James Baldwin’s 1956novel Giovanni’s Room has, on thecopyright page, a quote from Walt Whitman’s Songof Myself: “I am the man, I suffered, I was there.” Like the novel, thispoem begins in the middle of the narrator’s life. At the beginning of the poem,the speaker tells us “My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil,this air” and then “I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, /Hoping to cease not till death.”[1]From the first quotation, we learn something critical about this speaker; heidentifies his origins very strongly with the place in which he was born,having his blood “form’d from this soil, this air.” His identity thus becomestied, in some way, to his location. From the second quotation, we see not onlythat this narrative begins in the middle of his life, but that he has only just“begun”—that, indeed, the first thirty seven years of his life do not comprisehis actual beginning.
There was a lot of Giovanni’s Room reflected in our relationship.” The novel, which was published in 1956, is Baldwin’s gift to the French, as it was his only work ever set entirely in France: told in flashbacks, David, an American, meets Giovanni in Paris and falls in love with the Italian man, who works at a bar owned by Guillaume. Giovanni’s Room is a beautiful, fast-paced, poignant novel that examines the depths of self-denial a person can put themselves through when they cannot face who they truly are. It also shows the effects social alienation has on these individuals as they come into themselves bit by bit—their triumphs, their failures, and ultimately the.
Whitman’s poem has been the subject of a plethora ofacademic work, but for our purposes it acts as a useful starting point to theexploration of one of the central themes of Baldwin’s novel: that of genderidentity. In Whitman’s poem, the narrator is asked by a child “What is grass?”to which the speaker internally responds, “How could I answer the child? I donot know what it is any more than he.”[2]He proceeds to give us a list of things it couldpotentially be, but is never capable of settling on one particulardefinition. The answer to the seemingly simple question “What is grass” eludesthe speaker because to be able to define it would be to essentialize it. Thevery act of defining becomes limiting because in saying the essence of a thing,defining what it is denies access toall of the things that it is not.
Somethingsimilar can be seen occurring within the sphere of gender identity in Baldwin’sGiovanni’s Room. The novel followsthe tale of a young American named David as he narrates the events of his pastfrom a villa in the South of France. David is an American living in Paris whospent the formative years of his childhood in New York with his father andaunt. He is also either gay or bisexual, a fact which both terrifies anddefines him throughout the novel. The primary problem David faces is hisconfusion of his sexuality—attracted to both men and women at differenttimes—with his gender identity. Sex and gender exist as different concepts; asSuzanne E. Hatty puts it, “Sexusually refers to the biological determinants of maleness and femaleness” whilegender “typically refers to the ascription of social characteristics to eachsex. It encapsulates the dominant ideas about feminine and masculine traits andbehaviors prevalent in any society at one time.”[3]Gender, in this estimation, is a cultural construct which “exists then toperpetuate and extend the differences implied by socially defined biologicalcharacteristics.”[4]David, however, confuses his sexuality with his gender: to be a man, he mustonly be attracted to women, yet he is also attracted to men, thus he cannot bea man within the social construct of masculinity of his youth. David tries todefine his gender identity by essentializing it, boiling it down to his sexuality,but unlike the speaker in Whitman’s poem he does not realize the troublecontained therein. When David removeshimself physically from the culture in which he formed his notions of gender,leaving America entirely, he begins to see that the answer to the question of“What is man” belies as a simple answer just as much as the child’s question inWhitman’s poem. However, the ambiguous ending of the novel does not provide asolid answer—even at the very end David is unable to separate these two identitieswhich persist in being intertwined.
America
David’sfirst sexual encounter with another person happens when he is relatively young.While staying over at his friend Joey’s house, he wakes up in the middle of thenight and, after a brief conversation about bedbugs, he “laughed and grabbedhis head as I had done God knows how many times before…But this time when Itouched him something happened in him and in me which made this touch differentfrom any touch either of us had ever known.”[5]He and Joey kiss, and David tells us that “Then, for the first time in my life,I was really aware of another person’s body, of another person’s smell. We hadour arms around each other. It was like holding in my hand some rare,exhausted, nearly doomed bird which I had miraculously happened to find” (8).From his present perspective in France, we get a snippet;
I feel in myself now a faint,a dreadful stirring of what so overwhelmingly stirred in me then, great thirstyheat, and trembling, and tenderness so painful I thought my heart would burst.But out of this astounding, intolerable pain came joy; we gave each other joythat night. It seemed, then, that a lifetime would not be long enough for me toact with Joey the act of love. (8)
A number of things happen inthis passage which elucidate David’s character and later events in the novel.David becomes, for the first time, “aware” of another person’s physical form.It is one thing to be aware of another person and their existence, but to be“aware of another person’s body” connotes something quite different. Davidbecomes aware that there are physical urges and needs outside of himself, andthat they connect to another person. He also doesn’t feel any shame initiallyat this first act of love; words like “miraculously,” “tenderness,”“astounding,” “joy,” and “love” all paint a vividly beautiful scene. Thislovemaking is nothing dirty or shameful, as David later feels, but rathersomething miraculous and beautiful—David even later tells us that Joey’s bodywas “the most beautiful creation I had ever seen till then,” (8) a sentimentwhich further reinforces the beauty and innocence of this act.
