Sexual Fluidity: A Reading of Robin Vote as a Prostitute in Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood
Abigail Hebert
Queer modernism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries defined itself as being especially liberating by focusing on sexually inverted individuals, or homosexuals. However, Djuna Barnes challenged this reading of modernist literature in her acclaimed novel, Nightwood. Barnes breaks the binary of sexuality by presenting the character, Robin Vote, as a woman of another world– arguably, the underworld. While many readers view this novel as lesbian fiction, Robin can also be read as a sexually fluid prostitute. Although lesbian literature was progressive at the time, it still exists on a binary of sexuality: heterosexual or homosexual. Robin does not fit into either of these categories, which is why the unfettered qualities of prostitution allow her to be read in a more liberated sense. While the term “bisexuality” had a different meaning at the time this novel was written, a twenty-first-century reader might classify Robin under this label as a way to describe her sexual relationships with either gender. Havelock Ellis and Michel Foucault attempted to theorize the autonomous aspect of a prostitute’s life in relation to sexuality and the nighttime, which is directly applicable to Robin’s character. Reading Robin as a prostitute rather than restricting her to the lesbian label subverts the stigma that sex must be tied to romance and identity in queer modernism conventions.
The literary genre, queer modernism, coincided with the invent of sexological science, which allowed for modernist writers to explore new themes of homoeroticism that were not prevalent before. Barnes, as a modernist writer, wanted to take this a step further by challenging the binary in which homosexuality exists. In her personal life, Barnes rejected the use of labels as she stated, “I’m not a lesbian. I just loved Thelma” (Martins, 108). In refusing the label of lesbian, Barnes is speaking to an even more progressive idea that sexuality should not need to be defined in order for a relationship to be validated. This ideal is translated into the character of Robin Vote. Robin’s initial description and setting are rather ambiguous– lacking specificity on why she is written in an undistinguished environment and what happened in her past; it is then continued through her behavior while in significant relationships. The ambiguity surrounding her character in conjunction with her particular attraction to nightlife contribute to the theory that Robin was a prostitute. Not only does the reading of Robin as a prostitute provide an explanation for her enigmatic behavior during the night, but it also allows her sexuality to be liberated from the singular definition of homosexuality.
Robin is first introduced to Felix Volkbein, a man new to the nightlife of Paris, by Dr. Matthew O’Connor. The doctor had a background in the Barbary Coast– the Red Light District of San Francisco– which gives context to the setting where Robin is presented. She is found lying on a bed in “one of those middle-class hostelries which can be found in almost any corner of Paris […] so typical that it might have been moved every night and not have been out of place” (Barnes, 37). The nondescript quality of the building could have implications of the many brothels that existed in this time, at the end of La Belle Époque in Paris. Barnes’s added detail of the “red carpeted floor” alludes to the trope of red representing a brothel: the connotation of the Red Light District (37). Red indicates passion and lust, which further enhances the seductive experience of invading this space. As Felix enters the room, the narrative brings the reader through an intense sensory experience of Robin’s body by employing Felix’s male gaze.
Barnes uses visual and olfactory detail to illuminate Robin’s sensuality. Beginning with sight, Robin’s legs “were spread as in a dance, looking too lively for the arrested step” (Barnes, 38). Eroticism is heightened in this picture of a woman’s spread legs, arrested, possibly awaiting an intruder. The description goes on to discuss the “perfume that her body exhaled […] with an odour of oil of amber” (Barnes, 38). The alluring experience of the sensual image coupled with a lavish aroma may indicate Robin’s attempt to attract lovers or clients. Finally, the narration ends with the mention of Robin being “in two worlds” (Barnes, 38). The two worlds could imply the binary of conventional society during the day and the underworld at night. In this binary, night places Robin’s body in a sexual sphere due to the fact that the underworld assumes the narrative of sex work. The concept of “another world” in relation to sex appears in Michel Foucault’s work when he discusses “a world of perversion” inhabited by “scandalous, dangerous victims, prey to a strange evil that also bore the name of vice and sometimes crime” (40). By noting that it is through Felix’s gaze which the reader learns all of this, one can recognize his fascination with her being a “lady of the night.”
