About a month ago, I was celebrating the anniversary of A Goofy Movie with some friends after our weekly RPG night. (Honestly, that makes it sound way cooler than what it really was, which was me begging them to watch it with me while I tried not to sing along with each song. I couldn't make any promises with "On the Open Road" though. That's my jam.)
We were half-way through the movie when suddenly, the thought "But wait, where is Max's mother?" hit me.
Now, I'm not just going to assume that Goofy would have a wife, or even be married. But, Mickey is with Minnie and Donald is with Daisy, so I was thinking that Disney would have at one point given Goofy a counterpart. Especially since they have been very into heteronormative relationships and traditional gender roles for like, ever. Besides, Max had to come from someone.
I eventually took to the Google machine, and found this synopsis:
(Source: Wikipedia)
1. Why weren't we ever able to see her face? That seems alarming.
2. "She's up there with the stars" should probably be seen as sweet and sad, but kind of came across like "he's swimming with the fishes", which potentially makes the circumstances surrounding her death seem a little suspicious.
I did some more searching and found out that Goofy's wife, "Mrs. Geef", has her own Wiki page. She is depicted as being "just as goofy as Goofy is", an"undesirable driver", and apparently has a niece named Debbie.
But then...
(Source: Wikipedia)
There it is again. She died of unknown causes. She is with the stars. What is going on?
I turned to my friends Abby and Meggie in desperation, figuring that perhaps I had missed something about Mrs. Geef. It turns out that Abby thought that Clarabelle was Goofy's wife the whole time.
Clarabelle is literally a cow.
(Source: disney.fandom.com)
I had hit a dead-end.
Since then, I've done a few more searches and have found some fan theories in the dark corners of the internet.
One makes the connection that Mrs. Geef had red hair, so perhaps Max is attracted to Roxanne because she reminds him of his mother. Another suggests that because of her poor driving skills, Mrs. Geef probably died in a car accident. Finally, some suspect that Pete and Goofy have such an intense rivalry because Pete was involved in Mrs. Geef's death.
As for me? I will not give up until I find out more about the elusive Mrs. Geef.
(Source: disney.fandom.com)
Rest in peace. May the 4th be with you.