The Vanishing Half

by

Brit Bennett

Stella Vignes Character Analysis

Like Desiree, her identical twin, Stella is a light-skinned Black woman who grew up in Mallard, Louisiana. She was always the quiet, passive sister who was content to let Desiree make important decisions. She excelled in school and dreamed of going to college, so she was disappointed when her mother, Adele, pulled her and Desiree out of school after their sophomore year in high school and sent them to work as housecleaners for a rich white family. She never told anyone, but the father of the rich white family sexually abused her in hidden closets throughout the summer, an experience that pushed Stella to go along with her sister’s idea of running away to New Orleans at the end of the summer. In New Orleans, she started working in a fancy office building that only employed white people, meaning she had to pass as white—something she always enjoyed doing as a child, when she used to enter fancy stores and pretend to be white. When the novel begins, Stella is long gone, having disappeared into her own life after deciding to permanently take on the identity of a white woman, requiring her to sever all ties with her past life and, of course, her twin sister. Above all, Stella believes that people have to create their own identities, so instead of dwelling on what she has lost, she focuses on her current life in Los Angeles with Blake, her white husband (whom she originally met at work). She and Blake have a daughter, Kennedy, who looks very white. Because Stella has never been truthful about her own racial identity, Kennedy has no idea that she herself isn’t fully white. Stella sees her daughter’s ignorance on this matter as a gift of sorts—according to her, she has made great sacrifices in order to give Kennedy a life of privilege and opportunity, so she resists telling Kennedy the truth, even when Kennedy meets Desiree’s daughter, Jude, and finds out about her mother’s past. In the end, though, Stella opens up to Kennedy and even returns to Mallard to reconcile with Desiree.

Stella Vignes Quotes in The Vanishing Half

The The Vanishing Half quotes below are all either spoken by Stella Vignes or refer to Stella 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:
Race and Identity Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

She wanted to go to college someday and of course she’d get into Spelman or Howard or wherever else she wanted to go. The thought had always terrified Desiree, Stella moving to Atlanta or D.C. without her. A small part of her felt relieved; now Stella couldn’t possibly leave her behind. Still, she hated to see her sister sad.

Related Characters: Desiree Vignes, Stella Vignes
Page Number: 11
Explanation and Analysis:

She was beginning to feel as if an escape door had appeared before her, and if she waited any longer, it might disappear forever. But she couldn’t go without Stella. She’d never been without her sister and part of her wondered if she could even survive the separation.

Related Characters: Desiree Vignes, Stella Vignes
Page Number: 13-14
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

But even here, where nobody married dark, you were still colored and that meant that white men could kill you for refusing to die. The Vignes twins were reminders of this, tiny girls in funeral dresses who grew up without a daddy because white men decided that it would be so.

Related Characters: Desiree Vignes, Stella Vignes, Leon Vignes
Page Number: 35
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

This was how Desiree thought of herself then: the single dynamic force in Stella’s life, a gust of wind strong enough to rip out her roots. This was the story Desiree needed to tell herself and Stella allowed her to. They both felt safe inside.

Related Characters: Desiree Vignes, Stella Vignes
Page Number: 58
Explanation and Analysis:

Stella needed to find a new job, so she’d responded to a listing in the newspaper for secretarial work in an office inside the Maison Blanche building. An office like that would never hire a colored girl, but they needed the money, living in the city and all, and why should the twins starve because Stella, perfectly capable of typing, became unfit as soon as anyone learned that she was colored? It wasn’t lying, she told Stella. How was it her fault if they thought she was white when they hired her? What sense did it make to correct them now?

Related Characters: Desiree Vignes, Stella Vignes
Page Number: 61
Explanation and Analysis:

“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.”

Related Characters: Desiree Vignes, Stella Vignes, Adele Vignes
Page Number: 68
Explanation and Analysis:

Desiree only knew the failures: the ones who’d gotten homesick, or caught, or tired of pretending. But for all Desiree knew, Stella had lived white for half her life now, and maybe acting for that long ceased to be acting altogether. Maybe pretending to be white eventually made it so.

