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Blake Sanders
Adele Vignes is Desiree and Stella’s mother. She is the direct descendent of Alphonse Decuir, the founder of Mallard. A group of racists murdered her husband, Leon, when Stella and Desiree were little girls, leaving Adele to raise them herself. She works as a housecleaner for rich white families but needs her daughters to help her earn money, so she takes them out of school after their sophomore year of high school and sends them to work as cleaners—prompting them to run away from home and start new lives in New Orleans. When Desiree comes home years later with her daughter, Jude, Adele makes it clear that she disapproves of Desiree for marrying a dark-skinned Black man. She especially resents Jude’s dark skin, often trying to show her granddaughter how to lighten her skin, though none of her tactics work. Despite her internalized racism, Adele welcomes Desiree and Jude into her home and lets them live with her. She never thinks about Stella, not wanting to dwell on the fact that her daughter abandoned her life to become a white woman. In fact, she doesn’t talk about Stella until years later, when she starts suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and can’t keep track of things. Stella returns home during this period, but Adele acts as if it’s not a big deal, apparently unable to register that Stella has been gone for so long. By the time she dies, Adele has learned to overlook her colorist ideas, having accepted Desiree’s dark-skinned partner, Early, as an important person in her life.
Adele Vignes Quotes in The Vanishing Half
The The Vanishing Half quotes below are all either spoken by Adele Vignes or refer to Adele Vignes. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2
Quotes
“Don’t you have something brown?” her mother had asked, lingering in the doorway, but Desiree ignored her, tying pink ribbons around Jude’s braids. Bright colors looked vulgar against dark skin, everyone said, but she refused to hide her daughter in drab olive greens or grays. Now, as they paraded past the other children, she felt foolish. Maybe pink was too showy. Maybe she’d already ruined her daughter’s chances of fitting in by dressing her up like a department store doll.
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Chapter 3
Quotes
“She don’t want to be found. You gotta let her go. Live her life.”
“This ain’t her life!” Desiree said. “None of it woulda happened if I didn’t tell her to take that job. Or drag her to New Orleans, period. That city wasn’t no good for Stella. You was right all along.”
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Chapter 7
Quotes
If he pitied her, he wouldn’t be able to see her clearly. He would refract all of her lies through her mourning, mistake her reticence about her past for grief. Now what began as a lie felt closer to the truth. She hadn’t spoken to her sister in thirteen years. Where was Desiree now? How as their mother?
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Get the entire The Vanishing Half LitChart as a printable PDF.
Adele Vignes Quotes in The Vanishing Half
The The Vanishing Half quotes below are all either spoken by Adele Vignes or refer to Adele Vignes. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2
Quotes
“Don’t you have something brown?” her mother had asked, lingering in the doorway, but Desiree ignored her, tying pink ribbons around Jude’s braids. Bright colors looked vulgar against dark skin, everyone said, but she refused to hide her daughter in drab olive greens or grays. Now, as they paraded past the other children, she felt foolish. Maybe pink was too showy. Maybe she’d already ruined her daughter’s chances of fitting in by dressing her up like a department store doll.
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Chapter 3
Quotes
“She don’t want to be found. You gotta let her go. Live her life.”
“This ain’t her life!” Desiree said. “None of it woulda happened if I didn’t tell her to take that job. Or drag her to New Orleans, period. That city wasn’t no good for Stella. You was right all along.”
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Chapter 7
Quotes
If he pitied her, he wouldn’t be able to see her clearly. He would refract all of her lies through her mourning, mistake her reticence about her past for grief. Now what began as a lie felt closer to the truth. She hadn’t spoken to her sister in thirteen years. Where was Desiree now? How as their mother?
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