Sociology

As a gay black writer writing in a time when it was not considered socially acceptable to be black or gay, James Baldwin and his novel Giovannis Room gave a unique voice to a previously unrecognized cultural group. Baldwin reflected his own struggles as a gay man in America struggling with sexual identity versus the standards of society through David, the novels protagonist and narrator. The story of love, sex, infidelity and murder confronts the concepts of gender roles, sexual identity, homosexuality, and cultural and personal values. The title character allows David, the novels protagonist, to explore elements of his personality and sexual identity that David had been previously unwilling or unable to confront and address. Phyllis Burke discusses many of the same gender identity and sexuality issues in Gender Shock Exploding the Myths of Male and Female. Burke discusses the concepts of gender identity disorder, questions the validity of the rigid social concepts of gender and sex, and argues that people of both sexes actually incorporate aspects of both genders in their sexual identity. Though Giovannis Room was written forty years before Burkes research and findings, the characters in the novel tackle many of the same myths and issues that Burke seeks to disprove and dispel.

The protagonist in Giovannis Room is David, a young American man living in Paris. Through the novel, the reader learns of Davids homosexual experiences, his reactions to the emotions that these experiences cause him to feel, and the relationships he forces himself into in an effort to clarify his sexual identity.

Two relationships in the novel primarily indicate Davids inner need to conform to the sexuality he feels hes supposed to embody. Early in the novel, David flashes back to a childhood experience with Joey, a young boy in his neighborhood with whom David has a homosexual encounter. David initially describes the encounter tenderly, saying that, we gave each other joy that night. It seemed, then, that a lifetime would not be long enough for me to act with Joey the act of love (8). The next day, Davids reaction is much different I was ashamedI was afraid. I could have cried, cried for shame and terror, cried for not understanding how this could have happened to me, how this could have happened in me (9). In the moment, David allows himself to enjoy the physical and emotional pleasure of loving Joey, but when he realizes that it will be viewed as wrong, he is ashamed at the emotions that have occurred naturally within him. David leaves without speaking to him the morning after the encounter, avoids Joey, and resorts to taunting and bullying Joey when they cross paths.

Another key relationship for David is his relationship with Hella. Hella is a girl that David has asked to marry him but she is in Spain for much of the novel. David describes his relationship with her and his feelings for her by saying, I thought she would be fun to have fun withI am not sure now, in spite of everything, that it ever really meant more than that to me (4). He justifies his marriage proposal by explaining that, nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedomI suppose this is why I asked her to marry me, to give myself something to be moored to (5). Here, and in the rest of the novel, neither of them expresses that they love the other. David and Hella both cling to the concept of marriage not because they want to be married to each other, or even married at all, but because it gives them something to cling to and a way to represent themselves in an acceptable social context.

It could be argued that Davids reaction to the encounter with Joey and his forced relationship with Hella is the result of his childhood years living with his father and aunt. David finds himself in this living arrangement after the death of his mother and through his childhood his father repeatedly states, All I want for David is that he grow up to be a man (15). David describes his father as a hard drinking, ruddy faced womanizer, while his aunt is, in his eyes, overly made up and garishly dressed to the point of being frightening. David seems to be afraid of women and feels the need to emulate his father because his father is a man, even though he recognizes that his fathers behavior is less than admirable.

Phyllis Burke introduced the concept of the gender independent culture (75) in which individuals are allowed to develop and encompass the best or strongest traits from each gender that they possessed, instead of being restricted to the traits traditionally attributed to their individual sex. A man, for example, could be both nurturing and strong, even though nurturing and caretaking are usually associated with female figures, women and mothers. The family structure that David grows up in clearly defies this concept, as his father is the strong, stoic mans man and his aunt over exaggerates her femininity and sexuality by dressing provocatively and shamelessly flirting with men. Davids adult role models growing up defined themselves by their genders and the traits traditionally associated with them, and both of them tried to force David into this same mold. This forced gender identification confuses David later when he has adult relationships. He states multiple times that he is both attracted to and disgusted by Giovanni. When he attempts to pick up a girl in a bar to force himself to have a heterosexual tryst and forget his feelings for Giovanni, he says that, I was both dismayed and relieved to see her. The moment she appeared I began, mentally, to take off all her clothes.(95). It could be argued that Davids emotions in general both dismay and relieve him. He recognizes that Giovanni makes him happy, yet he is held back by his feelings that his relationship with Giovanni is wrong. His conflict over his attraction to another man and his attempt to will himself to be attracted to a woman are, according to Burkes findings, like self-imposed therapy for Gender Identity Disorder, or GID. Burke found that young people were historically diagnosed with GID for displaying varying degrees of gender nonconformity or disassociation. This diagnosis and the prescribed treatment were often used not to treat transexuality, but to prevent children and teens from becoming homosexual. Davids refusal to acknowledge Joey, his conflict over his happiness with Giovanni, his unemotional and desperate marriage proposal to Hella, and his attempt at an affair with a female stranger could all be interpreted as David trying to convince himself that hes not a homosexual. His fathers nickname for him of Butch and his repeated references to women and sex could also be seen as attempts to convince David that hes straight and that hes attracted to women. Where Burke argued that gender and sex are separate parts of an individual instead of being intertwined, David has learned from his family and the society he was raised in that a person defines himself by his gender traits. For a man, these are very specific, most of which have been represented for him by his father. David panics when he finds himself feeling emotions that have not been traditionally associated as male for him by his role models, leading to his bullying of Joey. He panics again later in life when he begins to feel real, deep emotion for Giovanni because he again recognizes that these are not accepted male gender traits and emotions. It is only after Hella discovers him in a homosexual situation and Giovanni is arrested for murder that David reflects on his true feelings and begins to accept them and himself for who and what he is.

Giovannis Room could be seen as a case study novel for Phyllis Burkes research. The characters find their lives negatively altered, and in some cases ended, by the traditional roles assigned to the genders. If Davids world were a gender independent one, David may not have been raised in a family where it was unacceptable to be a man different than his father, and David and Giovanni could have found themselves free to live and love as they chose. The tragedy is that neither David nor Hella were able to accept who they were because society did not accept them as they were, and Giovanni found himself sentenced to death for choosing to refuse to conform to societys standards or to be a silent victim. In a world of gender freedom, the characters could have found themselves reaching far different, and more self-loving, conclusions.