By Gabriella Maio

This map, created with Google MyMaps, shows two different layers. The first layer is of real places that are mentioned in relation to the queer characters in the novel. The second layer depicts speculative placements of imaginary locations from the novel based on descriptions in the text. These are represented by coloured transparent hexagons/bubbles.

Navigating the Map

The above map shows all the places where the two central queer characters – La Fleur and Big Blonde – are seen in Romance in Marseille by Claude McKay. There is a geographical politics to the vocabulary of queer spaces in the novel. La Fleur and Big Blonde move around Marseille in very different ways. When mapping these locations, it became clear that nowhere that La Fleur goes but Big Blonde does not, have enough locational information to be accurately put on the map, while there are plenty of mappable places where only Big Blonde goes. To best show this, the places only visited by Big Blonde are in blue, and locations frequented by both him and La Fleur are in green. Imagined locations are represented by large bubbles, colour coded to the character(s) who appear in scenes there. Clicking on the bubbles or pins provides more detail on whether the place is real or imagined, as well as the context of the scene in which the place occurs.

Queerness in Quayside

McKay’s treatment of queerness in Romance in Marseille reflects the sexual openness of France in the 1920s and early 1930s (Tamagne and Seberry); this is highlighted by the fact that both La Fleur and Big Blonde are openly queer. The acceptance of 1930s France was limited, however, and soon to change with the onset of the Second World War (Tamagne and Seberry), something which can be seen through the queer characters’ interactions with place and space throughout the novel.  

The map shows the complicated nature of open homosexuality in Romance in Marseille, through the differences it reveals between the two main queer characters. Big Blonde’s locations occupy more space on the map than La Fleur’s, both because he visits more places than La Fleur, and because the locations he visits, while imagined, are often accompanied by specific descriptors, making them easier to find. In contrast, La Fleur is mostly seen in the Quayside region, which is centred around the Old Port of Marseille, and when she appears outside of this area, the location is referenced vaguely. For example, she is taken to the “high-up part of the town” (McKay p82) by one of her clients. This descriptor provides no mappable information as the high-up part of the town is ambiguous and could refer to any well-off part of Marseille. Both characters hold different social positions, La Fleur is a sex worker and tied to Quayside, which is the hub of her trade, meanwhile Big Blonde is a dock worker and an openly gay man. He is forced to move around because of “trouble [with the police] at Quayside” (McKay p146), most likely because of his open queerness (Newman). Thus, McKay uses Big Blonde’s roaming throughout Marseille to show that, despite not being illegal, homosexuality is still not wholly accepted in the France of Romance in Marseille. Meanwhile, La Fleur does not suffer this because she is protected by her trade, and granted stability by the heterosexual service she provides.

The difference between La Fleur and Big Blonde’s attitudes to Quayside is most evidently demonstrated in the scene where La Fleur leaves her evening with “the rubicund” (McKay p83) and “fle[es] to Quayside” (McKay p83). The lexis of fear used in the verb “fled”, suggests that Quayside is a refuge for La Fleur against the unwanted heterosexual attention she has received. She is described in the same section as “the queen of Quayside” (McKay p83), the title implying great social command over the region and that she is thus protected. It is not surprising then, that La Fleur cannot be placed on the map outside of this region, which is the place of her social power.

The other prevalent queer character, Big Blonde, is not protected by Quayside but demonstrates what it is like to be openly gay in McKay’s Marseille without the social currency of being a sex worker. In opposition to La Fleur being grounded in Quayside, Big Blonde is frequently forced out of Quayside and into hiding at the Seaman’s Club because “he had got into trouble [with the police] at Quayside” (McKay p145). The Seaman’s club is “situated […] in the drabbest and least interesting proletarian and factory quarter of Marseille” (McKay p125). The club is unmappable, and it is uncertain whether it is based on a specific historical location. However, McKay makes it clear that the club lies in a distinctly different district of Marseille to Quayside. Thus, from the outset, Big Blonde’s refuge greatly diverges from La Fleur’s. It is insinuated that the trouble Big Blonde gets into with the police of Quayside is because he is openly gay (Newman). The story of Big Blonde breaking “up the furniture in the saloon of the loving house of La Creole, because a boy companion of his was insulted there” (McKay p95) provides evidence for this claim. In this tale, Big Blonde’s defence of his lover paints him as “a heroic outlaw” (Newman p62), who takes radical actions to protect others in his community from harm. If this is truly what gets him run out of Quayside, then a safe space for La Fleur is a dangerous one for Big Blonde.

McKay depicts an interesting aspect of homosexual culture within the 1920s and early 1930s France through the inclusion of the Petit Pain bar. In France,

the main distinction in the 1920s homosexual scene was the creation, in addition to the traditional networks of cruising and prostitution, of quasi-legitimate establishments doing regular business and openly accepting homosexual customers (Tamagne and Seberry).

Situated away from the city, the bar “the Petit Pain” is just that, it provides a space for Le Petit Frere and Big Blonde to exist openly, though not without harassment. McKay positions the Petit Pain very particularly, noting that it is “in the vicinity of the principal railroad station” (McKay p167). Meaning that, even though the bar itself is imaginary, it is possible to hypothesise its location via a bubble on the map near the principal railway station of Marseille at the time, the Gare Saint-Charles railway station. Since the bar is “quite literally on the other side of the tracks from the bars and clubs that are the usual haunts of Quaysiders” (Newman p67), the physical and metaphorical distance between the districts is evident. It is a trend within McKay’s portrayal of the locations of queer characters to have this type of imprecise location being given. While the actual places the characters go to are inaccessible to the reader, the distance, and movement or stagnancy of the characters La Fleur and Big Blonde stand out in the novel.

The process of creating Digital Maps is extremely useful for visualising the spaces which the characters occupy in the novel. It is especially relevant to the analysis of queer space in a novel set in 1930s France, as 1920s and 1930s France was a vibrant but tumultuous place in which queer culture expanded and evolved largely due to the creation of queer spaces.

Work Cited

McKay, Claude. Romance in Marseille Claude McKay ; Edited and with an Introduction by Gary Holcomb and William J. Maxwell. Penguin Books, 2020.

Newman, Eric H. ‘A Queer Romance: Centering the Margins in Claude McKay’s Romance in Marseille’. English Language Notes, vol. 59, no. 1, Apr. 2021, pp. 58–72, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/787759 

Tamagne, Florence, and Alice Seberry. History of Homosexuality in Europe, Berlin, London, Paris 1919-1939: Berlin, London, Paris; 1919-1939. Algora Publishing, 2004. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=318688.

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