It’s also important to note that David paints this momentas something that “happened in him and in me.” Rather than painting this as a choice—the choice to make love withsomeone—this becomes rather a part of him, a newly discovered aspect of hisidentity. It is happening inside of him, changing him in some way, and thischange persists through his life. Even in remembering it many years later, wehear that he feels “now a faint, a dreadful stirring of what so overwhelminglystirred in me then.” The use of the word “dreadful” connotes feeling of frightand alarm, exemplifying David’s own fear of what was awoken within him all thoseyears ago. Yet even so, this description also demonstrates that the feelingwhich awakened with Joey that night continues to exist within him—it has becomeabsorbed into his being.
But this “astounding” discovery about himself isshort-lived, bounded, as he tells us, “by that night—it ended in the morning”(8). When David moves to wake Joey, “something stopped me. I was suddenlyafraid” (8). The diction of this last sentence is noticeably short—our normallyverbose narrator draws our attention with the brevity of his thought. This isnot a realization that he did not enjoy making love to Joey. This is rather afear that what he has done is, in some intrinsic way, wrong. While paintingJoey’s body earlier as “the most beautiful creation,” he tells us that “my ownbody suddenly seemed gross and crushing and the desire which was rising in meseemed monstrous” (9). His body becomes an extension of his desire, and bothare seen as grotesque. The shift comes because of David’s anxiety over a simplefact; “But Joey is a boy” (9). Davidhas been socialized into a certain understanding of gender. Socialization “isthe training people are given in order for them to learn what their statusesare and how to perform the roles attached to those statues.”[6]David has grown up with the understanding that he is a man, and that being aman has specific qualities attached to it. In his understanding, men areattracted to women, not other men, thus his attraction to Joey is a startlingand unsettling. By sleeping with another man, something fundamental aboutDavid’s identity as a man has been upset. David says that Joey’s body “suddenlyseemed the black opening of a cavern in which I would be tortured till madnesscame, in which I would lose my manhood”(9 emphasis mine). He suddenly shifts from awe and wonder at his physicalencounter with another person to dreadful fear and terror that this aberrantbehavior—attraction to the wrong gender—will cause him to lose not just hissanity, but something intrinsic to his sense of self: his manhood. Davidsomehow knows that society believes this act is wrong—through “half-heard,half-forgotten, half-understood stories, full of dirty words” (9). His sense ofself, and thus his sense of masculinity, has been defined by the socialpressures of the world around him. David knows that he is a man, but has nowdiscovered that he feels sexual attraction to other men, and this undermines thesense of self developed in America.
David’s definition of “manhood” stems primarily from therole model of his father. After his encounter with Joey, he hears his fathercome home late one night and have an argument with his aunt Ellen. Ellenaccuses David’s father of not acting appropriately, telling him “‘that someoneought to tell you what you’re doing to your son’” (13) and intimating thatDavid knows “‘where you’re coming from’” and knows “‘about your women!’” (15)As we find out, Ellen “was wrong. I don’t think I did know about them—or hadnever thought about them. But from that evening, I thought about them all thetime. I could scarcely ever face a woman without wondering whether or not myfather had, in Ellen’s phrase, been ‘interfering’ with her” (15). Two thingsoccur in this argument. The first is a self-fulfilling prophecy: Ellen believesthat her brother’s behavior is negatively affecting David’s development into anadult, when in fact David had not ever thought about it consciously before. However,once Ellen outlines the bad behavior she believes David will develop hepromptly begins developing it. David tells us that the conversation “allowedall of Ellen’s prophecies about me to come true. She had said that there wouldcome a time when nothing and nobody would be able to rule me, not even my father.And that time certainly came” (15). In this way, David’s sense of identity andself becomes continually modified by the people and the culture around him. Headheres to the person Ellen imagines him to be, just as he is petrified to besomething society believes he should not be.
