After Mumsfield confirms to Blanche that Aunt Emmeline has been replaced and presumably killed, Blanche’s first course of action is to make a phone call to Archibald, the lawyer who witnessed and accepted the falsified signing of the will. “He had some stake in this, too. Her only other choice was to call the police. The idea of voluntarily putting herself in the hands of the sheriff’s office didn’t warrant a moment’s thought. She went to the phone and dialed” (179). In my initial reading of this passage, I allowed myself to forget the narrator’s previous focus on Archibald and expected the next paragraph to lead into Blanche’s phone call with the police, as if her self-sacrifice was her “only choice,” a moral act that “didn’t warrant a moment’s thought.”
When thinking of Blanche on the Lam as a work of noir fiction, it’s useful to remember that this is a story about subverting figures within established systems of power. Like the protagonists of other novels that we’ve read throughout the semester, Blanche as a noir heroine is tasked with seeking justice outside the boundaries of the established legal system.
Blanche, as the title so plainly communicates, is on the lam from law enforcement after being sentenced to 30 days in prison for writing bad checks. From the very first page of the novel, the American legal system is challenged by Neely and our protagonist for its adoption of legal equality over equity; Blanche’s difficult circumstances aren’t taken into account during her sentencing. Beyond questions of equality and equity, Neely goes a step further, introducing race, class, and power into the story when Blanche makes her escape. Sitting on the toilet after her sentencing, Blanche fumes over her employers and the carelessness with which they wielded their power over her livelihood, the:
…so-called genteel Southern white women for whom she currently did day work… she’d intended no crime. If four of her employers hadn’t gone out of town without paying her, she’d have had enough money in the bank to cover the checks (3-4).
Soon after, the matron accompanying Blanche to the court’s restroom is distracted by the commotion caused by a county commissioner accused of taking bribes. “She was positive he wouldn’t get thirty days. A little bad publicity, and a lot of sympathy from people who might easily be in his position, was about all he’d get” (4-5). Here, a man in an appointed political position is accused of a white-collar crime with effects more far-reaching than Blanche’s bad checks; however, based on the assessment given by our narrator, he will face less severe punishment than Blanche punishment due to his higher, more powerful position in society. Though his race isn’t explicitly stated, “people who might easily be in his position” suggests other politicians or people with power, which in 1990s rural North Carolina probably means white.
Being that this is a noir text, Blanche must seek avenues towards justice that skirt around the restrictive and at times corrupt boundaries of the law. By the time she calls Archibald, the sheriff has already been revealed as having involved himself in Grace and Everett’s crimes. So, using her quick wits and knowledge of the corrupt figures around her, Blanche identifies a way in which she can manipulate/pressure Archibald into helping her help Mumsfield in a way that helps himself.
However, we must not forget: Blanche is a Black noir heroine. Where Sam Spade might cockily use law enforcement as a pool of bumbling, but useful tools, Blanche knows to be wary of white men in positions of power. “Now she could only wait. It was a hard prescription. Waiting for some prime-aged white man to show up and set things right had the ring of guaranteed failure” (180).
It is very interesting that you highlight the difference between equality and equity. In my mind, equality has always meant that people receive the same treatment for the same choices/crimes; yet it does not afford the additional understanding of circumstances that equity accounts for. Noir centers on protagonists with a equitable moral codes. By subverting corrupt authority figures, the protagonists of noir try to ascend from the moral darkness that surrounds them–sometimes in spite of their physical darkness and the negative perceptions that stem from being part of the “other.” They do not apply the same moral judgements that other people who have not experienced the underworld would because they realize that the politics of race, racism, and general corruption are not easily overcome; there is a common thread throughout their interactions that goes back generations.