The Search for Selfhood: An Existential Feminist Exploration of Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half

Abstract

The research is an existential feminist analysis of Brit Bennet’s Vanishing Half (2020). Stella’s racial passing through material things shows that fragmented identity and psychological alienation comes from self-denial, while Desiree accepting her past shows that one can exist authentically and retain moral integrity even when one fails to be deemed a failure by society. By applying Simone De Beauvoir’s existential feministic framework on the life of twin sisters, the study investigates how women negotiate the tension between facticity the social racial and gender limitations imposed at birth and transcendence, the act of consciously choosing one’s own existence by exploring different paths of the protagonists. Furthermore, the study extends this framework to secondary characters Jude and Reese, showing how body politics and gender transitioning further de-essentialize the binaries. This paper ultimately argues that the Bennett narrative displays the existentialist view that existence is defined through the acceptance of one’s identity.