On Women in "Giovanni's Room" by James Baldwin
In Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin meditates on four essential questions under the guise of a romantic tragedy. Through his characters—particularly David and Hella—he explores what it means to be American, what it means to be white, what it means to be a man, and what it means to be a woman. The protagonist David frequently uses women as tools to affirm his manhood. He uses women’s bodies to assert his proclaimed heterosexuality to himself, and he covets a life with his fiancée, Hella, out of an intense fear of his sexuality and desire for Giovanni. Through his female characters, and especially Hella, Baldwin highlights the complexities of white American womanhood in the 1950s. He uses David’s character as an instrument to emphasize the trivialization of women and femininity, the perceived disposability of women, and the ways in which men use women to affirm their own manhood.
Though she is absent for most of the novel, David and Giovanni begin discussing Hella, David’s mistress. Giovanni is rather dismissive of Hella, and women in general, referring to Hella as a “young girl” or “little girl” throughout the conversation. When David tells Giovanni that he doesn’t seem to have a high opinion of women, Giovanni says to David:
“Oh women! There is no need, thank heaven, to have an opinion about women. Women are like water. They are tempting like that, and they can be that treacherous, and they can seem to be that bottomless, you know?—and they can be that shallow. And that dirty.” He stopped. “I perhaps don’t like women very much, that’s true. That hasn’t stopped me from making love to many and loving one or two. But most of the time—most of the time I made love only with the body.” (Baldwin 79-80)
His disdain for women—despite having used women’s bodies—is so obvious that David is surprised even though his own actions throughout the novel show a similar disdain.
Giovanni doesn’t seem to believe women have much complexity to them, and certainly doesn’t believe in Hella’s complexity. Giovanni particularly dislikes Hella’s independence, and the fact that she has chosen to go away to Spain rather than remain in Paris with David; he even advises David to find another mistress, believing her to be childish.
“Oh, well, said Giovanni, “these absurd women running around today, full of ideas and nonsense, and thinking themselves equal to men—quelle rigolade!—they need to be beaten half to death so that they can find out who rules the world.” (Baldwin 80)
Despite his unconventional relationship with David, Giovanni still subscribes to patriarchal norms and the concept of male superiority over women, further emphasizing his casual distaste for and dismissal of women.
As David and Giovanni settle deeper into a domestic situation, David begins “playing the housewife,” in his own words, when Giovanni goes to work. David convinces himself that he doesn’t enjoy his newfound role because he refuses to simply be with Giovanni. His strict adherence to American masculine ideals means he cannot perform a traditionally feminine role because, as a man, he is the one who should be coming home from work to a clean home, food on the table, and someone waiting for him. Further along in the novel, after Hella has returned from Spain, David and Giovanni argue about their relationship. David asserts that, unlike him and Giovanni, he and Hella can have a life together.
“What kind of life can we have in this room?—this filthy little room. What kind of life can two men have together, anyway? All this love you talk about—isn’t it just that you want to be made to feel strong? You want to go out and be the big laborer and bring home the money, and you want me to stay here and wash the dishes and cook the food and clean this miserable closet of a room and kiss you when you come in through that door and lie with you at night and be your little girl.” (Baldwin 142)
David’s disdain for the feminine role is clear, especially at the idea of him, a man, fulfilling it. He projects his own desires for Hella onto Giovanni; he believes Giovanni wants him to be the “woman” of the relationship. Without the existence of traditional gender roles, he doesn’t understand how a relationship can work with two men, hence his intense fear of being with Giovanni. In response, Giovanni says, “I am not trying to make you a little girl. If I wanted a little girl, I would be with a little girl.” (Baldwin 142) Though their argument is not necessarily about women, both David and Giovanni trivialize women and what they view as a woman’s role in the process.
When David received Hella’s letter informing him that she would be returning to Paris soon, he was overjoyed to finally have a reason to leave Giovanni—not because he didn’t want to be with him, but because he was deeply afraid of how others would perceive him. He wants to fulfill the masculine role; he wants to have a wife and children who depend on him; he wants to be the man of the house because he feels it is the safest option for him. But, first, he needs to find a way to affirm his masculinity to himself and, like many men, David ties his masculinity to his sexuality, which means he needs to have sex with a woman to prove his manhood. While sitting in a bar, he meets an American woman named Sue who he describes outright as “not pretty” but he is still more than willing to have sex with her because of what her female body represents to him. Since manhood is something that is partially attained through access to and validation from women (and, through said access to women, validation from other men), David must seek out a woman; it is the only way he can assure himself that he is, indeed, a “real man.”
When David and Sue sleep together, he says, “She was very big and she was disquietingly fluid—fluid without, however, being able to flow. I felt a hardness and a constriction in her, a grave distrust, created already by too many men like me ever to be conquered now. What we were about to do would not be pretty.” (Baldwin 99) David is aware that women like Sue are often used by men, and yet he still chooses to use her. Afterwards, he abandons her, like the men who came before him, though he does not even feel satisfied by the sex. He uses Sue to “cleanse” himself, so to speak, of Giovanni. It doesn’t work, but he still ends up leaving Giovanni for Hella, and Sue is never mentioned again in the novel. Her character ultimately served as a tool for David; she was not given a role beyond what she and her body represent, much like Hella who, although she is given more depth as a character in comparison to Sue, still serves as a tool for David in his desire for a conventional 1950s American family which, to both him and Hella, represents the ultimate form of safety and stability. The disposability of Sue only further emphasizes David’s self-serving nature and, in the greater scheme of things, the self-serving nature of heterosexual relationships in general.