The second thing which occurs in this passage is thefirst quasi-definition of manhood. Throughout the novel, masculinity is definedin opposition to various qualities or identities. The first moment of thisbegins here, when David’s father says, “‘all I want for David is that he growup to be a man. When I say a man, Ellen, I don’t mean a Sunday school teacher’”(15). David hears what a man should be for the first time, but defined in thenegative. Being a “man” means not being “a Sunday school teacher.” Thiscontrast connotes several different things. During much of the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries, the number of men attending church was significantly lowerthan the number of women in America. Churches became a space associated withfemininity. Sunday school, being the place where children learn about theirreligion, becomes doubly feminized as both located with the construct of religionand connected with women through its association with church. Being a “teacher”also connotes some idea of femininity, since teaching has become highlyassociated with women and is now seen as a nurturing pursuit, in opposition tothe more aggressive and solitary image that America had (and perhaps continuesto have) of masculinity.
Once David has an image of masculinity as it is definedin America and transgresses against that image by having feelings of attractionfor men, he feels the need to retaliate by becoming hyper-masculine. He tellsus that
I could not discuss what hadhappened to me with anyone, I could not even admit it to myself; and, while Inever thought about it, it remained, nevertheless, at the bottom of my mind, asstill and as awful as a decomposing corpse. And it changed, it thickened, itsoured the atmosphere of my mind. Soon it was I who came staggering home lateat night, it was I who found Ellen waiting up for me, Ellen and I who wranglednight in and night out. (16)
The notion that he “could noteven admit it to” himself demonstrates a repression of identity that beginshere and is explored throughout the rest of the story. Because David feels suchintense shame about this part of his identity, he deliberately separates it fromhis conscious thought—he cannot confess it even within the privacy of his ownmind. His encounter with Joey becomes, for him, a shameful dead weight, a“decomposing corpse” that he carries around with him. This image fully enforcesthe sense that being homosexual means the death of his gender identity. Ratherthan trying for a little introspection on his identity, David rather works toemulate his father’s behavior to become a man and not “a Sunday schoolteacher.” His innocence has died as society has forced him to grow up andbecome something which he fears he cannot be.
David’s attempts at hyper-masculinity mirror a number ofpsychological studies which demonstrate that male members of more repressedgroup tend to develop hyper-masculine characteristics as retaliation againstthe “blocked access to the power and authority of the dominant group.”[7]In the study cited below, the authors “focused on the conception of masculinitydescribed as a social construct involving the negotiation of power and authority,in which socially dominant men who adhere to gender role norms subordinateother men, women, and femininity.”[8]This description aptly expresses some of the characteristics which David putson—his treatment of women and Giovanni often seems demeaning and sometimescruel. The authors also identify that “hypermasculinity has become the valuedand preferred gender culture among gay men in response to subordination by adominant heterosexual male culture.”[9]The study focuses on black men, but can be applied very effectively elsewhere.In their discussion, the authors draw out a key point; “Although gender andsexual orientation are distinct socialconstructs, our results suggest that participants’ important others oftenconflated the 2 constructs, equating homosexuality with femininity, such thatthe masculine expectations experienced by participants were both antihomosexualand antifeminine.”[10]The key point which emerges from this study as it can be applied to Baldwin’snovel is the expectation of adherence to gender roles. As stated above, genderand sexuality are often (mistakenly) conflated with each other. In David’scase, the socialization he experiences in his youth resultscreates a veryparticular understanding of masculinity, one which becomes ingrained in hispsyche.
All ofthis takes place during David’s young life in America, and his identity andthus gender identity become inextricably bound to American concepts anddefinitions. He understands masculinity to be defined by sexuality, thusconfusing the two. As Harry Thomas points out, “He is sexually attracted to men, which draws him towards gayculture, but as he sees it all available forms of identity based aroundsame-sex desire involve renunciations of his manhood.”[11] And his manhood, as is discussed later inthis paper, is held up as one of his central characteristics by those who knowhim. David conceives of masculinity to be something fundamental—that the onething, for him, which defines men is apparently their attraction to women. Tonot have that is to not be a man.
While all thisdiscussion of David’s conception of masculinity is true, it is imperative tounderstand that he comes to this understanding of manhood through the locationin which he learns it. David conceives of his gender through the social normsof the culture. In America, “being a man” is often equated with sexualattraction to women. David’s interest in preserving his masculinity and hisdeeply rooted anxiety surrounding his homosexuality stems from the fact thatthe place where he developed hisidentity forbids the connection of masculinity and homosexuality.
