The Gems in Blanche's Crown

Hello, dear readers,

A quick, but important note: a friend and colleague's daughter endured a terrible car accident a few weeks back; she has been in and out of the hospital for almost TWO months and is now in need of a lot of help. If you can donate ANY amount to help her and her family your generosity will be much appreciated. If you are unable to donate, it costs you nothing to share the link with your friends: https://www.gofundme.com/sabrinadavis

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Now on to our regularly scheduled program!

We are continuing on our golden brick road through the 1980s-1990s series The Golden Girls. The next four posts are going to concentrate on the girls themselves and a selection of the virtues, strengths, societal issues from yesteryear through today that they helped to portray. And today, we are going to start with Blanche.

On the surface, Blanche Elizabeth Deverau is a fun loving gal who deems herself a queen of the old South. To any outsider, and often to her friends, she is vain, she is attention hoarding and the world revolves around her. However, a dive beneath the shallow waters reveals a more complex character with deeper strengths and flaws that reveal her to be quite human. The humanization of characters may seem like an odd concept for which to aspire, but it is the flaws, the problems of our favorite TV characters that make them "real" and more like us viewers. Indeed, the Golden Girls were constrained by the twenty-eight minute air-time or so, and most of their problems were solved in that brief time frame, but the issues they touched, as we will see with our first highlighted golden girl, remain to be profound in modern times.

Throughout the twentieth century, we ladies have made tremendous leaps in the States, but the value of women as more than mere house-wives who had the right to vote was emerging as a common theme in 1980s cinema and sitcoms. The Cosby Show had Dr. Claire Huxtable. The ladies of Nine-To-Five proved to their good-for-nothing boss that karma packed one mean powerful punch. And the Golden Girls had Blanche, a vixen who had married rich, was temporarily engaged to an extremely wealthy man, was for the majority of her life a house-wife and had a governess to take care of her children. Yes, indeed, that last note is surprisingly contrary to the previous statements, but Blanche is a character full of surprises. Diving just a bit deeper we see that regardless her assertions as a meek, yet sexually free female, she has principles and stands up when her principles or loved ones are threatened.

In an episode in season one appropriately entitled, "Adult Education," Blanche is taking a few extra courses to complete a degree, which will help to have her considered for a promotion at work. This alone is something to stop, analyze, and admire. In the 1980s, the 25% of the female population 18-24 years old in the USA were enrolled at college, compared to the over 45% today (Mather and Adams). That's all well and good, but realize that the average age of college for females even to date is between 18 and 24. Blanche was in her fifties vying for a promotion by trying to earn her degree. This is a subtle detail in the episode, but incredibly inspiring. It shows that you don't have to be twenty-something to be a college student hoping to advance yourself. Hope does not have to and nor should it stop just because you've settled down with a family, or in Blanche's case, that she lived in a mostly empty nest, save for the few "coo-coos" who were her roommates. (Die-hard Golden Girls fans will likely understand that reference. If you don't get it, watch Season Seven.)

In Blanche's quest to achieve that promotion, she hits a snag. She needs to bring up her grade in Psychology - she failed her midterm and if she doesn't pass the class, she won't have the GPA to receive her degree. Trust me, if anything stands in the way between you and your degree, a piece of paper that you have put your blood, sweat, and tears into, you're going to be upset and willing to do almost anything to achieve that most desired end. So, after consulting her girls, Blanche decides to ask her professor for assistance to see what she can do to earn a better grade in the class. The professor listens to her story and unfortunately, he does have a way that will guarantee her the path to a passing grade. A path that of course excites her until she realizes that the extra-credit would involve extra-curricular activities. Blanche is prone to be drawn to those activities, in fact the words "possible-addict" come to mind, but she knows that she wants to be proud of her degree. Sleeping with the professor would forever hinder her from holding her head high whenever she looked at or thought about her degree.

After the incident Blanche consults with her girls and they all agree that she needs to report it to the administration. Alas, for Blanche the ol' song and dance that many people who blow the whistle fear; the administrator said to Blanche, "It's your word against his." Like it's not terrifying enough for victims of sexual harassment to come forward, particularly when their harassers are in positions of power, the person who was supposed to provide her help, refused to take her seriously because there was no witness and because, to quote the administrator, "A man's career [was] at stake."

Now, Blanche could easily have accepted this, she could have kneeled down to the idea that her report could ruin a man's career, but she decided to take a stand for her own rights. She buried herself in the books and even missed a Frank Sinatra concert to take her final exam. Towards the end of the episode, Blanche is the last student in the class taking the exam. The professor tells her that it is time for pencils down; when she stood up, the professor again asked her to consider his offer. But Blanche was not about to stand down after all of the work she went through. Standing proud, Blanche told the professor to kiss her "A," (her grade of course.) 

Blanche, promiscuous, fun loving Blanche, stood up for herself and for women's rights by saying, "No" to the easy route. Now, unfortunately for Blanche, she did not receive the promotion because some other woman took the low road by using her body (having a butt lift) to receive the promotion. The girls gave Blanche words of sympathy, but with the biggest smile, Blanche replied that it was alright as, "one day her but'll turn to mush, but I'll always have my degree."

If you've ever been in a situation where you had to choose, be proud of the decision you made. You know, a quote comes to mind from a marvelous book a dear friend loaned to me; "You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it however." Richard Bach, Illusions.  

Keep that quote and the brightness of this gem in Blanche's crown in your thoughts, dear Readers. Perhaps these words may prove to be an escape or a pathway to greatness for you.

Until next week when we go where few have gone before - beneath the peroxide colored hair of Rose Nylund...

Your humble author,

S. Faxon

PS - If anyone would like to sponsor my research so that I may dive deeper with the topics in terms of research and expansion, the ideas are here. The funds to support my hobby, alas, are absent. Does this sound like a project in which you'd like to invest? If so, leave a comment below. I'm listening, I have a plot outlined, and I am ready to write.