The Womb in "Giovanni's Room"

Not having it right in front of me, but for starters:

  The title is "Giovanni's Room," but, it isn't Giovanni's at all..it's some woman's, a maid, whom we never meet. This may explain, partially, the presence of the romantic painting—a man and woman dancing or walking together, roses all around, I think. Eventually, Giovanni begins to "renovate" the room, but he only manages to bring in dirt, detritus, and disarray. But what if the room, belonging to a woman, is representative of the womb belonging to a woman? It's not just that the painting taunts Giovanni because of its own symbolic horror, and so he wants to erase it, but also that he is literally destroying, scraping out, the womb signifying the "abortive relationship" he has with David, and the dead infant in his past. 

  For David, the threat of the inescapable, disfigured womb— the all-seeing dead mother, whose influence dominated his childhood home even through absence—doubled with the image of the life he pretends, sometimes wants, but ultimately cannot have, becomes too terrible, and he must run to a living woman, any woman, to prove himself capable of rejuvenating life, in his loins, in her, in his future. 

Excerpt from the Sacred Prostitute

  "Differentiation is not a limiting factor; on the contrary, it is necessary for full psychological development. In the second half of life, the psychic process is predisposed toward reuniting the opposites, only now on a conscious level where the feminine principle of Eros and the masculine principle of Logos function congruently. Alchemists from the time of the Dark Ages describe this process in the poetic image of Sol and Luna, as gold ans silver, being melted into a unity purified of all opposition, and therefore incorruptible. But the sacred marriage can only occur after there has been a differentiation of the masculine and the feminine principles. As Ulanov writes:

          'Without wrestling with this task of differentiation, we fall into formlessness and a cheap         imitation of current persona roles. We miss our chance to become unique persons. Furthermore, we miss the spiritual significance of physical sexuality. If we deny sexual differences then we deny the fact of otherness that is so strikingly conveyed to all of us through sexual experience.'"