Thus, David’s move away from America, to an entirelyseparate location, challenges his sense of self. David tells us “Perhaps, as wesay in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, notcurrent as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainlydoes not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something hasbeen misplaced” (21). A dictionary definition of “misplace” defines it as both“To put (something) in a wrong place; spec.to misfile” and “To put (something) in a place and forget its whereabouts.”[12]For our purposes, the first definition holds interest. David’s feeling that hisidentity has been somehow “misfiled” suggests not that he has forgotten whereit is, but that it has been placed within the wrong “file,” as it were. Hisidentity is, as we’ve said, tied very closely with his sense of manhood, andthis is tied to the place-developed understanding of masculinity. Perhaps insome way, then, David has “misfiled” his identity as a man under the categoryof his sexuality. To connect that back to how we began this section, Davidhimself refuses to think about his night with Joey—he has willfully forgottenthat part of himself. However, going abroad brings it all bubbling back to thesurface. David, from his present perspective as narrator after all the eventsof the novel have taken places, tells us “I think now that if I had had anyintimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the sameself from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home”(21). David’s self ends up being the same person he has always been. LikeDorothy in her ruby slippers, what he was running from and looking for end upbeing in his backyard all along.
Paris
Once in Paris, David’sidentity changes in a number of fundamental ways. The first of these is his nationalidentity as an American which is often brought to the fore. Probably the mostobvious occurrence of this happens in a scene between David and Giovanni at thepost office for Americans in Paris. David “was aware that they [the Americans]all had in common something that made them Americans, but I could never put myfinger on what it was. I knew that whatever this common quality was, I sharedit” (89). David has awareness that he is American in some essential way, thoughhe cannot define it. Like the question of “what is grass” in Whitman’s poem,again we get the sense that “what is American” becomes a troublingly complexquestion. David still tries to identify one essence that makes them allAmerican but, like the speaker in Song ofMyself, is unable to identify one unifying quality. And yet, despite thenebulous nature of this identity definition, David gets dreadfully defensivewhen Giovanni uses his identity as an American to define him either in thepositive or the negative. We are told that when Giovanni is angry with David hecalls him a “‘vrai américain,’” andwhen he approves of him, Giovanni “said that I was not an American at all” (89).David resents this, “resented being called an American (and resented resentingit) because it seemed to make me nothing more than that, whatever that was; andI resented being called not anAmerican because it seemed to make me nothing”(89). David’s identity in Parischanges drastically because of the shift in geographic location. He is not aParisian or even a Frenchman; he is an American. Travelling abroad, geographicidentity becomes increasingly important because of displacement: those who aretraveling do not belong here butbelong, by their very nature, somewhereelse. David’s identity becomes bound up in geographic location because hefinds himself elsewhere. At the same time, he becomes uncomfortable with peoplehaving such intimate knowledge of his identity when he, as he tells us earlier,“did not want anyone to know me” (16). If someone who is not David can haveintimate knowledge of his identity, it further undermines his sense of self andvalue because he does not know himself.
This displacement causes him to face his essentializingtendencies head-on, as we see in his slow exploration of his attraction to men.Before meeting Giovanni, David continues to adhere to his American formation ofgender identity; he tells Jacques “‘Well, you may find this hard to believe,but, actually, I’m sort of queer for girls myself…I don’t spend money on men’”(30). Despite his intimation, the audience knows that he also finds attractionin men. The lie can be spotted in the diction; this sentence is rife withpauses. Take this sentence and put a dash wherever a comma happens, and thepauses become overwhelming: “‘Well—you may find this hard tobelieve—but—actually—I’m sort of queer for girls myself.’” Not only does Davidpause excessively when expressing this sentiment, but he also uses fourdifferent introductions to his thought. “Well,” “you may find this hard to believe,”“but,” and “actually” would all serve the same purpose when introducing thealleged fact that he’s interested in women. It’s as though David stutters over theidentification of his sexuality. Additionally he uses the word “queer,” a termwhich has become heavily associated with homosexuality. In doing so, he perhapsaccidentally suggests his actual sexual orientation. Jacques responds to hisstatement with “‘I was not suggesting that you jeopardize, even for a moment,that…that immaculate manhood which isyour pride and joy’” (30). Jacques reinforces David’s stereotypically“masculine” identity, and his “pride” in that quality. In this way, we see twovery different things equated more forcefully than they have been up to thispoint. David continues to align his gender—as a man—with his sexuality. Socialpressures have indicated to him that men like women, not other men. Thus beinga man (as stated earlier) means being attracted to women.
