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Chapter Two
Summary: Chapter Two
This chapter begins exploring the Vignes family history. Stella and Desiree’s father, Leon, was one of four sons, all of whom died tragically. The eldest died from heatstroke, the second was killed in Belgium during the war, the third was stabbed in a bar fight, and Leon was lynched twice by an angry mob of white men who accused Leon of writing a displeasing letter to a white woman. Desiree and Stella witnessed their father’s first lynching as children, the memory of the event leaving an indelible mark on them. Leon somehow survived the first lynching, but the white men found him at the hospital and shot him dead. At Leon’s funeral, Desiree and Stella learned from Willie Lee, the town butcher, that even in Mallard, white people could commit violence on people of color with impunity if they felt threatened.
The story moves forward in time again. Adele spends the morning after Desiree and Jude’s arrival ruminating on the twins’ birth, their upbringing, and whether her mothering led the twins to run away fourteen years ago. While Jude plays with a doll Stella had originally made for Desiree, Adele and Desiree have a conversation about Desiree’s plans for the future. Desiree is reluctant to stay in Mallard, but Adele urges Desiree that she needs to be with family and sign Jude up for school.
On Jude’s first day of school, Desiree dresses Jude in bright colors, believing that it would further differentiate her from the other students, as Jude is already noticeably darker-skinned than the other students. When Jude asks Desiree why the students are all looking at her, Desiree assures her that it is because she is new.
After dropping Jude off at school, Desiree, traveling with Willie Lee, goes to Opelousas to apply for a job in the Sheriff’s Department as a fingerprint examiner. Though she finishes the exam in record time and has experience analyzing fingerprints for the FBI, she is turned away because her address is listed in Mallard. Unsure of what to do next, Desiree decides to spend the afternoon at a bar called The Surly Goat. The Surly Goat was founded by her grandmother, Marie Vignes, and this was the first time Desiree had ever entered it. Desiree drinks and ponders about her life when she notices Early Jones at the end of the bar.
Desiree recalls meeting Early Jones the summer she and Stella left Mallard. Desiree remembers Adele cautioning her against dating or interacting with dark-skinned boys, and Adele’s insistence that she marry a boy from Mallard. The day Desiree met Early he had been delivering fruit to her house. The two flirted, and for the rest of the summer Early would leave more fruit for Desiree. Early lived in a farm on the edge of town with his aunt and uncle and made deliveries for the Fontenots, hoping to move to New Orleans at the end of the harvest. Desiree knew that she could not date Early but cherished their relationship as specific to herself and separate from Stella. When Adele caught Early with Stella, Early stopped visiting, and Desiree never saw him again.
Now in The Surly Goat, Desiree is surprised to see a grown Early Jones back in Mallard. The two reconnect amicably, until Early removes Desiree’s scarf, revealing the bruises left by Sam. Angered by Early’s forthrightness, Desiree shoves Early and leaves the bar. The next day, when Sam inquires if Early has found Desiree, Early lies and says that he will need more time.
Analysis: Chapter Two
This chapter explores another prevalent theme of the novel: the pain of loss. Leon Vignes’s murder at the hands of white men destroys their family for the rest of their lives. Their father’s death is a reminder that even in the relatively safe haven of Mallard, racism can bring about tremendous loss. The horror of what the twins witness and of their father’s unjust death begins to drive a wedge between Stella and Desiree. The day they bury their father, Desiree feels the burden of being the oldest for the first time. She doesn’t want to always be the one with the answers. The twins go in the opposite direction in response to their father’s death. Stella moves towards whiteness in an attempt to protect herself from the racism that killed her father. Desiree moves towards Blackness, and they both lose each other. Their separation emphasizes the ways in which painful loss can become compounded.
The theme of the pain of loss is also evident in Adele. The twins’ mother loses not only her husband but both of her daughters. She is so accustomed to being alone and to inhabiting the loss of her entire family that she is unsettled when Desiree returns. Every noise that her daughter and granddaughter make startles her because she’s lived alone for 14 years. In this chapter, the beginning of her memory loss seems tied to her larger losses. Her efforts to remind herself that she used to have two daughters suggests that part of the way she coped with loss was to forget. When Desiree brings up Stella, Adele says she doesn’t think about Stella at all. This foreshadows her dementia later in the novel. The novel does not provide easy answers to the losses the Vignes family experiences, but shows each character striving to live the best they can through tremendous pain.
The chapter also explores the theme of the perils of prejudice. Desiree was forbidden to have a relationship with Early because he was dark-skinned, and the people of Mallard believed that dark-skinned boys only wanted to use light-skinned girls. In a way, this belief runs parallel to the much more dangerous belief that white people of the time often held: that Black men sought out white women for sex. The horrifying consequence of this stereotype is seen in Leon’s death, when he is murdered because five white men imagined that he flirted with a white woman. The residents of Mallard are intently focused on populating their town solely with light-skinned people, and their discriminatory views against dark-skinned people are an attempt to adopt the privileges of whiteness within their own community. Desiree is interested in Early precisely because she is forbidden from being in a relationship with him and because she finds the town’s preoccupation with colorism oppressive. In some ways, this teenage flirtation with Early is a hint that Desiree will reject Mallard’s ideology and learn to explore her own identity through her romances with dark-skinned men, acting in opposition to the town, her mother, and her sister.
