With an ear attuned to listen for underlying messages that are embedded within our culture, we can hear distinct voices: voices ranging from pop punk bands performing songs blatant with their desires to ditch insignificant hometowns, to movies that tell stories of protagonists actualizing themselves upon their tender return home. As a generation who has felt the blunt effects of the displacing pandemic, we’ve made it our new prerogative to find our place not only in the universe at large, but also in our specific, physical places — the ones we grew up in and the ones where we grew into ourselves. We, the generation in search of belonging, voice our conflicting approaches to physical places that are influenced not only by an idea of place formed both individually and culturally, but also by our sense of identity. Similar to the motif of fig tree in “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath, Bennett utilizes her unique literary use of setting to explore the boundaries society places on people of color, women and queer people. Rather than starving in the branches of a fig tree, Bennett reminds us in “The Vanishing Half” to examine our roots and connect with our paths as we find our own places of belonging. Using the idea of place to make sense of our personal identity, Bennett explores the tensions between the aspects of identity that are inescapable and inherited and the aspects that are uniquely individual and freely chosen.
Writing with an assumption that our relationship to our places is tied necessarily to our sense of personal identity, Bennett addresses an inherently human want: our desire to make choices. As the twin protagonists, Stella and Desiree, desire to find fulfillment in their respective places, they dream of ways to escape the position they are born into, surpassing their geography and filling out their identities. Born into a close-knit black community in the deep south, the girls embody Bennett’s theme of identity-shaping choices. Readers see the existence of two worlds masked behind one, the twins’ identical faces choosing two radically different spaces to embody. Though to add complexity, Bennett contrasts her character’s decision-making with the realistic complications that accompany their differing places and personal identities. In this way, “The Vanishing Half” examines who is able to make choices depending on where they’ve been placed socially and physically, shedding light on the privilege some of us are prone to forget. Bennett shows how the twins’ shared childhood experience quickly becomes unfamiliar soon after their escapade to New Orleans as Stella realizes the societal benefits of being white-passing in 1960’s America tempting her to assume a new identity and leave Desiree and their shared past behind. Reading the twins’ unfolding paths, it is evident that the choices we make are central to how our identities are formed, determining the ways in which we choose how to reveal ourselves in the presence of others and in the ways those others choose to interpret our presentation of self.
Too small to qualify for a place on the map, Mallard is ironically the foundational space in the stories for a majority of the characters in “The Vanishing Half” and is crucial to understand the ongoing development of several of the character’s identities. Early on, one of the town’s natives recognized the fluidity of the place, describing Mallard as “ … jelly, forever molding around your memories.” Like the sweet fruit spread that is contained within a glass jar so as to protect its malleability, identity is not presented as a thing fully solidified and unchanging, but is prone to be shaped by outside forces just like Mallard, Louisiana. As place and identity work together to form each other, neither have a fully gelatinous interpretation either. Bennett writes, “A place, solid or not, had rules,” proclaiming the realistic complication of the societal rules attached inescapably to our identities.
Considering her hometown, Jude, Desiree’s dark-skinned daughter, imagines that “ … maybe, in time, she would forget it.” What would it be like to move away from Mallard and be able to forget? Jude knows that she cannot. Having to live according to the rules placed upon her because of the inescapable part of her identity — the part that is most disposed to be interpreted flagrantly by others — Jude is tied to her place as much as she is tied to her identity.
Relative to Jude, Stella has an extra measure of freedom in her ability to choose, a freedom accessible as a result of her identity as white-passing and also the continual choice of others to grant her the additional personal liberties because of her chosen identity. This privilege is exemplified in her choice of place. Bennett writes, “Foolish to pretend that she hadn’t chosen this city. She had created herself. Since the morning she’d walked out of the Maison Blanche building a white girl, she had decided everything.” Further than simply moving away from home, Stella’s choice to move to white suburbia required an elimination of self through the destruction of her past life in Mallard, the place where her inescapable identity lay. This part of her identity, if found out, would make her lie become a performance for all.
Resting in the concept of place Bennett lays out, the tensions of which aspects of identity are inescapable or are, conversely, malleable, are questioned through her exploration of equality of choice. Travelling alongside the separated lives of each twin, the readers understand how overwhelming it feels to stand before the metaphorical fig tree Slyvia Plath imagined. Watching each character choose the future winking at them from the figs they pick, we also see the fruits they let fall and wither at the tree’s roots as well as the ones that were never available for their picking in the first place. We can only hope to curb our hunger for belonging by choosing the paths that bring us the most nourishment and sharing the fruits of what we are gifted by the green fig tree of life.