Besides moving out for college, moving homes is not something I am familiar with. I have always been happy with where I lived, and my family has maintained a stable lifestyle, so there was never any need to move. Although, I have always been curious about what it would be like to live elsewhere. It is very interesting to me how two people from very different states in the same country can live such different lives. This is what has always sparked my curiosity of moving to somewhere new. However, moving can also be uncomfortable because change is uncomfortable. While I have never had a bad experience that has made me want to move, I have been in situations that are not healthy, but I continue to stay in them because change can be scary. This is what I perceive to be happening in Blanche on the Lam. The main character, Blanche, recounted how she tried to flee away from her normal life and headed to California, but only lasted there a year. Then she returned to the east coast and headed to New York where she stayed with her niece and nephew until they were confronted by a stranger. As a result, she moved her and the family back home down south to Farleigh, NC. Throughout these shifts in location, Blanche must have encountered many new environments, but she did not stick around in these new locations very long. Despite returning to Farleigh in the end, she does not speak very highly of the small town and describes the many racist encounters she has every day. This was what made me most curious about Blanche’s relocations.
In our previous books set in California, it has always been portrayed as progressive with a diverse population. Although the population may not be specially integrated, there was still a representation of the variety. When Blanche travels there, I wonder why she was so quick to leave. I am sure part of the reason involved her niece and nephew back home, but there must have been more to it because as a black woman one would think she could achieve a better quality of life. Though no details are explicitly mentioned, there must have been a fear within Blanche of the stark difference between a small town in the south and the big state of California. A fear, that even if she could achieve more equality, it would be different from anything she has known. Sometimes having too much freedom can be intimidating like when we enter into our adult lives and suddenly we gain a large amount of responsibilities and freedom to choose how we live our lives. I think Blanche was afraid of the new and somewhat intimidated by the agency she gained in the west.
Blanche proceeds to move to New York. She travels back east which we have referenced in class largely means traveling back in time on racial progressiveness. However, she still remains in the north, which has a different racial dynamic than the south, more closely resembling California. Even still, Blanche is scared, but I think her fear is more of the contrast between the small town she came from and the large city she entered. Cities are dangerous and can be especially frightening when you do not have experience. It is unfortunate but homeless people are more common, crime is more common, and overall darkness seems more present. Blanche is run out of the city when a man tries to convince her niece and nephew into his car. She is fearful of the dangers of the city. Not because she is a coward but these are dangers that she has no prior experience with which makes them all the more intimidating.
Finally, Blanche moves back down to Farleigh, NC. She willingly returns to the life she knows, even if it is not a good life. Blanche knows how to deal with the racist people in the south and even admits to enjoying manipulating them by acting unintelligent. Though her fears that reside in Farleigh are still ever present, they are familiar fears. Change is incredibly hard to face and Blanche believes it is much easier to face the challenges she knows than try and discover something new even if it would be to her benefit.
I wrote my post this week with very similar thoughts in mind, and I came to essentially the same conclusion. Regarding the difficulty of change, I also mentioned how it could seem that she moves to an objectively worse situation in Farleigh than she had in New York City, and how this proves that humans are very far from rational creatures. We do many things based on our own experience, and what makes us feel most comfortable given that experience. While it plays out in this book simply as moving away from home then back to home, I think that it is an applicable lesson that we can keep in mind whenever we are judging someone’s decisions from the outside without all of the relevant context and experiences that they have.
I think one possibility is that Blanche realized how most places in the U.S., despite their varying qualities and reputations, harbor a darkness not dissimilar to one another. Poverty and a lack of governmental support exist across the country; institutional and systemic racism; political disempowerment; segregation based on race and class; sexism; gendered violence; etc. Those are heavy topics to consider and the novel doesn’t necessarily confront all of them head-on, but given Blanche and her situation, I think it’s fair to say that Neely wished to communicate to the reader that Blanche was incapable of simply running from her problems. The types of problems Blanche had to face were bigger than herself or Farleigh.