By Jack Loughney
James Baldwin’s 1956 novel Giovanni’s Room examines the complexities of existence as a homosexual man. The segment of life which is explored most particularly is sexuality and its relationship to gender identity–David, the protagonist, is used as a vessel to examine these concepts, especially in relation to the imposition of societal ideals within these concepts. Throughout Giovanni’s Room, David is torn between pressure to conform to an identity acceptable to society along with his own desire. Pressure is exacerbated by the establishment of an inconsistent sexual morality within his home life, which impacts him throughout the entirety of his life. Though he is likely truly homosexual, he finds it impossible to accept this about himself because of the inconsistent social ideals he learned at home–both from his father and aunt following the death of his mother. Other characters throughout the novel, such as his fiancée, Hella, play similar roles to his parental figures as a channel for societal principles. David finds himself haunted by ideas of what a man should be and the role he should play within a family–and can never reconcile them with his own feelings. I will argue that the total image of what a man should be that is presented to David by his parental figures not only conflicts with his own feelings but is contradictory to itself, trapping David in an ethos that hinders his ability to decide how to live life. His sexuality, already deemed taboo by society, becomes a corrosive secret, eating away at his identity. At heart, David is a man, and he is also truly homosexual–but his moral framework dictates that these are irreconcilable. The tragic position leads him to where he is found at the end of the novel–destitute and utterly alone. David’s issues with what a man should be–especially the importance of masculinity and rejection of femininity–prevent him from fully accepting who he is because significant parts of his true identity are incompatible with this societal principle.
A feminine authority of David’s youth, his aunt Ellen, influences an important part of David’s life: his views on promiscuity. David’s father returns from a night out drinking, and during the ensuing argument, Ellen accuses him: “‘And don’t fool yourself…that he doesn’t know where you’re coming from, don’t think he doesn’t know about your women!’” (Baldwin 15). Ellen’s accusation against his father insinuates that this manner of acting is inherently negative; David says, “From that evening…I could scarcely ever face a woman without wondering whether or not my father had been …‘interfering’ with her” (Baldwin 15). David specifically repeats the word “interfering”, which is used by Ellen to describe an uncommitted relationship. Her view on such relationships is clear: they are a perversion, disturbing the natural, moral way of having a relationship. David expresses this attitude himself throughout his adult life–especially in Paris. His time spent with the promiscuous men at Guillame’s bar evokes a feeling within him of absolute disgust. Jacques, a companion of David, is one such victim to the view David holds on promiscuity–he regards Jacques in contempt for the lack of romance in his love life: “A lot of your life is despicable.” (Baldwin 55). He asserts that Jacques’ romantic/sexual behavior is by nature wrong–and this is regardless of his sexual orientation. Importantly, Jacques is David’s main connection to the underground social life of homosexuals in Paris, and the contempt he holds for him also falls upon the rest of this world. David does not want to directly implicate himself with people who act in such a manner, nor does he: David’s contempt allows him to never fully immerse himself in this underground world: “I was not of their company.” (Baldwin 22). At heart, David has little to no respect or empathy for the lives and experiences of the gay men he spends time with. Naturally, this is greatly impactful on David’s relationship with Giovanni: in spite of the intensity of their love, David will never consider his romance with Giovanni to be a fully legitimate part of his life. Part of David longs to not commit himself to Giovanni: “I wished…standing there at the bar, that I had been able to find in myself the force to turn and walk out—to have gone over to Montparnasse and picked up a girl.” (Baldwin 42). This sentiment never passes in David’s mind; for the rest of their relationship, he knows deep down that he won’t commit. Interestingly, David’s reaction to Giovanni also embodies another different idea from the same argument his father had with Ellen–this one, however, is exactly contrary to the former.
