In class on Wednesday part of our discussion focused on the unique setting in Blanche on the Lam that is unlike any we have encountered in this class before. Farleigh, North Carolina is described as a rural town that is even less of a city than place like Durham or Chapel Hill which are said to at least have academics. Adding to the nuance about why such a setting may have been chosen by the author, Blanche is said to have spent time living in New York City, from where she moved back to Farleigh. As a black woman, the conventional thought from an outsider’s perspective would be that she would do better in the large city than the rural southern town, the likes of which are often perceived to be “behind the times” allowing for the legacy of southern slavery to live on in discreet but signifiant ways.
Interestingly, Blanche is said to have comparatively thrived in New York City economically speaking. The city provided more opportunity for her to hold down a job that paid well, and had opportunities for advancement. However, the good of the city seems to have been outweighed by the downsides because she moved her and her two children back to Farleigh after they were approached by a man in a van promising Run-DMC music for them. In comparison, the troubles she faces in Farleigh appear much greater. She is not nearly as economically secure by her own admission, and she faces the more imminent threat of overt racism in the rural area; even if it was not necessarily a more historically racist area, she cannot blend in nearly as well as she would be able to do in a crowded and diverse city. Such an issue is highlighted as she flees the courthouse – she describes wanting to walk at just the right pace so as not to stand out as a black man or woman would if they were running in that area. To think that someone had this sort of concern in America in the 1990’s (and perhaps still has the same concerns in many parts today) is terribly sad, and makes the reader wonder what motivated the move back to Farleigh.
As I said in class, and have thought about since, I truly believe it comes down to familiarity with the worst of what each setting has to offer. As awful as some of the things that Blanche has to face as a black woman in the south, she at least knows what they are. When someone approaches her children offering Run-DMC music from a sketchy van, she is shocked mostly at the unfamiliarity of the relatively normal incident. While I am not sure that this will play into the rest of the reading, I think it is an interesting thing to note about humans in general that we are willing to deal with objectively worse situations because we are familiar with the pitfalls they have. In this way, I think we can be more tolerant of people’s decisions that we believe to be poor from the outside. Change is not easy, and familiarity (even with the worst of situations) will cause people to make seemingly irrational choices.
I really enjoyed reading your blog post. I think you make a very interesting note on Blanche’s character and overall on human nature. Throughout the reading of the novel, I kept thinking that Blanche’s reasoning for moving to Farleigh wasn’t a good one. I found that in NYC her fears are every mother’s fear no matter the skin color while in Farleigh she places herself in a position where she not only has to worry about normal trouble but also the trouble that comes with being Black in the south. When we were in class I love the way you worded it in choosing the Devil We Know, I was trying to understand Blanche’s decision with the idea of choosing the lesser evil but that doesn’t quite satisfy my questions. Thank you for this post.
It’s interesting to me that you believe that you believe that fear coincides with “familiarity with the worst of what each setting has to offer.” For many of our characters, they must face the worst of each setting in their everyday life—King David, Trick Baby, even Bob–they must face gruesome, horrible realities everyday. I think about how differently we ingest their realities; because we as ND students are generally so sheltered, privaleged, and safe, their realities seem foreign–even terrifying. I really like hearing about which people in class find which books relatable. For me, none of them have really felt relatable, though “Blanche on the Lam” seems familiar as it reminds me of a classic southern mystery.