Friday, June 23, 2017

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. 




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