David’s father’s idea of what a man should be–who David should be–is expressed in the same argument of Ellen’s accusation: “‘All I want for David is that he grow up to be a man. And when I say a man, Ellen, I don’t mean a Sunday school teacher.” (Baldwin 15). The Sunday school teacher evokes an image of a quiet, faithful family man of a small town–perhaps of less masculine character. David’s father reviles this man, instead championing the macho man. Within conservative society, both ideas of man are acceptable, in spite of their natural conflict. And of course, the lives of men who exist in the underground world of Paris are not acceptable under these conservative models of action. Baldwin’s argument goes beyond the simple fact that David finds conflict between his true desire and societal ideation–his main assertion is that who and what society values as a man is itself in conflict. This flawed idea of masculinity goes on to haunt David throughout both relationships with Giovanni and Hella. His relationship with Hella shows both sides of the dilemma–the existence of the relationship is what David feels to be necessary to be a man. However, he frequently cheats on her with other women in order to further prove his masculinity to himself. The most apparent instance in the novel is with another American girl, Sue. David, having just received a letter from his father which seemingly asks the question “Is it a woman, David? Bring her on home.” (Baldwin 91), is overwhelmed with shame. He has been with Giovanni for a long time now, but his father’s letter calls him back to the traditional morality of America. David’s response is to immediately attempt to reclaim his masculinity in the Montparnasse, just as he longed to do when he first met Giovanni. His affair with Sue is quick and frivolous–in some ways, it evokes images of a younger, boyish affair. David’s true feelings on it are of disgust and shame–even more so than what he felt when receiving his father’s letter. What evokes his shame and pain is not his betrayal of Hella. He finds pain and fear because he cannot shake his homosexuality: “Sue was not Hella and did not lessen my terror of what would happen when Hella came: she increased it.” (Baldwin 100). In traveling to the Montparnasse, he believes that he can forget the love he has felt for another man and go back into the traditional boundaries of masculinity. He knows that his love for Giovanni is real and it cannot be put away any more, his face appearing in his mind as he walks on the left side of the bank, where he intended to shake his homosexuality: “The face that glowed before me was not her face but his” (Baldwin 95). The part of his life he intended as a temporary fling has bled into the rest of his life. In the essay “Chagrin D’amour”, Monica Pearl asserts that David’s relationships with women are used in order to wash away or mentally disguise homosexuality–and that Sue is used in “The most instrumental of purposes” as “a way of disavowing his desire for men” (Pearl 65-66). Pearl also argues that this objectifying attitude towards the women he picks up is related to the way he treats les folles, the flamboyantly gay men from the bar: “His syntax here is identical to when he reveals his disdain for gay men, with its final pronoun spat out.” (Pearl 67). Baldwin is connecting misogyny and homophobia–which both are strongly related to the womanizing, masculine role that his father desires for him earlier in the book.
David fears that his relationship with Giovanni has permanently damaged his masculinity, making him alike to les follesfrom Guillame’s bar that he despised so much. He fears that “The beast which Giovanni had awakened in me would never go to sleep again…this…opened in me a hatred for Giovanni which was as powerful as my love.” (Baldwin 84). He cannot pretend he is a straight man anymore as he had been previously conveying outwards: “By means of the rough, male candor with which I conveyed to him his case was hopeless.” (Baldwin 28). In his own mind, he has become much like them. When he encounters the stereotypically masculine sailor strolling through Paris, he feels intense shame for now lacking similar masculine character: “He had seen some all-revealing panic in my eyes, he gave me a look contemptuously lewd and knowing…as he might’ve…to the nymphomaniac or trollop trying to make him believe she was a lady.” (Baldwin 92) He admits to the reader what revealed his character was not in his looks–but rather his desire for the sailor, combined with his envy for his confidence and masculinity. David feels that having taken steps allowing himself to be more active in his homosexuality, he has permanently damaged his masculinity that once served as a barrier from it.
In spite of David’s innate homosexual desires, he had always tried to make himself out to be separate from the rest of the gay men he socialized with. Harry Thomas discusses this idea in his essay “Immaculate Manhood”. He argues that men identifying with more traditional masculine roles are averse to fully identifying themselves with the rest of the homosexual community, preferring to define themselves separately. David initially falls into this category, but when his love for Giovanni becomes inextricable to himself (i.e., his reaction after he makes love to Sue), he “tries to resolve this dilemma by embracing a traditionally feminine role” (Thomas 609) within his relationship with Giovanni. This is a curious reaction, but the reason is clear: David cannot accept love outside of the traditional gender binary. To him, two men together are simply incompatible–one must act the woman for it to be possible (which itself is completely contradictory given David’s disgust towards les folles and their gender expression). Regardless, David believes that it is the only way he and Giovanni can be together. “‘You want me to…be your little girl…I’m a man! What do you think can happen between us?’” (Baldwin 142). Truly, it is impossible for it to work: David believes that all relationships must follow that of man and woman, but he also refuses to part with his masculinity. His relationship with his father follows a very similar pattern: “He wanted no distance between us; he wanted me to look on him as a man like myself. But I wanted the merciful distance of father and son, which would have permitted me to love him.” (Baldwin 17). Love between two men is impossible for David, regardless of the sort of love that is occurring–eros and storge (romantic and familial love, respectively), in the case of Giovanni and his father.
