James Baldwin’s second novel, Giovanni’s Room, first published in 1957, is very much, as the title suggests, a tale which revolves around spatiality. But the spaces under interrogation here are not the literal physical spaces of a room, a bar, an apartment or a house, though those are among the sites of interaction throughout the text. Baldwin uses these locations as metaphorical spaces or places wherein bodies may be categorised in terms of sexuality. A consideration of this metaphorical usage of spaces, in particular, the room of Giovanni, a young, self-exiled, Italian man who works as a bartender at a Parisian gay bar, reveals the novel to be a study of the obsession, as Horrocks (1997, p. 154) would call it, of society to posit bodies into “dichotomous or binary categories”, in this case, heterosexual or homosexual. It is also a strong and unapologetic revilement of the dominant hegemonic, patriarchal belief that homosexuality, as Cranny-Francis et al (2003, p. 19) note, is “an aberration, an evil, a criminal activity”. But it is not so much the character of Giovanni or even his lover, the narrator and protagonist, David, who delivers Baldwin’s message. That is delivered by Giovanni’s room itself, particularly via its significance to David, who is unable to determine his own position as a sexual being.

Baldwin’s metaphorical use of physical spaces begins with the very first line of the novel: “I stand at the window of this great house” (Baldwin 2001, p. 9); and ends with the beginning of the final paragraph: “And at last I step out into the morning and I lock the door behind me” (Baldwin 2001, p. 159). This house is the place to where David retreats from Paris with his fiancée, Hella. It is large and spacious in contrast to Giovanni’s room, which is small and cluttered. The difference is critical, as this discussion shall elucidate.

As the site for Giovanni and David’s homosexual practices, their individual perceptions of the room are telling indicators of each man’s attitude towards his sexuality. For Giovanni, his room is, as Henderson (2000, p. 320) claims, “a work in progress”, imbuing the space with positivity and potential.

Day after day we lingered in that room and Giovanni began to work on it again. He had some weird idea that it would be nice to have a bookcase sunk in the wall and he chipped through the wall until he came to the brick and began pounding away at the brick (Baldwin 2001, p. 109).

Henderson (2000, p. 320) suggests Giovanni’s efforts at renovation “represent efforts to destroy the confining walls of compulsory heterosexuality”. The smallness of the room, equating it with a closet, supports Henderson’s contention. Heteronormative discourse often refers to the ‘closet’ from which homosexuals ‘come out’. Such discourse can also be understood as a heterosexist imperative to hide homosexuality; to put it away where it cannot be seen. A closet is very much how David views the room. When he first enters it, his impression is one of “clutter and disorder” and “gloom” (Baldwin 2001, p. 64). He tells us:

I thought, if I do not open the door at once and get out of here, I am lost; soon it was too late to do anything but moan (Baldwin 2001, p. 64).

This confusion of fear and ecstasy reveals David’s “sexual ambivalence”, which DeGout (1992, p. 427) considers “a constant underlying theme” through the text. David is constantly torn between his sexual desire to be with Giovanni, to be in the room, and his desperation to “escape his room” (Baldwin 2001, p. 74). As Henderson (2000, p. 319) argues, David sees the room as “disgusting and repulsive”, but his terror is not derived from the physicality of the space, rather from David’s association of homosexuality with “dirtiness, disorder and decomposition”. Just as David feels ‘closeted’ by the room, he feels entombed by the truth of his sexuality, which he considers both illegal and immoral.

The house in the country, on the other hand, large, spacious and open, represents, as Henderson (2000, p. 322) agrees, heterosexuality and the proper place, in David’s mind at least, to be. But, rejected by Hella when she realises the nature of David and Giovanni’s relationship, the house becomes an empty shell. There is no love for David in this space. While Giovanni may have ended up in prison awaiting his execution, David will always be imprisoned by his inability to face the truth about himself. As Weatherby (DeGout 1992, p. 433) asserts, “the real theme was the price of lying to yourself”. David desperately yearns to categorise himself as heterosexual. He abuses the women in his life with his dishonesty in order to hang his true desires in his own closet, his own ‘Giovanni’s room’.

David’s story is, as the critic, Nelson Algren, cited by Caryl Phillips in his preface to the novel, “a story of a man who could not make up his mind” (Baldwin 2001, p. x). But more than that, it is a story of spaces, places, categories, and, as Baldwin, cited in that same preface, states, “People invent categories in order to feel safe” (Baldwin 2001, p. xi).

References

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