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Part IV: The Stage Door (1982)
Chapters Ten–Thirteen
Summary: Chapter Ten
At the party in Beverly Hills where Jude drops the bottle of wine, she is fired on the spot, having ruined the expensive carpet. Jude finds a job afterward in the UCLA cafeteria. During this time her grades start to suffer as thoughts of the woman at the party who looked like Stella preoccupy her mind.
In the fall of 1982, Jude works as a waitress at Park’s Korean Barbeque. She has applied to seven medical school programs and waits to hear back from them. To save money, Jude and Reese move into the rundown Gardens Apartment. On top of his job at the Kodak store, Reese also acts as the unofficial handyman for the building and picks up a job as a bouncer for Mirage during the weekends.
In November, a musical comedy opens called The Midnight Marauders. Barry, landing a role in the musical, invites Jude and Reese to opening night. Jude is reluctant to miss work for the show, but Reese convinces her to attend since it’s been a while since they’ve done something enjoyable. Jude is shocked to see that the lead actress is the blonde-haired, violet-eyed girl she served a drink to at the party in Beverly Hills. Flipping through the program, Jude learns that the girl is named Kennedy Sanders. After the show, Jude is surprised when Kennedy remembers her from the party in Beverly Hills. Curious about the possible connection Kennedy might have with the person at the party who looked like Stella, Jude decides to go to the Sunday matinee, hoping to interact with Kennedy again. Outside the theater, Jude bumps into Kennedy and Kennedy invites her backstage. Jude helps her get changed for the show. As they converse, Jude learns that Kennedy’s mother’s maiden name is Estelle Vignes, but everyone calls her Stella for short.
Summary: Chapter Eleven
Following the incident between Stella and Loretta, Stella takes up Blake’s suggestion to pick up a class to occupy her time. Stella enrolls at Santa Monica College before transferring to Loyola Marymount. In her final year at Loyola Marymount, Stella is hired as an adjunct professor to teach Introduction to Statistics. On the night of the retirement party in Beverly Hills, Stella arrives late due to grading papers at the university. At home that evening, Blake harangues Stella for working so much, even though he was the one who initially suggested she pursue an education.
In 1982, a week after the opening of The Midnight Marauders, Stella invites Kennedy to lunch at a restaurant near the USC campus, in the hopes that it will inspire her to return to college next semester. Stella and Kennedy argue over Kennedy’s decision to be an actress. Stella cannot understand why Kennedy would waste her opportunity to receive an education, while Kennedy stresses that college isn’t for everyone. During a conversation with Peg Davis, Stella’s advisor at school, Peg comforts Stella’s anxieties about Kennedy, telling her that plenty of students take time off. To Blake’s discontent, Peg introduces Stella to feminist ideas, which make Stella second guess her relationship with Blake. Peg asks Stella who she was before she met Blake, to which Stella responds, “I can’t even remember.”
Summary: Chapter Twelve
In order to get closer to Kennedy and hopefully meet Stella, Jude gets a job at the Stardust Theater, working the weekend shifts of The Midnight Marauders. Jude also becomes Kennedy’s unofficial assistant, bringing her coffee and food, helping her get ready for the show, and listening to her complaints. Jude and Kennedy could not be more different, but Jude continues to shadow her, even though Reese disapproves. All throughout November, Jude anxiously awaits Stella attendance at the show, but Stella never appears.
Summary: Chapter Thirteen
Stella finally appears at the final performance of The Midnight Marauders. At intermission, Jude confronts Stella while Stella smokes a cigarette outside. After Jude explains that she is a friend of Kennedy’s from the play, she startles Stella with the news that she is Desiree’s daughter and grew up in Mallard. Stella is incredulous at first, thinking it unfathomable that Desiree could produce such a dark-skinned child. After Jude unveils intimate details about Stella and Desiree’s past, Stella begins to ask Jude if Stella and Desiree’s mother is alive, and inquires how Jude and Desiree ended up back in Mallard. Jude suggests to Stella that they call Desiree, who has been looking for Stella all these years. Stella leaves, almost getting hit by a car as she crosses the street.