Related Characters: Desiree Vignes, Stella Vignes
Page Number: 69
Explanation and Analysis:

She passed through the perfume aisle with the confidence of a woman who could buy any bottle she wished. She stopped to smell a few, as if she were considering a purchase. Admired the jewelry in the display case, glanced at the fine handbags, demurred when salesgirls approached her. In the lobby, the colored elevator operator gazed at the floor when she stepped on. She ignored him, the way Stella might have. She felt queasy at how simple it was. All there was to being white was acting like you were.

Related Characters: Desiree Vignes, Stella Vignes, Early
Page Number: 75
Explanation and Analysis:
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?

Related Characters: Desiree Vignes, Stella Vignes, Blake Sanders, Adele Vignes
Page Number: 152
Explanation and Analysis:

She couldn’t tell what unnerved her more, picturing a colored family moving in or imagining what might be done to stop them.

Related Characters: Stella Vignes
Page Number: 160
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

She’d moved to Los Angeles for Blake’s job and sometimes she felt like she’d had no say in the matter. Other times, she remembered how thrilling the possibility of Los Angeles had seemed, all those miles between there and her old life. Foolish to pretend that she hadn’t chosen this city. She wasn’t some little tugboat, drifting along with the tide. She had created herself. Since the morning she’d walked out of the Maison Blanche building a white girl, she had decided everything.

Related Characters: Stella Vignes, Loretta Walker
Page Number: 172
Explanation and Analysis:

She couldn’t share any memory of her youth without also conjuring Desiree; all of her memories were cleaved in half, her sister excised right out of them, and how lonely they seemed now, Stella swimming by herself at the river, wandering through sugarcane fields, running breathlessly from a goose chasing her down the road.

Related Characters: Desiree Vignes, Stella Vignes, Loretta Walker
Page Number: 174
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

“I’m not one of them,” she would say. “I’m like you.”

“You’re colored,” Loretta would say. Not a question, but a statement of blunt fact. Stella would tell her because the woman was leaving; in hours, she’d vanish from this apart of the city and Stella’s life forever. She’d tell her because, in spite of everything, Loretta was her only friend in the world. Because she knew that, if it came down to her word versus Loretta’s, she would always be believed. And knowing this, she felt, for the first time, truly white.

Related Characters: Stella Vignes, Loretta Walker
Page Number: 201
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

Only a lazy girl would get caught, and her daughter was clever but lazy, blissfully unaware of how hard her mother worked to maintain the lie that was her life.

Related Characters: Stella Vignes, Kennedy Sanders
Page Number: 226
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

But sometimes lying was an act of love. Stella had spent too long lying to tell the truth now, or maybe, there was nothing left to reveal. Maybe this was who she had become.

Related Characters: Stella Vignes, Kennedy Sanders, Blake Sanders
Page Number: 259
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

The language bothered Stella most of all. You didn’t just find a self out there waiting—you had to make one. You had to create who you wanted to be.

Related Characters: Stella Vignes, Kennedy Sanders
Page Number: 305
Explanation and Analysis:
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Stella Vignes Quotes in The Vanishing Half

The The Vanishing Half quotes below are all either spoken by Stella Vignes or refer to Stella 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:
Race and Identity Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

She wanted to go to college someday and of course she’d get into Spelman or Howard or wherever else she wanted to go. The thought had always terrified Desiree, Stella moving to Atlanta or D.C. without her. A small part of her felt relieved; now Stella couldn’t possibly leave her behind. Still, she hated to see her sister sad.

Related Characters: Desiree Vignes, Stella Vignes
Page Number: 11
Explanation and Analysis:

She was beginning to feel as if an escape door had appeared before her, and if she waited any longer, it might disappear forever. But she couldn’t go without Stella. She’d never been without her sister and part of her wondered if she could even survive the separation.

Related Characters: Desiree Vignes, Stella Vignes
Page Number: 13-14
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

But even here, where nobody married dark, you were still colored and that meant that white men could kill you for refusing to die. The Vignes twins were reminders of this, tiny girls in funeral dresses who grew up without a daddy because white men decided that it would be so.

Related Characters: Desiree Vignes, Stella Vignes, Leon Vignes
Page Number: 35
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

This was how Desiree thought of herself then: the single dynamic force in Stella’s life, a gust of wind strong enough to rip out her roots. This was the story Desiree needed to tell herself and Stella allowed her to. They both felt safe inside.

