“The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett (post 3): Narrator says Stella is “split in two” (has multiple personality) and had been “two people her whole life”

In the middle of the novel, the story of the missing identical twin, Stella, is taken up. Passing as white, she has married a white man and is living with him in Los Angeles. As background, the narrator says that prior to coming to Los Angeles, back when Stella and Desiree had been in New Orleans: “In New Orleans, Stella split in two” (1, p. 183).

“She didn’t notice it at first because she’d been two people her whole life: she was herself and she was Desiree…She’d always thought of herself as part of this pair, but in New Orleans, she splintered into a new woman altogether after she got fired from the Dixie Laundry.” (1, p. 183).

Stella got a new job for a Mr. Sanders [whom she eventually marries]. At work, she was known as Miss Vignes [her and Desiree’s family name]…She’d walked in a colored girl and left a white one. She had become white only because everyone thought she was (1, p. 188). "Each evening, she went through the process in reverse. Miss Vignes climbed onto the streetcar where she became, again, Stella…She didn’t like to think about Miss Vignes when she wasn’t her, although, sometimes, the other girl appeared suddenly…Sometimes she wondered if Miss Vignes was a separate person altogether. Maybe she wasn’t a mask that Stella put on. Maybe Miss Vignes was already a part of her, as if she had been split in half. She could become whichever woman she decided…” (1, pp. 188-189).

Thus, the author explicitly acknowledges that Stella has multiple personality, although she attributes its origin to identical twinship, not childhood trauma (unless she implies that being an identical twin is inherently problematic).

I don’t know how this issue will evolve in the rest of the novel, but it is unusual for a novel that is not about multiple personality, per se, and which does not label the character that has multiple personality as having “multiple personality” in so many words, to acknowledge the issue to this extent. I wonder if the author is implying awareness of multiple personality in herself, when she says, “She didn’t notice it at first because she’d been two people her whole life” (1, p. 183).

1. Brit Bennett. The Vanishing Half. New York, Riverhead Books, 2020.