During the afterparty, Jude accompanies Kennedy while she drinks shots of tequila and complains about Stella’s absence. Jude declares her intention to leave the party. A drunken Kennedy tries to get Jude to stay and drink with her, but when her attempts fail, she makes a snide comment about how lucky Jude is that Reese would be with someone like Jude, considering how dark-skinned she is. Flabbergasted, Jude lambasts Kennedy for being so ignorant about her own family and reveals Stella’s relationship to Jude’s mother, Desiree. Later that evening, Reese comforts an upset Jude at Mr. Park’s restaurant, and Jude makes the decision to keep her interaction with Stella a secret from Desiree.
The following morning, Stella replays the events of the night before. Blake notices her heart racing and Stella explains the recurring nightmare of men dragging her out of bed. Blake assures Stella that he will keep her safe and they make love. After showering, Stella realizes she is late for work and rushes out the door when she bumps into Kennedy. Stella apologizes to Kennedy for not seeing her after the play ended, explaining that she felt sick during the intermission and had to leave. When Kennedy asks Stella if she has ever heard of Mallard, Stella pauses before saying that she has not.
That night, as Stella and Blake get ready for bed, Stella apprises Blake of the girl who cornered Kennedy and claimed to be her cousin. They conclude that Jude was trying to hassle them for money and her claims were unfounded. Months later in June, Blake and Stella rent an apartment for Kennedy to help her as she auditions for acting jobs, hoping that she will return to school the next semester. When Stella accidentally mentions her old apartment in New Orleans, Kennedy presses Stella about her past again, but to no avail.
Analysis: Chapters Ten–Thirteen
Part IV on the novel, “The Stage Door (1982),” explores the motif of acting and how it parallels the ways characters perform in their real lives. Stella has acted for her entire adult life in the role of Miss Vignes. When she encounters Jude outside the stage door, Stella says she can’t reach out to her sister and mother because she “can’t go back through that door.” Stella has been on a metaphorical stage for so long that she can’t leave. She conveys that the role of Miss Vignes has become the only self that seems possible. Meanwhile Kennedy is on stage playing the realistically familiar role of a lonely woman surrounded by ghosts. As unwitting audience to her mother’s long-running performance, Kennedy feels lost as she enters adulthood. Acting also is often required to “play one’s role” as a member of a certain race. During their first attempts to find Stella, Early tells Desiree that the key to acting white is to feign privilege. In his investigations, Early repeatedly plays the role of the “good Black man” who knows precisely when to defer or retreat in the face of white scrutiny. These moments give insight into the reality that constant performance of race often leaves characters feeling lost or foreign to themselves and to each other.
The chapter also explores the motif of white privilege. Jude observes that Kennedy blithely coasts through life with little consideration for other people. She shows up late, starts arguments for fun, and expects doors to open for her. Jude experiences inner conflict when she observes her own internal rush to comfort Kennedy in Kennedy’s moment of uncertainty. Instead of acknowledging Kennedy’s shortcoming, Jude feels forced to affirm that Kennedy is special. Jude is the opposite of Kennedy: she is hardworking, empathetic, and constantly mindful of how her actions will affect the people she loves. Jude has endured poverty and racism her entire life, but she has persevered and now strives to be a doctor. However, to comfort Kennedy in the moment, Jude denigrates herself by suggesting she won’t get into med school. This scene hints at one of the functions of white privilege: to protect white people from an awareness of the consequences of their own bad actions, often at the expense of Black people’s dignity and autonomy.
In this section, the theme of getting lost in a performance takes center stage. Stella and Jude finally meet, which is the instigating force behind the last chapters of the novel. Stella has become more and more white throughout the novel, and there’s a sense that the stage door between her past and her white life is closing and will leave her permanently trapped on the stage she has chosen. In the aftermath of her meeting with Jude, Stella relies on the same tactics that she used to drive Loretta and Reg away: she plays the role of the vulnerable white woman and leads Blake to conclude that Jude’s motives were criminal. When cornered, Stella chooses the most powerful weapon in her arsenal: her ability to cast herself as a fragile white woman who is being threatened by a Black person. As a girl, Stella saw firsthand the brutal consequence of this dynamic when racist white men murdered her father over a lie about him writing crude letters to a white woman. Similarly, when the life she built for herself feels threatened, she instinctively reaches for that same terrible power. This illustrates that Stella has truly lost herself in the performance of whiteness.
