of and charming about; a culture rich in all arts and traditions, barren of all ideas, in the last of those days when the great gardener clipped the inferior roses to produce one perfect bud.

Related Characters: Beatrice Blaine
Page Number: 3-4
Explanation and Analysis: