Reflections in a Golden Eye

Reflections in a Golden Eye
by Carson McCullers

Reflections in a Golden Eye
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Book Summary Information

Author: Carson McCullers
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-09-08
ISBN: 0618084754
Number of pages: 182
Publisher: Mariner Books

Book Reviews of Reflections in a Golden Eye

Book Review: A tragedy resulting from repressed emotions and desire
Summary: 5 Stars

This short novel, is extremely well written, not a word out of place. Carson McCullers I very economical with her descriptions, evoking a drama of odd circumstance that must have been a taboo topic when the book was first published. McCullers doesn't seem to really like any characters in the book but she treats them fairly as she surgically dissect each one, revealing repressed feelings, narcissism, shallow intellect, emotional fragility, and dangerous sublimation of emotion.
Repressed homosexual Army Major Penderton is the most complex character in the novel, an unloved and unlovable shell of a human, who is barely able to sustain a rigid mask of sanity as homosexual compulsions eventually, drives him to rash acts of violence against himself, his wife's horse, and others. He is the victim of Venus, the goddess who infects humanity with sexual obsession. He is struck by a vision of a handsome young man, Private Williams, and vacillates between fantasy of sexual encounters merged with combat and struggle. The Major's wife, Leonora, is not a complex thinker, but is a bold, beautiful spoiled military brat who has married a career officer with a repressed secret that undermines their entire relationship, making them enemies. As a sexually frustrated wife, she meets her sexual needs with an affair that is so open that everyone on the military base knows it is occurring, with the possible exception of Major Weldon Penderton. Major Penderton may know about her affair with Lt. Colonel Morris Langdon, their next-door neighbor, but he sees it as punishment for his dark secret. She releases some of her pent up passion through horseback riding on her beautiful white stallion, Firebird, an animal that her husband sees as somewhat of a rival.
Some may indicate that this is a dark Southern Gothic tale by a Southern writer. It takes place in a post-World War II army base in Georgia where officers and their wives make use of a stable of horses, maintained by the enlisted men. When riding, there are multiple trails in the southern forest that surrounds the Army base. It is here that Leonora and Colonel Langdon frequently go to have sex among the blackberry bushes. It is here that Private Williams, a handsome animal force from nature, rides a black mare nude. It is here that Major Penderton pushes his wife's horse into panic and frenzy in a wild ride of desperation to escape his life condition.
Private Williams is a fascinating character, his actions bring about the crisis of identity for Major Penderton for he becomes the object of male obsession. He is a force of nature drawn to nature and destined to appeal to the nature hidden within others. He is as one with horses and the forest where he takes off his clothes and either rides or naps in the nude. He recognizes in Leonora an animal instinct and animal passion that is unreleased and seething. As a voyeur, he observes Leonora taunt her husband while she is nude. However, Private Williams has his own secret, for he becomes obsessed with Leonora and enters the Penderton home nightly to watch her sleep and to smell her clothing. There could also be a Jungian interpretation of Private Williams, for he acts as a shadow archetype for Major Penderton. He nightly enters the home of Penderton (which is the symbol of the psyche) as if the repressed homoeroticism is breaking through the unconscious into consciousness.
Alison Langdon, the mentally disturbed wife of Colonel Langdon, watches as her husband courts Leonora, hating both but too weak to escape. As is many classics, she may be mentally ill but she sees all. She sees that her husband is unfaithful and she sees that Private Williams enters the Penderton home on a nightly basis. She is tended to by an effeminate butterfly of a man, Anacleto, who is the houseboy for the Langdons. Alison lost a female child in childbirth and mutilated her nipples afterward in an act of grief and an emotional break from reality.
Much story is told in this short novel. The weaknesses of every character are revealed. We are swept away by McCuller's beautiful writing into an odd story of repression and violence.

Summary of Reflections in a Golden Eye

A new trade paperback edition of McCullers' second novel, REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE, immortalized by the 1967 film starring Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, and John Houston.
Set on a Southern army base in the 1930s, REFLECTIONS tells the story of Captain Penderton, a bisexual whose life is upset by the arrival of Major Langdon, a charming womanizer who has an affair with Penderton's tempestuous and flirtatious wife, Leonora. Upon the novel's publication in 1941, reviewers were unsure of what to make of its relatively scandalous subject matter. But a critic for Time Magazine wrote, "In almost any hands, such material would yield a rank fruitcake of mere arty melodrama. But Carson McCullers tells her tale with simplicity, insight, and a rare gift of phrase." Written during a time when McCullers's own marriage to Reeves was on the brink of collapse, her second novel deals with her trademark themes of alienation and unfulfilled loves.

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