Robin often experienced this issue of being admired through a sexual gaze. The problem that this view perpetuates is allowing the voyeur to project their own desires onto Robin, making her more of a commodity than a romantic interest. Her body is therefore seen as a consumer good intended for the use of whatever the interested person needs, relating Robin to sex work. It helps to place this idea in the context of sexological science’s interpretation of prostitution. Havelock Ellis explained the habit of projection onto the prostitute as resultant of the idea that “she appeals to him by no means only because she can gratify the lower desires of sex, but also because she is, in her way, an artist, an expert in the art of feminine exploitation” (299). Her basic role of fulfilling sexual desires leaves the emotions open for projections. By Robin inheriting the desires of her lovers along with providing sex, she is able to keep them as long as she needs. Felix constructs a whole life with her around an illusion of marriage when Robin is really only giving him sex. However, when he attempted to get closer, “she took to going out… to other cities, alone and engrossed” (Barnes, 49). Robin’s fear of becoming too close to a lover, prompts her to go back and use her “feminine exploitation” of feelings and sensuality to lure someone else in– the same way she had done with Felix.
A similar exploitation happens in regards to Nora, the character that contributes to the lesbian reading of the novel. Nora aspires to haveing a loving lesbian relationship, free of stress and drama, but this is impossible with Robin. They met at the Denckman circus in an intense moment of passion from a lioness crying for Robin. At this show of emotion, Robin stood up and left with Nora– reiterating her impulse to run from profound emotion. However, she runs into a relationship with a woman who never wants to let her go. Barnes describes their affair as one of “love and anonymity” (60). Nora envisioned a normative marital relationship with Robin with a child and a home, similarly to Felix, even though she knew nearly nothing of Robin’s past; “Robin told only a little of her life” (Barnes, 60). Nora clung to the little moments when Robin would indulge with her at night after returning home from an “outing”, disregarding the fact that to Robin, their relationship could only exist after dark. After a couple years, “the departures of Robin became slowly increasing in rhythm” (Barnes, 64). Once again, Robin could not maintain monogamy– craving the freedom of being on her own. In association with Robin’s need for autonomy, Ellis believed “the prostitute never signs away the right over her own person, as the wife is compelled to do; retains her freedom and her personal rights” (264). Consequently, as a sex worker, Robin would never have been able to fulfill the wife role for either Felix , nor Robin.
Robin’s escape from Nora leads her into the bedroom of Jenny, which is the final sexual relationship Robin experiences before virtually disappearing from her active role in the narrative. Barnes presents Jenny as “always submitting to the act, spoke of and desired the spirit of love; yet was unable to attain it” (74). As a consolation, she latches onto Robin for the ephemeral quality of love: sex. Although the love Jenny feels for Robin is not as significant as Nora’s or Felix’s had been, it becomes an obsession. She feels that she must constantly be with Robin in order to keep her from running back to find Nora. Robin is an object to maintain, a commodity; Jenny “has a longing for other people’s property” (Barnes, 104). As a result, Robin loses the autonomy she requires as a life source. Robin slips into a state “as if she had no will […] her knees on the floor, her head forward as her arm moved upward in a gesture of defence” (83). This quote highlights the lack of agency present in Robin’s interactions with Jenny. Once again, Robin experienced an intense “wish to be gone” (Barnes, 77). As a sex worker, Robin can only give love temporarily– eventually she must move on in order to sustain her own desires.
After examining all three of Robin’s significant relationships in the novel, it is clear that one could not simply categorize Robin as homosexual. In the day, her lovers had to be defined on the binary of heterosexual or homosexual, but at night she had the freedom to escape these labels. As Barnes states, “Every day is thought upon and calculated, but the night is not premeditated” (87). Robin’s character personifies the “citizen of the night” in her constant withdrawal into the dark streets where she did not know what the night would bring her (Barnes, 148). “The anticipation of the people she was to meet” lured her further into the underworld due to their unconventional nature. Notice that she mentions “people”, rather than a specific gender, which is crucial in challenging the idea that Nightwood is purely a lesbian narrative. Barnes composes Robin’s nightlife “involving the irrational forces of love and the inconsequence of social constructions such as gender” (Whitely, 85). The microcosm of the night provides a space for Robin to explore her sexuality openly without the need for labels. As Jeanette Winterson puts it, it is only within “the night-time world, where [Robin] will not be judged, and where she can find the anonymity of a stranger’s embrace” (xi). As a prostitute prospers at night, so does Robin in her liberation from the lesbian label.
