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Part 1, Chapter 12
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory and Meaning
Love and Vulnerability
Freedom
Art, Creativity, and Expression
Wonder and Knowledge
Summary
Analysis
Villon-sur-Sarthe, France. July 30, 1714. Someone shakes Adeline awake. Adeline opens her eyes and sees Isabelle. She realizes she’s fallen asleep in Isabelle’s barn. “Get up, you fool,” Isabelle urges her; there is concern in her voice. Isabelle calls over her shoulder to Mathieu, her young son, to bring back a blanket. Isabelle asks Adeline who she is. Adeline says she’s from Villon, but Isabelle doesn’t believe her: she’d have met Adeline before. Isabelle helps Adeline to her feet and leads her inside. Then she fetches a basin of water and washes Adeline’s hands. Adeline thanks her oldest friend—who doesn’t recognize her—for her kindness.
The juxtaposition between the past chapter, in which Addie feels loneliness over Toby and James, and this chapter, where Addie experiences Isabelle, her best friend, not remembering her for the first time, seems intentional: it’s meant to underscore just how many years Addie has been dealing with the loneliness and alienation her curse has created for her—and that this loneliness is the cost of the freedom she asked the darkness for.
Themes
Isabelle asks Adeline questions, but when Adeline tries to talk about her past, Isabelle’s face goes blank and she seems not to hear. In time, Adeline will learn that lying now comes naturally to her—but she doesn’t know this yet.
This seems to be another “rule” of Addie’s curse: she can’t tell people about her past, because she—past, present, and future—is incapable of being remembered. In place of this, the darkness seems to have enchanted Addie with a propensity to lie easily, though Addie has yet to learn this.
Themes
The women hear heavy footsteps coming from outside. Isabelle stands up straight: it’s her husband, George. Addie is suddenly afraid. She knows that if Isabelle crosses over the threshold to greet George, she won’t recognize Addie when she returns. Isabelle gets up to explain the situation to George, pressing baby Sara into Addie’s arms, and telling her that she’ll be right back.
This scene builds tension: Isabelle won’t remember Addie (or telling Addie to watch baby Sara while she leaves to speak with her husband). When Isabelle returns, then, she’ll likely think a strange woman has taken her baby. Curiously, though Addie’s cursed, lonely freedom isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, Isabelle’s obvious fear of her husband shows Addie the life of servitude and submission to men that this cursed freedom has allowed her to bypass.
Themes
Sara begins to fuss in Adeline’s arms. Just as Adeline calms the infant, Isabelle returns—and thinks a stranger is holding her baby. Isabelle angrily orders Adeline to get away from Sara. Adeline tries to explain, but George is here now, too. He tells Adeline to leave. Adeline realizes she left her slippers beside Isabelle’s hearth, but she has no choice but to leave the barn. She steals a pair of George’s boots that lean against the house on her way out.
Just as the reader may have expected, Isabelle reacts poorly to an apparent stranger holding her baby—and once more, Addie has no choice but to depart on her own. This reinforces the harsh reality of Addie’s deal with the darkness: he's given her personal freedom, but the cost of freedom is that she has nobody to rely on but herself.
Themes
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Adeline wanders back to her house. She hides behind a yew tree next to her father’s woodshop and watches her mother do laundry. When Adeline thinks about being a stranger to everyone she knows, she realizes she must leave Villon: it hurts too much to be here.
In the novel, trees symbolize freedom. When Addie hides behind the yew tree and watches the parents who no longer know her, it’s a cruel reminder of all she’s given up for her freedom.
Themes
When Adeline’s mother goes back inside, Adeline sneaks into her father’s woodshop. She looks at one of her father’s works in progress, a group of wooden birds, captured mid-flight. Adeline realizes that she’s come here to say goodbye to her father. This way, she can remember him by his art, not as the man with the “sad unknowing” expression on his face. She finds a piece of parchment and tries to write a letter to him, but the words disappear as soon she writes them. Shocked, Adeline jumps backward and accidentally steps on and breaks her favorite wooden bird. She kneels to pick up the bird, and by the time she stands, the bird is whole again.
Addie has always seen her father’s woodworking as an expression of his inner self—and his art is more important to Addie than ever before, now that her deal with the darkness has rendered her and her father virtual strangers to each other. This scene also reveals two important rules of Addie’s new cursed/enchanted reality: she can’t write (since writing would leave her mark on the world, and part of her deal is that she can’t be remembered), and she’s apparently incapable of breaking things, though this latter rule is a bit unclear at this point in the story.
Themes
Adeline pockets the bird. Then she leaves her father’s woodshop and makes her way down the road, past the yew tree, and out of town. She looks back one last time, then she sets out on her new life beyond Villon.
Addie has always wanted to leave Villon, but now that the darkness’s deal has given her the freedom she’s always wanted, it’s bittersweet, since she must give up everything and everyone she loves to have it.
Themes