Related Characters: Desiree Vignes, Stella Vignes
Page Number: 58
Explanation and Analysis:

Stella needed to find a new job, so she’d responded to a listing in the newspaper for secretarial work in an office inside the Maison Blanche building. An office like that would never hire a colored girl, but they needed the money, living in the city and all, and why should the twins starve because Stella, perfectly capable of typing, became unfit as soon as anyone learned that she was colored? It wasn’t lying, she told Stella. How was it her fault if they thought she was white when they hired her? What sense did it make to correct them now?

Related Characters: Desiree Vignes, Stella Vignes
Page Number: 61
Explanation and Analysis:

“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.”

Related Characters: Desiree Vignes, Stella Vignes, Adele Vignes
Page Number: 68
Explanation and Analysis:

Desiree only knew the failures: the ones who’d gotten homesick, or caught, or tired of pretending. But for all Desiree knew, Stella had lived white for half her life now, and maybe acting for that long ceased to be acting altogether. Maybe pretending to be white eventually made it so.

Related Characters: Desiree Vignes, Stella Vignes
Page Number: 69
Explanation and Analysis:

She passed through the perfume aisle with the confidence of a woman who could buy any bottle she wished. She stopped to smell a few, as if she were considering a purchase. Admired the jewelry in the display case, glanced at the fine handbags, demurred when salesgirls approached her. In the lobby, the colored elevator operator gazed at the floor when she stepped on. She ignored him, the way Stella might have. She felt queasy at how simple it was. All there was to being white was acting like you were.

Related Characters: Desiree Vignes, Stella Vignes, Early
Page Number: 75
Explanation and Analysis:
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?

Related Characters: Desiree Vignes, Stella Vignes, Blake Sanders, Adele Vignes
Page Number: 152
Explanation and Analysis:

She couldn’t tell what unnerved her more, picturing a colored family moving in or imagining what might be done to stop them.

Related Characters: Stella Vignes
Page Number: 160
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

She’d moved to Los Angeles for Blake’s job and sometimes she felt like she’d had no say in the matter. Other times, she remembered how thrilling the possibility of Los Angeles had seemed, all those miles between there and her old life. Foolish to pretend that she hadn’t chosen this city. She wasn’t some little tugboat, drifting along with the tide. She had created herself. Since the morning she’d walked out of the Maison Blanche building a white girl, she had decided everything.

Related Characters: Stella Vignes, Loretta Walker
Page Number: 172
Explanation and Analysis:

She couldn’t share any memory of her youth without also conjuring Desiree; all of her memories were cleaved in half, her sister excised right out of them, and how lonely they seemed now, Stella swimming by herself at the river, wandering through sugarcane fields, running breathlessly from a goose chasing her down the road.

Related Characters: Desiree Vignes, Stella Vignes, Loretta Walker
Page Number: 174
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

“I’m not one of them,” she would say. “I’m like you.”

“You’re colored,” Loretta would say. Not a question, but a statement of blunt fact. Stella would tell her because the woman was leaving; in hours, she’d vanish from this apart of the city and Stella’s life forever. She’d tell her because, in spite of everything, Loretta was her only friend in the world. Because she knew that, if it came down to her word versus Loretta’s, she would always be believed. And knowing this, she felt, for the first time, truly white.

Related Characters: Stella Vignes, Loretta Walker
Page Number: 201
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

Only a lazy girl would get caught, and her daughter was clever but lazy, blissfully unaware of how hard her mother worked to maintain the lie that was her life.

Related Characters: Stella Vignes, Kennedy Sanders
Page Number: 226
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

But sometimes lying was an act of love. Stella had spent too long lying to tell the truth now, or maybe, there was nothing left to reveal. Maybe this was who she had become.

Related Characters: Stella Vignes, Kennedy Sanders, Blake Sanders
Page Number: 259
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

The language bothered Stella most of all. You didn’t just find a self out there waiting—you had to make one. You had to create who you wanted to be.

Related Characters: Stella Vignes, Kennedy Sanders
Page Number: 305
Explanation and Analysis: