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Chapter 6
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Vanishing Half, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Race and Identity
Loss, Memory, and Inheritance
Companionship, Support, and Independence
Class and Privilege
Summary
Analysis
Stella now lives in a wealthy housing development in Los Angeles. At an emergency Homeowners Association meeting, her fellow residents are up in arms about the fact that a Black family might move into a house across the street from Stella’s house. As everyone yells about how the entire neighborhood might go to ruin, Stella stands up and vehemently tells the president of the Housing Association that he absolutely must stop the Black family from moving in. She surprises herself by acting so boldly—she’s usually quiet and reserved. Because her outburst is so out of character, it makes an impression on her neighbors, who applaud her for fighting against racial integration.
Stella’s intensity at the Homeowners Association meeting might be surprising to her neighbors, but it wouldn’t be all that unexpected from anyone who knows that she’s actually a Black woman—after all, people with secrets often violently oppose anything that might expose whatever they’re hiding. It’s also possible that Stella’s aversion to a Black family moving into the neighborhood is the product of internalized racism. After years of passing as a white woman, it’s likely that she has established an identity that stands in opposition to her former identity as a Black woman; in other words, she has taken on a racist worldview as a way of more fully inhabiting her new identity as a white person.
Themes
Blake Sanders, Stella’s husband, is also quite surprised by Stella’s outburst at the Homeowners Association meeting. On the whole, though, he agrees with her sentiment, believing that the Black family who put an offer on the house across the street ought to be stopped. That night, Blake soothes Stella by assuring her that the neighborhood surely won’t let Black people move in—after all, the Homeowners Association has lawyers who will stop that from happening.
The community that Stella and Blake live in is clearly very racist, as evidenced by the fact that there are lawyers who will work to keep a Black family out of the neighborhood. It’s clear, then, that Stella has found her way into an environment of wealth and racial segregation—an environment in which nobody is willing to embrace the idea of racial unity.
Themes
Stella and Blake have been married eight years. They met in New Orleans and now have a young daughter who, like Stella, often has nightmares. Stella’s own nightmares revolve around her father’s murder, but she can’t talk about them with Blake because she never mentions her past, for fear of uncovering too much about herself and revealing that she’s passing as white. When she was pregnant with her daughter Kennedy, she thought constantly about whether or not the baby would come out with light or dark skin. If Kennedy had ended up with dark skin, Stella might have lied and told Blake that she had an affair with a Black man. In the end, she didn’t have to lie because Kennedy looked so white.
The fact that Stella would rather have Blake think she cheated on him than admit she’s Black is a good indication of just how serious she is about keeping her Blackness a secret. She has lived as a white woman for so long that she’s unwilling to jeopardize her current life by revealing the truth about her past, ultimately demonstrating the extent to which she has committed to leaving behind her identity as a Black woman.
Themes
As a very young child, Kennedy once asked Stella where she was from. Even though she had never told Blake the name of her hometown, she told Kennedy that she was from Mallard, figuring that Kennedy wouldn’t remember. Whenever Kennedy asked about Stella’s parents, Stella just said they were “gone.” As for Blake, she told him that her parents died in a tragic accident.
One difficult aspect of passing as white is that it requires Stella to completely separate herself from her personal history, which means constantly lying about her past. She can’t tell Kennedy about her mother, who is still alive, nor can she speak openly to Blake about where she’s from. Instead, she has to find ways to be evasive about her past or—alternatively—lie.
Themes
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The morning after the Homeowners Association meeting, Stella floats in her private pool drinking gin. She thinks about the possibility of her neighborhood desegregating and fears that the Black family across the street will sense her secret. She’s glad that Blake convinced her to get a private pool when the local public pools were beginning to desegregate. Slowly but surely, she has acclimated to the wealthy lifestyle Blake has always led. She has a housekeeper now, a fact that sometimes reminds her of her days spent cleaning for the rich white family in Opelousas. She never told anyone, but the husband of that wealthy couple often cornered her in a closet and stuck his hands down her pants. That’s why Stella agreed to leave Mallard in the first place: to get away from that man.
It turns out that Stella didn’t leave Mallard simply because Desiree wanted her to. Rather, she had a specific motivation to leave: the man she and Desiree worked for was sexually abusing her on a regular basis. Because he was a powerful, rich white man, it would have been extraordinarily difficult for Stella to put an end to his abuse, since she was a young Black teenager living in a racist society, making it very unlikely that any law enforcement officials would take her word over her abuser’s word. As such, she had few options other than to run away.
Themes
In the coming weeks, Stella and her neighbors learn that the Black family buying the house across the street threatened to sue the Homeowners Association if it didn’t let them purchase the property. It’s clear that the family is extraordinarily wealthy, which intimidates Stella and everyone else in the neighborhood. Stella gossips with the other families in the housing development, many of whom are adamant about making sure there isn’t a trend in which Black people start moving to the neighborhood after the first Black family arrives. Stella agrees with her neighbors about not wanting to live alongside Black people, but she also fears what these powerful white people might do to get their way.
Stella is in a strange position, since she aligns with the many racists in her neighborhood while also feeling—on some level—the harmful effects of their bigotry. She doesn’t want a Black family to move in, but that means perpetuating the hateful sentiments that her racist neighbors spread about Black people. If her neighbors end up resorting to racist violence, Stella will be horrified because she knows what it feels like when angry white people behave aggressively toward Black people—after all, a racist mob killed her own father.
Themes