Yet in Paris, the lines between men and women becomeblurred and, in some cases, erased altogether. In Paris we meet both transwomen and gay men, both groups who are seemingly able to better separate theirgender identity from their sexual orientation. For David, however, these thingsare inextricable and the confusion or separation of them disgusts him. Uponfirst entering the bar where Giovanni works, David gives the audience arun-down of all the bar patrons. The ones he spends the most time on are “les folles, always dressed in the mostimprobable combinations, screaming like parrots the details of their latestlove affairs—their love affairs always seeming to be hilarious” (26). “Lesfolles” translated to English literally means “the crazies,” which alone is nota flattering or kind characterization. Added to that, however, is David’sinsistence upon dehumanizing these individuals; in this passage, he says theyare “like parrots” and later he tells us that “they looked like a peacock gardenand sounded like a barnyard” (27). David “always found it difficult to believethat they ever went to bed with anybody, for a man who wanted a woman wouldcertainly have rather had a real one and a man who wanted a man would certainlynot want one of them” (27). ForDavid, gender and sexuality are inextricably bound together. Being a man whowants to be a woman who is sexually attracted to men is painted as anaberration of nature: they cannot be human because no rational human wouldthink that way because (as David sees it) gender and sexuality are boundtogether.
David’s formation of this argument is troubling to saythe least, but this passage also illuminates something important in the personDavid becomes while in Paris. This passage allows us to see that David has, onsome level, accepted the possibility of men being attracted to other menbecause he admits “a man who wanted another man would certainly not want one ofthem.” His use of “a man” as thesubject who wants the object of “another man,” gives subject and object, loverand loved, the gender identity of masculinity. In spite of David’s insistenceupon an essentialized version of manhood, he begins to move towards anunderstanding of gender and sexuality which can separate the two things. Evenif he is not yet comfortable with this idea (and, arguably, never becomestotally comfortable with it) he has at least begun to accept it as a viablepossibility.
When David and Giovanni sleep together for the firsttime, we get another sense that David’s identity has begun to shift. He tellsus that they made love “With everything in me screaming No! yet the sum of me sighed Yes”(64). This is a very curious sentiment, and one worth exploring. We are giventwo parts of David’s consciousness: “everything in” him and “the sum of” him.Though they connote similar things, they represent two different aspects of hisidentity. In this paradigm, “everything” represents all of the ‘things’ whichhe has been given to socialize his identity as a man. This includes hisfather’s definition of masculinity, his aunt’s fear of what David will become,and the overwhelming social pressure David identifies when he sleeps with Joey.All of these things, the cultural understanding of gender which he has imbibed,result in his internal cry of “No!”Yet it has often been said that the whole is more than the sum of its parts,and so when David tells us that “the sum of me sighed Yes,” we are getting more than merely David’s socialized understandingof masculinity. This is the inherent identity which he holds within him, theidentity which awoke the night he spent with Joey; just as when something“happened in him [Joey] and in me,” so too here does something happen. David’s truesexuality emerges via his sum, that thing which the entireness of his being andnot merely all of the accumulated parts.
At first, all seems to be going swimmingly with David’snewfound acceptance of this aspect of his self. He tells us “In the beginning,our life held a joy and amazement which was newborn every day” (75). This joyaligns with the joy David felt with Joey in his youth, yet even here David seescracks in the façade. He tells us “Beneath the joy, of course, was anguish andbeneath the amazement was fear” (75). His use of the phrase “of course” impliesthat his fear and anguish are completely natural and warranted, so of course hewould feel them. Such a sentiment connects nicely to what has already beenexamined in David’s character: his absolute certainty of the entwined nature ofgender and sexuality, and his fear at their separation. Beyond this, however,“fear” and “anguish” demonstrate the dreadful reality of David’s situation.Even in accepting a part of himself, he is incapable of happiness because hefeels that he has transgressed against the social construct of gender. In beinga man attracted to other men, he consistently internally violates the Americanparadigm of masculine identity.
But the biggest focus of David’s relationship withGiovanni is not Giovanni himself. Instead, David fixates on Giovanni’s room,which he moves into shortly after their first encounter. David tells us “Iscarcely know how to describe that room. It became, in a way, every room I hadever been in and every room I find myself in hereafter will remind me ofGiovanni’s room” (85). The room has a profound effect on David, becoming thelocation of “a sea of change” (84) for his character. He offers an incrediblydetailed description of the room, odd especially given its small size, andtells us “In the beginning, because the motives which led me to Giovanni’s roomwere so mixed, has so little to do with his hopes and desires, and were sodeeply a part of my own desperation, I invented in myself a kind of pleasure inplaying the housewife after Giovanni had gone to work” (88). This passage doesseveral things. First, it illustrates that David’s move into the room was theresult of his “own desperation.” Desperation, like fear and anguish,characterizes David’s understanding of his self. He is desperate to understandit, desperate to come to terms with it, and completely baffled by the self hecontinually stumbles across. Secondly, we discover David’s attempt at crossingthe boundary from masculine into feminine. Because, as has been repeatedlystated, David believes men should be attracted to women, here he tries tofeminize himself in an effort to create a congruous identity once again. In“playing housewife” David takes on a stereotypically female role. This doesn’twork for David, however, as he later says “men never can be housewives” (88).Once more, David formulates masculinity in the negative; like his father’sassertion that being a man means not being “a Sunday school teacher,” Davidasserts that men cannot hold the feminine role of housewife, even though bothof these roles are socially constructed and their gendering results from thatsame social construction. David attempts to make his sexual identity match upwith his gender identity; he is attracted to men, therefore he should be awoman. But even here, David clings to his masculine identity—being the Americanversion of a man is too important to him for him to relinquish thatunderstanding.