When Hella finally returns from Spain, she comes back with revelations about herself and her place in the world as a woman in the 1950s. Hella and David both view heterosexual relationships and the nuclear family as safe havens for themselves, but, according to society, having a husband is much more of a necessity for Hella than having a wife is for David. A man without a woman is a bachelor while a woman without a man is unnatural. After David’s encounter with Sue, David thinks to himself,
“...I wanted children. I wanted to be inside again, with the light and safety, with my manhood unquestioned, watching my woman put my children to bed. I wanted the same bed at night and the same arms and I wanted to rise in the morning, knowing where I was. I wanted a woman to be for me a steady ground, like the earth itself, where I could always be renewed.” (Baldwin 104)
Nowhere does David mention what he would be for his woman or what he would do for her; a heterosexual relationship is ultimately about performing roles and how well a woman can perform white American femininity for him. David only wants a woman because he believes that his manhood will not be questioned by other men if he is with a woman; he values his manhood more than he values his own happiness.
Hella, in comparison, is much more cynical when she describes marriage.
“...I’ve got you to take care of and feed and torment and trick and love—I’ve got you to put up with. From now on, I can have a wonderful time complaining about being a woman. But I won’t be terrified that I’m not one.” She looked at my face and laughed. “Oh, I’ll be doing other things,” she cried. “I won’t stop being intelligent. I’ll read and argue and think and all that—and I’ll make a great point of not thinking your thoughts—and you’ll be pleased because I’m sure the resulting confusion will cause you to see that I’ve only got a finite woman’s mind, after all. And, if God is good, you’ll love me more and more and we’ll be quite happy.” She laughed again. “Don’t bother your head about it, sweetheart. Leave it to me.” (Baldwin 126)
Hella understands the role she is expected to play as a woman and how restrictive marriage in the 1950s is while David does not which highlights their differences in maturity and perception. A heterosexual marriage is a desire for David while a heterosexual marriage is a necessity for Hella.
Hella tells David that living in Spain made her realize that couldn’t be free until she was committed to a man, and she couldn’t handle the full weight of independence. Women are socialized to always seek a man and the consequences of not finding a man in time or at all often leads to ostracization and shame. All throughout their conversation, Hella is explaining what is to be a woman and David doesn’t understand because he doesn’t view women as having much depth beyond their individual use for him. He used Sue earlier as a tool to assert his manhood and he now wants to use Hella as a pathway to the American idea of “normality.” His romanticization of marriage won’t allow him to truly understand Hella, or women in general. He wants to be a husband because he wants what a woman can give him: safety, stability, children, status, his “manhood unquestioned,” but he is not concerned about what marriage will look like for Hella, or what he can or should do for Hella. Before she reveals her feelings about marriage, David tells Hella, “I don’t see what’s so hard about being a woman. At least, not as long as she’s got a man.” (Baldwin 124) His simplistic views of marriage, relationships, and women won’t allow him to take Hella seriously and, therefore, almost guarantees their relationship will never be fulfilling for Hella.
Later in the novel, David and Hella’s relationship begins to deteriorate and, once again, David uses a woman’s body (i.e., Hella’s) for self-serving purposes because, for David, women are receptacles for his emotions and instruments to be used whenever he needs to feel like a man. When their relationship begins to meet its breaking point, Hella begs David to tell her the truth, mirroring an earlier moment between David and Giovanni. In tears, she pleads,
“David, please let me be a woman. I don’t care what you do to me. I don’t care what it costs. I’ll wear my hair long, I’ll give up cigarettes, I’ll throw away the books.” She tried to smile; my heart turned over. “Just let me be a woman, take me. It’s what I want. It’s all I want. I don’t care about anything else.” (Baldwin 161)
Hella doesn’t want to lose David because she has already resigned herself to marriage and accepted her role as a woman; however, she views her access to traditional white American womanhood as being dependent on a man. Without David (or any man), she cannot be a wife and mother—which is what a woman is expected to be. She no longer desires to be independent (or, she has convinced herself that she no longer wants independence) and she needs David to be a man—the very man David himself wants to be but can’t which he proves to her when she later finds him in a gay bar with another man. When she finally understands why David can’t “let her be a woman,” she decides to leave him. “If I stay here much longer,” she said, later that same morning, as she packed her bag, “I’ll forget what it’s like to be a woman.” (Baldwin 163) In other words, David cannot provide an environment for her to be traditionally feminine.
