Jane Gallagher Quotes

She was terrific to hold hands with. Most girls, if you hold hands with them, their goddam hand dies on you, or else they think they have to keep moving their hands all the time, as if they were afraid they’d bore you or something. Jane was different. We’d get into a goddam movie or something, and right away we’d start holding hands, and we won’t quite till the movie was over. And without changing the position or making a deal out of it. You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.

– J. D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield in Chapter 11. Holden is thinking about the summer he spent with Jane Gallagher and how well he knew her. He really cares for her and even finds the way she holds hands praiseworthy.

All of a sudden this booze hound her mother was married to came out on the porch and asked Jane if there were any cigarettes in the house. I didn’t know him too well or anything, but he looked like the kind of guy that wouldn’t talk to you much unless he wanted something off you. He had a lousy personality. Anyway, old Jane wouldn’t answer him when he asked her if she knew where there was any cigarettes. So the guy asked her again, but she still wouldn’t answer him. She didn’t even look up from the game. Finally the guy went inside the house. When he did, I asked Jane what the hell was going on. She wouldn’t even answer me, then. She made out like she was concentrating on her next move in the game and all. Then all of a sudden, this tear plopped down on the checkerboard. On one of the red squares – boy, I can still see it. She just rubbed it into the board with her finger.

– J. D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye. Chapter 11. Holden describes the relationship between Jane Gallagher and her stepfather as very gold and aggravated. Holden believes that Jane has been abused by her alcoholic stepfather.

She was a funny girl, old Jane. I wouldn’t exactly describe her as strictly beautiful. She knocked me out, though. She was sort of muckle-mouthed. I mean when she was talking and she got excited about something, her mouth sort of went in about fifty directions, her lips and all. That killed me. And she never really closed it all the way, her mouth. It was always just a little bit open, especially when she got in her golf stance, or when she was reading a book. She was always reading, and she read very good books.

– J. D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye. Chapter 11. With his sister Phoebe and younger brother Allie, who dies of leukemia three years before the start of the novel, Jane Gallagher is one of only three people that Holden can connect with. She is also the only person outside his family that he showed Allie’s baseball mitt to.
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