Consequently, David consistently uses language of escapewith regards to the room. He says, “I was going…to escape his room” (77) and “‘Ionly knew I had to get out of Giovanni’s room’” (164). If we understand theroom as a metaphor for David’s sexuality, then his desperation to escape itties right in with his decision to leave America. He consistently tries toescape himself, inhabiting the places of other people for a time, trying themon to see if they fit. Yet, as he explains when he first describes the room, itbecomes “every room I had ever been in and every room I find myself inhereafter will remind me of Giovanni’s room” (85). Thus, David can never trulyescape the room or the aspect of his identity that it represents though, as wesee, he certainly tries.
His opportunity to escape the room comes when Hellareturns to Paris. Once he receives word that she’s coming back from Spain, Davidfeels an absolute certainty that his life will return to the norm, saying “Nowshe would be coming back and my life with Giovanni would be finished” (94). Hisbrush with Giovanni is deemed as finished as soon as the alternative of aheterosexual relationship returns to his life. He says that this encounter“would be something that had happened to me once,” intimating not only thatit’s just a “thing” that happened, but also that it happened “to” him, implyingthat he had no agency in it. Again we see David’s conviction of his genderidentity is interconnected with his sexuality. But what really drives homeDavid’s absolute certainty of the entwined nature of gender and sexuality,however, is his conversation with Giovanni when he returns to the room to breakup with him. David has returned to Hella, moving back towards the heterosexualnorm he has been socialized to understanding as “natural,” and returns to theroom to collect some of his belongings. Giovanni accuses David, saying,
“You do not…loveanyone! You never have loved anyone, I am sure you never will! You love yourpurity, you love your mirror—you are just like a little virgin, you walk aroundwith your hands in front of you as though you had some precious metal, gold,silver, rubies, maybe diamonds downthere between your legs! You will never give it to anybody, you will never letanybody touch it—man or woman. You want to be clean.” (141)
Giovanni’s accusations hit acentral issue with David’s formation of gender and sexuality. Not only is heattracted to men, but he has discovered that he can actually love other men.David repeatedly tells us that he loves Giovanni: he tells Hella “‘I love him,in a way’” (134) and tells the reader that he loves Giovanni even as he hateswhat that love has created within him (84). But in hating what that love hascreated—an identity with which he cannot reconcile—David demonstrates thecentral tension of being incapable of being both a man and gay. These socialconstructs, which restrict his gender to male and sexuality to heterosexual,constrict his emotions to the point of uselessness. Giovanni points out thatDavid treats the physical manifestation of his masculinity as though it weresomething precious, “gold, silver, rubies,” when really there’s nothing sospecial about it at all. Yet he protects it for what it represents, which isthe heteronormativity he has been socialized to believe in. What David isafraid of, then, is not only that being attracted to men will destroy hismanhood, but that loving a man woulddestroy his self.
Additionally, there is David’s larger fear, validated bythe society in which he grew up, that two men cannot have a life together. Hesays, “Inside me something locked. ‘I—I cannot have a life with you’” (141) andasks “‘What kind of life can two men have together, anyway?’” (142), pointingout the very real fact that during this time period (and arguably still today)homosexual relationships are censured by society, considered perverse andunacceptable. If David wants to have a life within the larger social norm, hemust conform to the societal expectation of what he should want as a man. Thekey problem is that society only determines whathe should want; when David accuses Giovanni of loving him “‘because you haven’tgot the guts to go after a woman, which is what you really want?’”, Giovanni is understandably baffled and upset,responding with “‘You are the one who keeps talking about what I want. But I have only been talking about who I want!’” (142). Giovanni, unlikeDavid, doesn’t feel the need to define his gender by his sexuality. He iscapable of holding the two things separate, and for him love is about whom, notwhat. It doesn’t matter particularly to him what biological sex David isbecause he loves him for his self. But for David, it is absolutelyinconceivable that any man who was actually a man would want someone who wasnot a woman. Connecting to the discussion earlier about hyper-masculinity, wecan see David belittling Giovanni in an attempt to exert his power, and thushis masculinity. His American-based identity as a man means he feels theimpulse towards hyper-masculinity and the need to reduce those who don’tconform to the social norm.
