In James Baldwin's novel Another Country, almost all of the central characters experience anxiety, confusion, or conflict when it comes to intertwining of their bodies and their identities and desires. However, it could be argued that the character of Eric, a homosexual expatriate who returns to New York midway through the novel to pursue an acting career, experiences no such crises, even when he is in a relationship with the heterosexual and married Cass. In fact, Eric's relationship with Cass in no way confuses his homosexuality. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay When we are first introduced to Eric, he has been living in France with his lover Yves for just over two years. Baldwin presents Eric and Yves as having a healthy, loving, and mutually respectful relationship, free of the racial, gender, and class subtext that is present in the relationships of all the other characters in the book. During the first chapter in which Eric is introduced, the couple is presented by Baldwin as happy with each other: “[Eric] and Yves had been together for more than two years and, from the moment of their meeting, his house was been with him. Yves. More precisely and literally, it was Yves who had come to live with him, but each was, for the other, the home that each had despaired of finding.”[1] This passage shows the level of happiness and completeness that comes from Eric and Yves' relationship through an achieved sense of "home", while the final sentence suggests that this relationship, and the resulting genuine happiness and sense of "home", is the end result of a long process of searching of a person that everyone was capable of loving. This therefore suggests that Eric, before leaving New York and moving to France where he met Yves, faced internalized crises regarding his identity and his desires which were resolved through the consummation of a relationship with another man. It is the fact that, after deciding to return to New York, "[he] did not want to separate from Yves" [Baldwin, pp. 158] which shows that Eric, through his relationship with Yves, has come to accept and be happy with his homosexuality. Eric's acceptance and comfort in his homosexuality is seen throughout the rest of the novel, as is his sense of loyalty to Yves and their relationship. However, his identity as a homosexual becomes strange when he begins a relationship with Cass, a friend from before leaving New York. Baldwin presents this relationship as arising from a mutual agreement between Eric and Cass: “'You make me feel very strange,' [Eric] said. 'You make me feel things I never thought I'd feel again.'' How do I make you feel? ' [Cass] asked, “Do the same for me.” He felt like he was taking the initiative for his own good [Baldwin, pp. 242]Being a homosexual willing to have a sexual relationship with a woman, Eric presents a complex intertwining of the concepts of body, identity and desire, or rather lack of it. The relationship between Eric and Cass suggests that bodies, identity and desire are not intrinsically linked or intertwined. Baldwin suggests that just because Eric identifies as homosexual and is part of a loving homosexual relationship, he is not prohibited from desiring women. In her book, Queer Theory: An Introduction, Annamarie Jagose presents the thesis that men who are married to women and identify as heterosexual but desire. however having sex with other men are not necessarily homosexual or openly homosexual.[2] The presentation of Eric's relationship is also reminiscent of Carl Wittman's statement in “A Gay Manifesto” that an identityhomosexuality is not based solely on sexual desire, who one has sex with, but rather on a social identification, a willingness to label oneself as homosexual, an “ability to love someone of the same sex” regardless of who else one may desire.[3] The gender of one's sexual partner, Baldwin suggests, like Jagose and Wittman, does not define one's sexuality; sex and sexuality are two mismatched concepts. Desire, in Eric's case, is presented as indiscriminate and ambivalent towards identities and bodies, allowing an individual who identifies as a homosexual man to desire another individual with a woman's body in an act of sexual fluidity. While Eric is seen as being able to embrace a sexual fluidity separate from his identity as a gay man, Cass, on the other hand, experiences some issues through his entanglement of bodies, identity, and desire. Vivaldo, a mutual friend of Eric and Cass, notes that regarding the affair "it wasn't Eric who surprised him, but Cass". [Baldwin, pp. 271] This suggests that Cass is assumed to be more traditional, more prudish, or conservative than Eric. Perhaps, unlike Eric, the issue is not the desired body and the impact this desire has on identity, but rather the existence of the desire itself. As Vivaldo's girlfriend notes, “Cass is a grown woman with two children. And those guys? … Those kids are going to hate her.” [Baldwin, pp. 272] The assumption is that there is a double standard when it comes to promiscuity. There is no problem when Eric, a homosexual male, embarks on a sexually fluid relationship despite being in a committed relationship, but Cass is condemned by her friends as she is a married mother who cheats on her husband, despite having an affair. that respects his sexual identity. Perhaps this is related to what Wittman states in “A Gay Manifesto,” that “sex for [women] has meant oppression, while for [homosexuals] it has been a symbol of our freedom.” [Wittman, pp.5] Sex, the act of combining bodies and desire, is intrinsically tied to gender, and is therefore very different for men and women, even if you ignore sexuality. Eric's relationship does not question his homosexuality, but rather consolidates it, if we are to follow Wittman's thesis, by being a symbol of his sexual freedom due to his ability to ignore naturalized gender roles. For Cass, however, it symbolizes an unacceptable difference from fixed gender roles and a continuation of sexual oppression, since, as Wittman continues, “One of the main problems [for homosexuals] is our male chauvinism”; Eric continues to sexually exploit Cass due to their gender differences. [Wittman, pp.5] For Cass, who seeks to escape her suffocating and banal marriage, the relationship with Eric is doomed due to the fact that women, due to the fixed nature of gender roles, are not allowed to act in based on your wishes. When it comes to how bodies, identities and desires are intertwined in another country, the results of this entanglement are strongly determined by gender. For Eric, there is no discernible entanglement between these three categories due to his acceptance of sexual fluidity; he is able to see the distinction between all three and how all three can remain separate. However, it is only because of his status as a gay male, his living outside of gender roles, that he is able to engage in sexual fluidity without consequences to his identity and the bodies he desires; it is because he is homosexual that the relationship with Cass does not confuse his homosexuality. For Cass, however, for whom sexual fluidity is not an option due to her coexistence with the constraints of naturalized gender roles, the intertwining of these three categories is. 4