Throughout the novel, David has only focused on what a woman will do for him in a marriage; he never once considered what he would do for the woman which he finally realizes in the end. He was still under the impression that a woman simply having a man was enough; he didn’t consider that the man would have to provide any sort of safety or stability himself for the woman outside of money or material possessions. David once again attempts to refute her, still thinking he knows more about women than a woman, claiming that women probably can’t forget what it’s like to be women. In response, Hella says,
“There are women who have forgotten that to be a woman doesn’t simply mean humiliation, doesn’t simply mean bitterness. I haven’t forgotten it yet,” she added, “in spite of you. I’m not going to forget it. I’m getting out of this, away from you, just as fast as taxis, trains, and boats will carry me.” (Baldwin 163)
Hella previously believed that her access to womanhood was dependent on David, but now she realizes that she can still be a woman without him—and she can find a man who will take care of her and make her feel loved. In the end, Hella ends up having to be independent once more despite her desire to be traditional and David ends up alone despite wanting to have the perceived safety that comes with having a wife and family.
In the novel, David and Hella serve as tools to critique traditional white American gender roles. Despite both David and Hella wanting to perform these roles, they are ultimately unable to do so. David’s ideas of manhood, his self-deception, and his sexuality led him to trivialize women and femininity and use women’s bodies for self-serving purposes. At first, Hella wanted independence, but then she realized that freedom frightened her; she didn’t know what to do with herself in the absence of American values. She tried to flee back into the arms of white American womanhood, but no one caught her; she had to keep herself from falling.
David was unable to perform his role even though Hella was willing to perform hers; he knew he didn’t truly want a life with a woman, even a woman he cared for like Hella. Women were never full humans to David; he defined them based on their proximity to a man and how they could be used to make himself feel more masculine. He never considered how he might make a woman feel like a woman—hence the deterioration of his relationship with Hella. Even if David hadn’t been queer, he still wouldn’t have been a good husband for Hella. His tendencies to trivialize, use, and dispose of women would have made him a neglectful and likely abusive partner. In the end, Baldwin’s female characters, Sue and Hella, were both let down by David, who, despite wanting to be a man, could not be the man they needed—not only because of his sexuality, but because of his received ideas of manhood and masculinity which wouldn’t allow him to see women as anything other than bodies to be used.
Work Cited
Baldwin, James. Giovanni’s Room. New York : Vintage Books, 1956. Print.
James Baldwin never did anything by accident. If he put a character in a room, if he let them linger by a window, press their lips to a cigarette, fold their hands over their own shame, it was because they were meant to be seen, felt, reckoned with. So, to read Giovanni’s Room and think of the women—Hella, Sue, even the silent presence of David’s mother—as mere shadows of the men’s grand, tormented desires is to miss the point entirely.
YOU get this. This essay understands that Baldwin doesn’t discard women in Giovanni’s Room; rather, he places them in the margins so that we, the readers, might question why they’re there, forced to witness the men’s wreckage but never allowed to claim their own stories fully. Hella, especially, is no less suffocated than Giovanni, no less betrayed than David, no less trapped in a world that demands she play a part she doesn’t truly want. But while David’s turmoil is made literary—his suffering at war with itself in grand, European tragedy—Hella’s suffering is silent, taken for granted.
That silence is intentional. It is the silence of women in so many gay men’s narratives, a silence that doesn’t signal absence but erasure, dismissal, a refusal to acknowledge the way patriarchy twists and wounds us all. Your work here reminds us that Baldwin, in his genius, is pointing toward that very dismissal. David is not a hero; he is a coward. And cowards don’t just hurt their lovers—they leave collateral damage.
What strikes me most in your analysis is the way you connect Baldwin’s treatment of women to the broader conversation about who is centered in queer narratives. Giovanni’s Room is a novel about David’s repression, but repression is never a singular suffering. It spills out, stains the people closest to you, demands their sacrifice. Hella, in her bitterness, her exhaustion, is a testament to this. She does not belong in the gay Paris of David and Giovanni, but neither does David, not really. He is a visitor in his own desire, watching himself as if from a distance, and in the end, the only thing he truly commits to is running.
This work is a necessary read because it refuses to let the women in Baldwin’s novel be footnotes. It demands that we look at them, listen to them, understand the ways their lives, too, are shaped by the same violences that ensnare David and Giovanni. Baldwin may have written Giovanni’s Room as a book about love and loss between men, but he knew—he knew—that the world of men does not exist without the women who bear witness to it.
So, what do we do with Hella, with Sue, with all the women Baldwin leaves in the margins? Maybe we do what David never could: see them, honor them, and let them take up the space they were always meant to.
This was beautifully written. Thank you for providing analysis from this POV that allowed me to examine one of my favorite Baldwin works in such a way. Much respect to the pen that you wield.
Lovely lovely analysis, so glad people are still talking about this book. One thing I noticed when I read it years ago were how words about whiteness and paleness accompanied descriptions of men, masculinity, and straightness, while darkness and shadows were used to describe women, femininity, and queerness. It always seemed that any of the “lower” category corrupted the straight white masculinity above it (i.e. David’s gayness keeping him from being masculine how he/his dad wanted him to be, Hella’s being a woman, I know there were other examples but it’s been a while!).
Again, great analysis!!