Yet even once he has escaped the room and the paradigm itoffers to him, David does not feel whole. Hella, a fascinating character in herown right, tries to bring him back to himself. In the last chapter of thenovel, Giovanni is accused of the murder of Guillaume and sentenced to death.This causes David to feel incredibly guilty, and he begins acting very distantfrom Hella. She begs him, “Please. I want to go home. I want to get married. Iwant to start having kids. I want us to live someplace. I want you” (161). Hella, also an American,still identifies America as her home. She fits neatly into the heterosexualparadigm of her home nation, though we see that she is perhaps more aware thanmost about the artificial nature of her gender. Yet even with this awareness,Hella knows what she wants and tries to get it. She wants to marry David andhave a nice, normal, socially acceptable life, but once David begins driftingaway so, too, does this dream. At one point she exclaims “‘where are you? You’ve gone away somewhere andI can’t find you. If you’d only let me reach you—!’” (161). The crucial thingthat Hella identifies here is the particular difference between David andherself. It’s not who he is that is the problem, but where he is. Hella stillidentifies America as home, but David never has, and therein lays the problemwith his attempt at conforming to heteronormativity. David’s gender identitywas formed in America, true, but the “sum” of him feels a cognitive dissonancewith this formation. Because he is predominantly attracted to men, he believeshe cannot exist in a heterosexual relationship. But because he identifies asmale, he also believes that he cannot exist in a homosexual one. He becomesdistanced, physically and emotionally, from everyone because of theinextricability of these two, socially constructed identities.
Once Hella discovers David’s attraction to men, shedecides to leave. While she packs, David tells her that he was “lying tomyself” about his sexual and romantic preferences (163). This is the first timethat David admits aloud what he has internally been admitting the wholebook—that he feels more attracted to men than to women, and that he has beentrying to deny that part of himself. She leaves, and David is left alone, wherewe met at the beginning of the novel. He has been looking at his reflection inthe window pane and he seems “to be fading away before my eyes—this fancyamuses me, and I laugh to myself” (166). David’s image and identity areliterally fading away, cut from him by the events which have transpired in thenovel. He takes off all his clothes and looks at himself in his mirror, saying“I long to crack that mirror and be free. I look at my sex, my troubling sex,and wonder how it can be redeemed, how I can save it from the knife. Thejourney to the grave is already begun, the journey to corruption is, always,already, half over” (168). This incredibly powerful scene heralds David’srecognition, finally, of the troubling multiplicity of answers to the question“what is man.” Like the speaker in Whitman’s poem, this realization comesmidway through his life. Formed, like Whitman’s speaker, “from this soil, thisair,” the identity David created in America is encapsulated in his reflection,the connection between his sexuality and his gender. He longs to “crack” thatimage and be freed of it, but even at the conclusion is incapable of doing so.The social construct holding his identity in place is too strong, and he isunable to escape. The very last thing which happens in the novel is Davidtaking “the blue envelope which Jacques has sent me and tear it slowly intomany pieces, watching them dance in the wind, watching the wind carry themaway. Yet, as I turn and begin walking toward the waiting people, the windblows some of them back on me” (169). Symbolically, he destroys his connectionwith Giovanni and with his sexuality. Had the novel ended with the windcarrying them away, perhaps we could be satisfied that David would move forwardunhindered. But the last line, that “the wind blows some of the back on me,”demonstrates this hope to be false. David cannot escape his “sum” no matter howmuch he tries. We are left, then, hanging in anticipation—David has finallyrecognized that the answer to his identity is not simple, yet cannot escapefrom the social construct that says it should be.
Baldwin’s novel takes on, as Harry Thomas puts it, “whatwas, at mid-twentieth century, a new social type: the masculine gay man.”[13]This social construct developed in America; as George Chauncey says in his bookGay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, andthe Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, “the sexual regime nowhegemonic in American culture, is a stunningly recent creation.”[14]The creation of a category of “homosexual” that had, tied with it, the socialstigmas of femininity and thus a lack of manhood, created enormous pressureupon those who didn’t identify with the heterosexual paradigm in America. Andthat understanding of masculinity seems nearly impossible to escape: David, aswe see, never fully extracts himself from the American mindset even after heleaves America. He is always trapped by a paradigm of masculinity to which hecannot conform.
