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Chapter 8
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
When Stella and Desiree first ran away to New Orleans, they worked in a laundromat. One day, Stella wasn’t paying attention because she was thinking about how thrilling it was whenever she pretended to be white. In her distraction, she almost got her hand caught in the clothing press machine. She got fired that day, since the owner of the laundromat couldn’t risk having authorities find out that she had two minors working for her. In need of a new job, she heard that an office in the Maison Blanche building needed a secretary with good handwriting and strong typing skills. She wasn’t going to apply, since she knew they wouldn’t hire a Black person, but Desiree encouraged her because the job would pay so well.
The novel circles back to remind readers that Desiree was the one who initially encouraged Stella to pass as white to work in the Maison Blanche building. However, Stella had already flirted with pretending to be white and enjoyed the way it made her feel. Desiree’s encouragement therefore simply pushed her further in the direction of deciding to pass on a more permanent basis.
Themes
To her surprise, Stella got the job. She served as Blake’s secretary, and though all the other secretaries were eager to catch Blake’s eye, she tried to stay quiet and keep to herself. Nonetheless, Blake took an interest in her and invited her to lunch one day. She found him handsome and charming, especially because no white man had ever treated her so well. She and Blake started spending more and more time together, and as their bond developed, so did Stella’s performance of her new, white identity. Still, though, she felt like she had two distinct identities: the Black Stella and the white Stella.
In the beginning phases of her transition into white society, Stella still feels like she’s pretending. She doesn’t, in other words, immediately embody a white identity and take it on as her own. Rather, she slowly gets used to performing this identity, spurred on by Blake’s attention and by the new world of opportunity to which she has suddenly gained access.
Themes
Back in the present, Stella continues to see Loretta without telling Blake. She even outright lies to him one day when he comes home earlier than expected to find the house empty, telling him that she was visiting one of her white friends. Around Christmastime, Loretta asks Stella what she’s doing for the holidays. She lies, saying that they’re just having a small gathering. In truth, they’re having the entire neighborhood over for a big party, but Stella doesn’t mention this to Loretta because the Walkers aren’t invited.
Despite her fondness for Loretta, Stella can’t bring herself to publicly acknowledge their friendship. The implication is that she feels she has too much to lose. If people find out that she’s close to Loretta, she fears that they might wonder about her and, in doing so, threaten the white identity she has spent so many years developing.
Themes
At the party, a group of Stella’s friends confront her about how much time she has been spending with Loretta. They’ve seen her walking across the street and entering Loretta’s house, so they ask if it’s true that the two women are friends. Put on the spot, Stella suggests that it’s none of their “goddamn business,” which shocks everyone. When the guests are gone later that night, she complains to Blake, but he just wants to know why she didn’t tell him about the time she has been spending with Loretta. He’s not angry—just worried. In the end, he chalks her secrecy up to loneliness and starts proposing alternative ways for her to spend her time.
Stella’s public and private lives collide when her white friends ask her about Loretta. For the first time since she started passing as white, she draws negative attention from the white community she has tried so hard to join. She responds harshly to their inquiries about Loretta, as if she’s incensed that they would dare pry into her private affairs—an overreaction that undoubtedly comes from her fear that everyone will find out that she’s Black.
Themes
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Back when Stella and Blake were first getting to know each other, he surprised her by taking her to a restaurant one day. They had yet to kiss, but it was clear they had feelings for each other. He had secured a new job in Boston and wanted Stella to come with him. Instead of taking her time to think it over, Stella told him she’d come, figuring that the most difficult part of becoming someone new was simply deciding to do it—once that decision had been made, it was easy enough to slip into the life of a white woman. Now, looking at Blake in their bedroom on Christmas Eve, Stella thinks about how it’s too late for her to leave the life she created for herself.
Stella believes that the hardest part of becoming someone new is simply deciding to do it—an idea that implies that what’s difficult about taking on a new identity isn’t necessarily the newness of it, but the fact that it requires leaving everything else behind. The decision comes down to whether or not the person is ready to abandon the life they’ve built for themselves up until that point. Ironically enough, Stella thinks that reversing her decision now, years later, would essentially be like abandoning her life all over again, illustrating just how much she has transformed and settled into her new identity.
Themes
On Christmas day, Stella looks out the window and sees Kennedy, who has been playing with other children outside. Now, though, there’s no other children. Only Kennedy, Loretta, and Loretta’s daughter are out there, and both little girls are crying. Stella rushes out and asks what happened and is surprised to discover that Loretta is enraged. Kennedy, Loretta informs Stella, called Loretta’s daughter the n-word and said she didn’t want to play with her. Loretta tells Stella to stay away from her, remarking that Kennedy must have picked up her views at home.
Loretta isn’t wrong that Kennedy learned to use bigoted language—and cultivated a racist worldview—at home. After all, the very first time Kennedy tried to play with Loretta’s daughter, Stella ran outside, dragged her away, and told her what Adele once told her: using the n-word, she said that their family doesn’t play with Black people. It’s obvious, then, that Kennedy has absorbed Stella’s views about race.
Themes
A week after Christmas, Stella tells her white friends about a time that Reginald Walker helped her carry groceries into her kitchen. In reality, Reginald didn’t even glance at her before leaving, but Stella tells her friends that he looked at her in a way that made her feel uncomfortable. Three days after she tells this story, somebody throws a brick through the Walkers’ window. The next week, someone lights a paper bag of dog poop on fire and leaves it on their doorstep. A couple days after that, another brick goes flying into the house.
Stella’s untrue comment about Reginald making her feel unsafe is most likely a strategic way of ensuring that Loretta and her family move away. She knows that the rest of the neighborhood is just waiting for any reason at all to turn their ire on the Walkers, so she makes up this story as a way of distancing herself from Loretta and, in turn, the guilt she feels about behaving like a racist. Above all, what becomes clear is that Stella is willing to go to great lengths to preserve her peaceful life as a privileged white woman.
Themes
Not long thereafter, the Walkers move away. Stella watches them pack their things and fantasizes about going over and telling Loretta that she isn’t actually white. She would tell her because Loretta is, when it really comes down to it, her only real friend. She would also tell her because she would know that people wouldn’t believe Loretta’s word over her own if she chose to share her secret—a thought that makes her feel truly white.
Part of being white means having privileges that people of color don’t necessarily have in American society. The mere fact that everybody would believe Stella over Loretta is a testament to how much power she has simply because she’s passing as white. Unfortunately for her, though, the cost of this privilege is that she can’t maintain a friendship with Loretta, whose companionship clearly means a lot to her, even if it also triggers her insecurities about her own racial identity.
Themes
