Race, class, and gender: intersections and social impacts

Race, Class, Gender

The question regarding Barbara Neely's first novel, Blanche on the Lam, isn't whether or not the novel has anything interesting to say on the subjects of race, class and gender, but rather, how can a novel so packed full of commentary on race, class and gender remain a compelling story, and an entertaining one as well?

Neely makes it clear from the very first page that this book will be about those three issues, although the race and class issues seem to get slightly more attention than gender, at least in a direct, in-your-face way. On the very first page, Neely sets Blanche up as a worthy and experienced commentator on the issues of race and class. Blanche is in a courtroom, and the judge admonishes her to learn to earn her money before she spends it, "like the rest of us." (p. 1) But Blanche has worked, like the rest of them. The problem isn't whether she works; it's whether she gets paid, a tough issue when the pay is only enough for current expenses and no more. "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," (p. 5) makes it clear that Blanche is not welfare cheat, but rather an honest working woman who was cheated, arguably by her 'betters." But may not have been much better; Blanche realized that she had moved from New York, where people expected to pay well for good work (something she repeats several times in the novel) to an area that was a lot less prosperous, and where class differences counted for more than bank accounts. "The folks who lived her and had money, even the really wealthy ones, thought they were still living in slavery days, when a black woman was grateful for the chance to work indoors," she mused. (p. 4) In one passage, Neely got her point across about both race and class.

By the bottom of the page, Blanche has noted the judge for her previous bad check court appearance had "his mind already on the golf course," when he had accepted her fine and restitution. Before a reader turns the first page, he or she knows that Blanche is black, not middle-class, broke and has had some trouble with the law before, although not this much, not jail time. The judge, any judge, is portrayed as a member of the semi-leisured class, able to close down the job and trot off to the greens.

Blanche is sitting in the lavatory, brooding, on her way to the lockup when she gets the chance to take advantage of commotion surrounding the legal problems of a white, high-profile alleged criminal, a bribe-taking county commissioner, caused enough commotion for her to walk away from the place and begin to take it on the lam.

Some of Neely's work is subtle, as for instance, her use of the name Blanche White. Blanche also means white (from the French for white), so the protagonist's name is actually White, an odd name for someone who is a Night Girl, a woman with a very dark complexion. In African culture, her skin color would earn her respect; in America, even if she is called White, it doesn't. And at pointing that out, Neely is sometimes a bit obvious. "A running black person was still a target of suspicion in ... even if the runner was a woman," Neely writes. But she does add gender to the mix, and subtly shows that for a black person, being a member of the 'gentle sex' made no difference; blackness was paramount in the way one was perceived.

Blanche White may be broke, black and female, but in her own mind, of which she keeps good control, she is worthy. In her own mind, she calls her employers -- especially the hateful Grace for whom she works while on the lam -- by the first names, rather than Mrs. Or Ma'am. "It helped her to remember that having the money to hire a domestic worker didn't' make you any better than the worker, only richer." In Blanche's mind, there is no class, although it took a lot of reminding to keep her convinced of that in the society she lived in. Riding in her employer's car to the country house, she noticed a police car and didn't want to be recaptured. "She began to slump down in her seat, then realized the law would no more look for her in a car like this than they would expect to find her in a convent," Neely writes. (p. 33) Once again, while stating the obvious -- that black women didn't' ride in fine cars -- Neely also slips in a more subtle bit of information. Blanche was a black woman; a black woman wouldn't be found in a convent. Black women weren't Catholic, they were, perhaps, A.M.E. Or maybe Baptist.

Neely moves easily back and forth between very blatant pronouncements, filtered through the character of Blanche, regarding the different treatment of blacks and whites in society. And while Blanche acknowledges a certain less offensive attitude about race and class among the people she worked for in New York City (and a lot better attitude about paying for value), she also recognizes that what she experienced as relatively decent treatment and respectful behavior did not descend below female domestics, to, for instance, nominally unemployed black men. At one point, Blanche started recalling "the police beatings of people in the 60s" (p. 89) which were beating of black men. And then, she added in her own poetic way, the gulf between the (assumed) white cops and the black (assumed) criminals was enormous, and the men were often killed "as though they were deer in season." (p. 89)