48 pages • 1 hour read
The Vanishing Half: A Novel
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Themes
The Nature of Identity
The Vanishing Half is focused on the question of identity. The author seems to conclude that identity is not a permanent condition but a mental construct that changes over the course of a lifetime. Stella illustrates this theme more obviously than the rest of the characters in the novel. She begins life as a Black girl who experiments with passing for White. However, her decision to pass permanently is only partly due to the material advantages afforded by being White. Stella is also a twin who always felt overshadowed by Desiree’s stronger personality, and she longs to have an identity all her own. Her rejection of her family is partly because of race but partly a need for self-assertion. The identity she fabricates for the benefit of her husband and daughter does not include an identical sibling.
As much as Stella wishes to create a distinct version of herself, the effort costs her on a psychological level. She never feels a sense of belonging because the identity given to her at birth still haunts her. She imagines a conversation with her Black friend Loretta:
She imagined Loretta pushing off the box and stepping toward her. Her face frozen in awe, as if she’d seen something beautiful and familiar. ‘You don’t have to explain anything to me,’ she would say. ‘It’s your life.’ ‘But it’s not,’ Stella would say. ‘None of it belongs to me’ (201).
Stella’s comment begs the question of who controls a person’s identity. For all her denial of her Black heritage, Stella still feels like a Black girl. She received this definition of herself from her family and the townspeople of Mallard. Decades later, she still carries that identity internally. Stella perceives herself as a liar, not because of the elaborate fiction she created to maintain her White persona, but because she seems to be denying an internal identity that she just can’t shake.
Social Ostracism
Despite the book’s subject matter, the theme of ostracism does not focus exclusively on race. Rather, the book examines the theme of antagonism toward those who are different from the norm in various ways. Some of the most marginalizing behavior in the novel comes from the residents of Mallard, who set themselves apart from the surrounding Black community. Adele is intolerant of Early because he comes from a poor sharecropping family rather than from one of the founding families of Mallard, and she thinks Desiree should pick a more prosperous mate. She is also somewhat hostile toward Jude because the child doesn’t look like a member of the Vignes clan.
Sexual ostracism is illustrated by Reese’s childhood experiences. He started life as a girl, but his family and community rejected his transgender identity, and he left home at an early age. Reese later finds a group of sexual misfits who are ostracized by the rest of society in the same way that he has been. Jude has her own childhood baggage about feeling different, but she is welcomed by Reese’s friends because they all understand what it feels like not to be accepted.
Intolerance also appears in a more subtle form in the novel when it takes the shape of lifestyle disapproval. This disapproval is most often directed at Kennedy. Jude is initially judgmental of her White cousin because of the wealth and privilege that Kennedy enjoyed as a child. Stella disapproves of her daughter once the girl exhibits an interest in drama. Although Kennedy shows genuine talent as an actress, Stella thinks her daughter ought to attend college like everybody else and pursue a conventional career.
In pointing to these varied forms of antagonism and intolerance, Bennett also depicts the different ways in which the characters both internalize and compensate for the ostracism they experience. Jude becomes convinced that her darker skin makes her inferior and unattractive, but she finds acceptance with Reese and the friends she meets through him. Stella, once she tries to pass for White, sees the ostracism she experiences as a Black woman more clearly, and she decides to put an end to this treatment once and for all by choosing to live as a White woman.
Self-Loathing
Many of the major characters in The Vanishing Half are their own worst enemies because they have internalized a negative perception of themselves and amplified their own imagined shortcomings. This self-loathing shapes the personas they create for themselves. No matter how much Stella attempts to distance herself geographically and psychologically from her Black heritage, she still feels that she’s living a lie. She never owns the persona she projects to the world even though she has longed to forge a distinct identity all her life. The best she can do is go into denial when Kennedy gets too close to the truth.
Desiree reproaches herself for returning to Mallard years after she swore that she would never go back. She hates herself for marrying an abusive husband and hates the menial work she is forced to take to support herself after fleeing him. Desiree judges herself to be insignificant because Stella could walk away from her so easily. Despite Early’s generally mature attitude, he also experiences some sense of unworthiness because his parents were poor sharecroppers. He never really feels comfortable in the Vignes home because he doesn’t quite believe he belongs in a place that good, a feeling that Adele reinforces: “‘He’s like a wild dog,’ he’d heard Adele tell [Desiree]. ‘You give him a nice bed, he still feel better sleepin in the dirt’” (323).
Jude develops an inferiority complex primarily because of the negative reaction her dark skin provokes from the other residents of Mallard. Her schoolmates are particularly abusive. By the time Jude flees to LA, she has fully internalized the belief that her ultra-dark skin makes her unattractive. Although Reese represents a positive influence in Jude’s life, he has his own personal demons to fight. His relationship with Jude is initially poisoned by the hatred he feels toward his own body. When the couple begins an intimate physical relationship, Reese doesn’t want Jude to look at his body until after he has had his female breasts removed. The mutual acceptance Jude and Reese find with each other puts both on a path toward greater self-acceptance.
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