So let me now return to the quotation at the beginning ofthe novel, hidden surreptitiously on the copyright page. The quotation isburied within information about date of publication and copyright infringement.Most readers wouldn’t see it unless they were looking for it. The quotationlinks Baldwin to a larger discourse, and deliberately connects him to Whitmanwho, some biographers allege, may have been gay himself.[15]If this is true, Baldwin furtively links himself to another gay writer whilealso deliberately connecting his novel with the larger canon of gay literature.But even if it is not true, the declaration he chooses to include seems almosta little rebellious. The quotation “I am the man, I suffered, I was there” wasnot chosen at random. It states, baldly, what David clings to throughout thenovel: “I am the man.” Not even a man,but the man. What Baldwin subtly andquietly suggests on the copyright page is the radical notion that one can existboth as a homosexual and as a man, that the two do not need to be mutuallyexclusive. And beyond this, that “I was there” implies that, even if otherswon’t acknowledge it, this man existed and was present. Similarly, even ifothers won’t acknowledge homosexuality as an acceptable reality, that doesn’tmean it doesn’t exist and it doesn’t make it go away. Even if David never comesto terms with his homosexuality, Baldwin seems to very sneakily suggest thatidentity, no matter the form it takes, will always be there and cannot bedenied.
Bibliography
Baldwin, James. Giovanni’s Room. New York: VintageInternational, 1956.
Chauncey,George. Gay New York: Gender, UrbanCulture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. New York:BasicBooks, 1994.
Giovanni 27s Rooms
Duberman, Lucile. Gender and Sex in Society.New York: Praeger Publishers, Inc.,1975.
Field,Errol Lamont, Laura M. Bogart, Katherine C. Smith, David J. Malebranche,Jonathan Ellen, and Mark A. Schuster. “‘I Always Felt I Had to Prove MyManhood’: Homosexuality, Masculinity, Gender Role Strain, and HIV Risk AmongYoung Black Men Who Have Sex With Men.” AmericanJournal of Public Health 105. No. 1 (January 2015), 122-131.
Harry,Thomas. “‘Immaculate Manhood’: The Cityand the Pillar, Giovanni’s Room,and the Straight-Acting Gay Man.” TwentiethCentury Literature 59. No. 4 (Winter 2013): 596-618.
Hatty,Suzanne E. Masculinities, Violence, andCulture.London: SagePublications, Inc., 2000.
Messner,Michael A. Politics of Masculinities: Menin Movements. London: Sage Publications, 1997.
Giovanni 27s Roomba
Miller,James E. Miller. “Sex and Sexuality.” TheWalt Whitman Archive. Accessed April 29, 2015. http://www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_49.html
'misplace,v.'. OED Online. March 2015. Oxford University Press. 5 March 2015. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/119858?redirectedFrom=misplace.
Sinfield,Alan. On Sexuality and Power. NewYork: Columbia University Press, 2004.
Whitman,Walt. 'Song of Myself (1892 Version).' Poetry Foundation. Accessed April 29, 2015. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174745.
[1] Walt Whitman, 'Song of Myself(1892 Version).' Poetry Foundation.Accessed April 29, 2015. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174745.
[3] Suzanne E. Hatty, Masculinities, Violence, and Culture (London: Sage Publications,Inc., 2000), 111.
[5] James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room, (New York: Vintage International, 1956), 7-8. Fromnow on, all references to Baldwin’s novel shall be made in text withparenthetical citations.
[6] Lucile Duberman, Gender and Sex in Society (New York: Praeger Publishers, Inc.,1975), 23.
[7] Errol Lamont Fields, Laura M. Bogart,Katherine C. Smith, David J. Malebranche, Jonathan Ellen, and Mark A. Schuster,“‘I Always Felt I Had to Prove My Manhood’: Homosexuality, Masculinity, GenderRole Strain, and HIV Risk Among Young Black Men Who Have Sex With Men,” American Journal of Public Health 105,no. 1 (January 2015), 122.
[9] Fields et al,. “Prove My Manhood,” 122.
[10] Fields et al., “Prove My Manhood,” 129,emphasis mine.
[11] Thomas Harry, “‘Immaculate Manhood’: The City and the Pillar, Giovanni’s Room, and the Straight-ActingGay Man,” Twentieth Century Literature 59,no. 4 (Winter 2013): 596.
[12] 'misplace, v.'. OED Online.March 2015. Oxford University Press. 5 March 2015.http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/119858?redirectedFrom=misplace.
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[14] George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay MaleWorld, 1890-1940 (New York: BasicBooks, 1994), 13.
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[15] James E. Miller, “Sex and Sexuality,” The Walt Whitman Archive, accessed April29, 2015, http://www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_49.html