Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory and Meaning
Love and Vulnerability
Freedom
Art, Creativity, and Expression
Wonder and Knowledge
Summary
Analysis
Paris, France. July 29, 1716. Addie waits across the street from the tailor’s shop. She hopes that Bertin, the shop’s owner, will assume she’s a lady’s maid. After the last customer leaves, Addie runs inside the shop. Monsieur Bertin regards her coolly; “I’m closing,” he tells her. Addie pretends that she’s Madame Lautrec’s maid and has come to give Lautrec’s measurements. Bertin leaves to get his measuring tape. By the time he fetches it, he’ll have forgotten about Addie and will retire upstairs—and Addie will have the shop to herself.
One year has passed since the narrative last flashed back to Addie’s early years of immortality. Note that the date is July 29—the anniversary of Addie’s deal with the darkness—which means she can likely expect the darkness to pay her another visit on this day. Also note how fluidly Addie navigates this situation with Bertin—it’s clear that she’s gotten a better hang of how to make sense of her invisibility in the two years since making her deal with the darkness.
Themes
Addie listens for Bertin to go to bed, then she gets to work, admiring the shop’s fine fabrics. She observes the men’s clothing in another corner of the room. She considers, as she often does, how much easier it would be to be a man. Then she changes into the men’s clothing; it feels like “armor” against her body. She picks up a pair of shears to try to cut her hair, but it grows back immediately. She looks at herself in the mirror. The disguise isn’t terribly convincing. She sighs, then she changes into a dark sapphire dress.
Addie might have the power of immortality on her side, but this doesn’t leave her invulnerable to the forces of gender-based oppression that govern her society, a sentiment she acknowledges when she describes the men’s clothing as like “armor” against her body. In other words, the social constraints of her world limit the freedom immortality allows her to achieve.
Themes
Addie leaves Bertin’s shop and steps outside into the night. A man dressed in black greets her from across the street: it’s the stranger. He holds out his arm and offers to walk with her. Addie accepts, but only because it’s dark out; only “women of a certain class” walk alone at night. After a while, Addie asks the stranger to change his appearance—he can take any shape he chooses, right? The stranger smiles and tells her he likes this shape—and he thinks Addie does, too. Addie says she did before, but he’s ruined it for her. Then she immediately realizes her mistake: she has told him the truth, and now he will always appear as the stranger.
When the stranger suggests that only “women of a certain class” walk alone at night, he’s referring to sex workers. Again, while Addie’s immortality immunizes her against death, it doesn’t spare her from experiencing gender-based oppression. Also note: Addie realizes that, now that she’s told the darkness that he’s ruined the stranger’s looks for her, she knows that he'll never appear as anything other than the stranger. This builds tension in the ongoing power struggle between Addie and the stranger.
Themes
Addie and the stranger walk until they reach a small, disheveled house. When the stranger leaves, Addie will sneak inside through a gap in the wall. This building will burn down in a month, but for now, it’s hers. But the stranger doesn’t leave. Instead, he asks why Addie puts herself through more suffering when she could just give in to him. Calmly, Addie tells the stranger about the elephants she saw in the palace grounds the other day, and the Champagne she drank afterward. She’s only been in Paris for two years, and there’s so much more to see. Addie grins, relishing the small victory of proving the darkness wrong.
The stranger has underestimated Addie. He believed that the loneliness of the invisible life he’s thrust upon her would overwhelm her and force her to give in to him, but in fact, Addie’s zest for life and adventure counteracts her misery: the opportunity to see new places and experience new things makes up for whatever misery and loneliness she must endure.
Themes
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