Queer modernism provides a foundation for Barnes allowing Robin to be depicted as a sexually transgressive, but Barnes pushes it a step further. Rather than using labels to restrain Robin’s sexuality to the homosexual inclination, Barnes allows her to be sexually fluid in the role of the prostitute. Foucault argues that a prostitute has “surreptitiously transferred the pleasures that are unspoken into the order of things that are counted” (4). The normalization of sex work in this manner allowed for Robin to exist outside of judgement for her sexual fluidity. Concurrently, the twentieth- century prostitute was “ceasing to be the degraded instrument of a moment’s lustful desire”; rather, she could reclaim her freedom of sexuality (Ellis, 304). This explains Robin’s ability to experience visceral feelings towards her sexual partners, although they may be temporary. She exists in an independent state of being; “she wants to be loved and left alone, all at the same time” (Barnes, 165).
Barnes cleverly queers the conventions of queer modernism to give Robin a transgressive source of power in her sexuality. “Pleasure and power do not cancel or turn back against one another; they seek out, overlap, and reinforce one another. They are linked together by complex mechanisms and devices of excitation and incitement” (Foucault, 48). Robin finds power in being able to experience love on her account– leaving when she feels the need to be alone again. By being “the eternal momentary”, Robin can achieve the sexual fluidity she seeks through the vehicle of sex work (Barnes, 135). Any attempt to constrain her to one partner or one sexuality would have been misrepresentative of Robin’s true state: fluidity. Even though she experienced great love, as with Nora, she had to leave in order to fill her ever-changing sexual desires. As the doctor reminds Nora, “Don’t you know your holding on is her only happiness and so her sole misery?” (Barnes, 134). Ellis captured the essence of Robin’s character in prostitution as a lover beyond a “moment’s lustful desire”, yet still a woman who “retains her freedom” (264,304).
In the twenty-first century, Robin might be defined as having no sexual preference: bisexual or queer. Modern thought characterizes “bisexuality [as] an emancipated state that exists previous to the monosexuality that culture imposes upon us” (Wayne, 110). Literary scholars of Nightwood are looking through a modernist lens trying to find the “deviant” character or aspect– usually pointing toward the lesbian relationship of Nora and Robin for their answer. It is important to validate that Robin engaged in lesbian sexual relations, but that is not the only way in which she finds sexual pleasure. While terms such as queer and bisexual were not present in the discourse of the early twentieth century when Nightwood was written, a prostitute’s sexual fluidity was generally accepted as a habit of the career. As a prostitute, Robin is unrestricted in exploring both her same-sex and heterosexual inclinations. As quoted in a case study conducted by Ellis, “I do not personally know of a single prostitute who is exclusively Lesbian” (Ellis and Symonds, 179). The general acceptance of a prostitute’s lack of sexual preference provides the framework for the theory of Barnes portraying Robin as a sex worker.
Works Cited
Barnes, Djuna. Nightwood. A New Directions Book, 1937.
Ellis, Havelock. Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume VI: Sex in Relation to Society. F. A Davis Company Publishers, 1913.
Ellis, Havelock and John Addington Symonds. Sexual Inversion: A Critical Addition (1897). Edited by Ivan Crozier. University of Edinburgh, 2008.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. Random House, Inc., 1978.
Martins, Susana S. “Gender Trouble and Lesbian Desire in Djuna Barnes’s “Nightwood””, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3. University of Nebraska Press, 1999.
Wayne, Linda D. “Bisexuality and Agency”, Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy, Vol. 13, No. 2. Penn State University Press, Fall 2002.
Whitley, Catherine. “Nations and the Night: Excremental History in James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” and Djuna Barnes’ “Nightwood”, Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 24, No. 1, Autumn, 2000.
Winterson, Jeanette. Preface. Nightwood, by Djuna Barnes. New Directions Books, copyright 2006.