Here I find there is a more complex issue that connects to David’s childhood–the idea of femininity versus masculinity within the home. David’s home life following the death of his mother is atypical and generally dysfunctional–the lack of a loving motherly figure for most of his life being one major problem. During his relationship with Giovanni he makes himself enter a more traditional feminine role in order to fit the traditional gender binary. By David’s account of the situation, “I invented in myself a kind of pleasure in playing the housewife after Giovanni had gone to work” (Baldwin 88). His eventual rejection of this in favor of holding his masculinity is perhaps expected regardless of previous circumstances, but I believe that his childhood plays a much more significant role. Femininity in his childhood is alien to him–mainly represented by his dead mother; imagery representing it is usually far away from David, something which he cannot possibly be part of: “Ellen spoke of my mother often, saying what a remarkable woman she had been…I felt that I had no right to be the son of such a mother.” (Baldwin 13) His only memories relating to his mother are of her photo on the mantel–which “dominated that air and controlled us all” (Baldwin 11). The role Ellen plays in his life is motherly but almost entirely without love; her actions are entirely negative towards David, described as having “wrangled night in and night out” (Baldwin 16) with him as she did with his father. This negative role that feminine figures play in David’s childhood no doubt lends itself to his distaste for taking up such a role in his relationship with Giovanni. Another contribution to this distaste goes back, again, to the masculine identity presented by David’s father–the womanizing role that he represents and supports. Though sexuality was generally suppressed to a large extent during the 1950s, effects were drastically different between feminine and masculine roles. David shows this in his feelings for women–for instance, his referral to women on the Montparnasse as “French whores” (Baldwin 95) which he asserts were not good enough for him–for their sexuality. This is directly in contrast to his father’s assertion of what a man should be: “I don’t mean a Sunday school teacher,” (Baldwin 15), which implies that a man with proper masculinity will not act in a celibate manner, unlike the expectations for women which insists that they must be in order to be worthy of attention. David’s attempt to accept femininity in his life becomes even more difficult because of this: it makes homosexuality morally impossible. Monica Pearl states that David “equates masculinity…with heterosexuality, and therefore, femininity with homosexuality.” (Pearl 67). Not only is this a false dichotomy by David, but his experience as a child leaves him with a poor understanding of the experience of femininity due to the absence of his mother. David is disgusted with the homosexuals of Paris for their prominent sexualities, but femininity must also be associated with chaste behavior–so these men exist to David in a zone of incomprehensibility–to be a man is masculine, to be masculine is to be sexual, to be homosexual is feminine, and to be feminine requires chastity. To make sense of this illogicality is impossible, so David’s adherence to these ideas makes it similarly impossible for him to accept his true identity and live peacefully with it.
At the heart of James Baldwin’s novel Giovanni’s Room is the issue of David accepting his sexuality. One can simplify the issue down into David’s own internalized homophobia–a simple and sensible reason that he finds it so difficult to accept who he is–but the mechanisms to his homophobia and general confusion he faces are more complicated than the common societal attitudes of the time. David’s family life not only communicates the typical heteronormative ideas against homosexuality, but also gives him a convoluted representation of masculinity which complicates David’s struggle much further. His question is not whether it is morally correct to love another man. Instead, it is whether he can love the way he truly desires while maintaining the identity he wants to hold in society. David’s identity is strongly tied to his masculinity, but his sense of masculinity is not only illogical but irreconcilable with that true desire. Thus, his identity disintegrates under the force of conflict between his designed identity and true self. Without a consistent code by which to live his life, his actions often contradict–either following his desire or his expectations for himself. The consequence of David’s inability to choose is the alienation of everyone in his life, leaving him heartbroken and alone, while Giovanni awaits his execution.
WORKS CITED
Baldwin, James. Giovanni’s Room. Vintage International a Division of Random House LLC, 2013.
Pearl, Monica B. “Chagrin d’amour: Intimacy, Shame, and the Closet in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room.” James Baldwin Review, vol. 6, 2020, pp. 64–84. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/48664824. Accessed 3 May 2024.
Thomas, Harry. “‘Immaculate Manhood’: The City and the Pillar, Giovanni’s Room, and the Straight–Acting Gay Man.” Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 59, no. 4, 2013, pp. 596–618. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24246956. Accessed 3 May 2024.
