Month: November 2023

I was interested in the different worldviews in Toibin’s Love in a Dark Time, especially after we discussed how Toibin’s Irish upbringing might limit him to the nuances of American societal issues which Baldwin writes about. Not to say that Toibin’s essays on American writers are flawed, I quite appreciated his thoughts on Baldwin. But I do think he lacks some emotional context of how deeply rooted racism, violence, and sexuality are in every facet of American society. 

To start, Ireland as Toibin describes it was and is dominated by the Catholic church. He references Ingles’ work that the church was “a fundamental force that shaped Irish society, dominated the way we dealt with our families, [and] the way we gathered as a group” (253). The power and influence of the Catholic church served as a main opposition, through direct and indirect means, to homosexuality. In this sense, I think there is a line of connection between Baldwin and Toibin. Baldwin describes how the pentecostal church shaped his family in Notes of a Native Son and Go Tell It on the Mountain, particularly via his father. I recently read a similar story called Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan that represents the church’s power similarly as a well-meaning man wrestles with intervening in the infamous Magdalene Laundries, in which women were practically incarcerated and coerced into forced labor by the church. Toibin brings a deeply emotional and close account of the struggles with homosexuality in Ireland. I have no intention of diminishing those experiences and stories.  I do however wish to point out that while Toibin deeply connects with Baldwin’s work, he does not acknowledge how inevitably tied race and sexuality are in America. This much is shown by his interpretation of Baldwin’s Going to Meet the Man. The short story is shocking, gruesome, and very heavy-handed, but it is also a very personal account of violence and hatred mixed in with sexuality. I think that without a full understanding of race in America, Toibin fails to fully grasp the mixture of race and sexuality despite his meticulous readings. I do not mean to fault Toibin for this, I simply think that it is indicative of how “American” the problem of race is as it is baked into every social structure, system, and identity.

When reading “The Male Prison” I began to better understand the theme of masculinity in Giovanni’s Room. While most of Baldwin’s works explore the relationships of men to other people, Giovanni’s Room is the first text where there is an emphasis on the main character’s relationship predominantly with other men. Furthermore, in both texts, there is a clear relationship between masculinity and sexuality and after our discussions in class comparing David, to Jacques, to Giovanni, and more, I began to see this relationship much better. However, it was when reading “The Male Prison” that the characters’ roles of Jacques, David, and Giovanni became even more transparent.

 In “The Male Prison” when Baldwin wrote, “the arguments…as to whether or not homosexuality is natural seems to me completely pointless…it seems clear that no matter what…the answer can never be yes. And one of the reasons for this is that it would rob the normal…of their very sense of security and order,” I immediately thought of David (Baldwin, 232). Throughout Giovanni’s Room, David maintains a heterosexual relationship with Hella, despite his relationships and feelings for Giovanni. Having Hella around brings “security and order” to David’s life since having a woman, rather than a man, represents the socially acceptable and “American” heterosexual relationship that David seems to keep running to. Additionally in “The Male Prison,” Baldwin writes that Madeleine is “the ideal” for Gide (Baldwin, 233). He states that Gide “would have been compelled to love her as a woman, which he could not have done except physically…He loved her as a woman, only in the sense that no man could have held the place in Gide’s dark sky which was held by Madeleine” (Baldwin 233-234). To translate this into the world of David, Hella, and Giovanni, David really loves Hella on a physical level, or at least that is how I see it as. When Hella returns from Spain and the two progress in their relationship, David continuously thinks about Giovanni, because that is who his love is for. Like I mentioned earlier, Hella simply serves as the ideal woman for the ideal relationship for David. He knew that “no man could hold the place in his sky” that Hella could hold because David is uncomfortable with the idea of loving a man and having a homosexual relationship with Giovanni. 

Later on on page 234 of “The Male Prison,” Baldwin continues reiterating this point when he writes, “the horrible thing about the phenomenon of present-day homosexuality, the horrible thing which lies curled at …the heart of Gide’s [David’s] trouble and…the reason that he [is] so clung to Madeleine, is that today’s unlucky deviate can only save himself by the most tremendous exertion of all his forces from falling into an underworld in which he never meets either men or women, where it is impossible to have either a lover or a friend…” (Baldwin 234). Throughout Giovanni’s Room, we read through the mind of David and particularly see how he views characters like Jacques. As the novel progresses, David becomes ambivalent about Jacques because of Jacques’s openness about his homosexuality and acceptance of his lifestyle. Thus, when reading this line by Baldwin, I also made the connection between David and Jacques. David remains clung to Madeleine and clung to the idea of heterosexuality because he does not want to be like Jacques. David is repelled by Jacques’s openness about his sexuality while he is struggling to come to terms with his. In addition to this, Jacques, as someone who has fully accepted his homosexuality, struggles to meet both men and women and struggles to find a lover or a friend, a topic we discussed in class. In seeing this, David cannot accept a similar life for himself so he deviates even more from accepting his homosexuality. He does not want to fall into “the underworld” that Baldwin writes about in “The Male Prison.”

I could go on and on about the connection between “The Male Prison” and Giovanni’s Room but I am afraid this blog post would become too long. However, I am happy that I read “The Male Prison” because if reaffirmed a lot for me and provided me with great insights which are certianly useful as we continue to explore Baldwin’s work that deals with sexuality.

A line that stuck out to to me was David’s constant talk about being American. It was a way that was similar to how he viewed his sexuality. I believe that the belief that people go around Europe and explore their sexuality openly and honestly is a real though in many peoples minds. Meanwhile in America, people are more closed-minded. In one example from Giovanni’s Room, there is a quote that reads ‘… he said that you were just an American boy, after all doing things in France which you would not dare to do at home, and that you would leave me very soon.’ This speaks to the closeted views of Americans and the risky views of the French, which is not something stated often in this book. I think that David struggles with being American and a homosexual for the very same reasons.

Being in America, David talks about his sexual experience with Joey. This was an event filled with shame and discomfort. Though it felt right with Joey, David still decided to never speak about this event and to associate it with someone who was not truly him, though it was. David continues on to say ‘And I resented this: resented being called an American (and resented resenting it) because it seemed to make me nothing more than that, whatever that was; and I resented being called not an American because it seemed to make me nothing.’ This line alone to me speaks to David’s views on homosexuality as well. I think that David knows he is homosexual, but resents being called that, and he also resents resenting that fact. I think it is hard to dislike a part of yourself, and David resents both his American identity that makes him stick out in foreign countries, while he also resents being gay because it makes I’m different as well. The sense of shame follows shame follows David around like a scary rumor. David seems to find shame in most situations, which are all likely linked to how he grew up and the shame he has felt since childhood.