#reflectionsinagoldeneye

 Reflections honestly surprised me in a lot of ways. It was published in 1941, but it’s a story about sex and longing and misery, directly and explicitly about these topics, unlike other novels from the same period. The story takes place at an Army base in the South, and it’s about six people who live there: Private E.G. Williams, Captain Penderton and his wife Leonora, Major Langdon, his wife Alison, and their houseboy Anacleto. A note, the book was written in 1941 by a white woman - its treatment of a Filipino servant and the few black characters mentioned in passing is unabashedly shitty. 

Leonora and Major Langdon are embroiled in an affair, Alison Langdon knows it and is also slowly dying of grief over the recent death of her baby, Anacleto is passionately devoted to Alison. These interactions are all interesting enough - they smack of stereotype, but they were crafted with enough care that I didn’t mind. 

But the interaction I was really interested in was that of Captain Penderton and Private Williams. Captain Penderton is gay, specifically and unambiguously gay, and what’s even more interesting is that McCullers doesn’t condemn him for it any more than she condemns or judges any other character. She’s not positive about it, for sure, but there’s far less condemnation that I would have expected. Captain Penderton is a pathetic figure, but not because he’s gay, because McCullers seems to like writing lonely, desperately miserable people. Describing the Captain’s relationship with his wife, McCullers writes: “But with (Leonora) he suffered. He had a sad penchant for becoming enamored of his wife’s lovers.” (9) 

And that is sad, isn’t it? Just a little? That Captain Penderton can’t express his own feelings or act on them, and instead gets sucked into a sort of whirlpool of desiring the men that desire his wife? I thought it was a little sad. 

At the beginning of the novel, Private Williams is doing some yard work for the Pendertons. During the course of an argument inside the house with her husband, Leonora strips naked. (In a book from 1941! Man, I Iike Carson McCullers) Anyway, the soldier sees her do this, and is struck so dumb by the sight of a naked woman that he stands outside their house for hours. (Side note, McCullers notes that Williams had only grown up with his father and had been told all his life that women had diseases that “made men blind, crippled, and doomed to hell.” [17]. Consequently, he hadn’t voluntarily touched, spoken to, or looked at a woman since he was eight years old. THIS IS WHY ACCURATE SEXUAL EDUCATION IS IMPORTANT, PEOPLE.) 

So Williams becomes so obsessed with Mrs. Penderton (whom he calls The Lady in his head), that he starts hanging out outside the house every night. And then eventually breaking into the house and just squatting by Mrs. Penderton’s bed all night, just staring at her. This is where the “reflections in a golden eye” title comes in - he’s got odd, gold-brown eyes. The Captain, not knowing about any of this, becomes obsessed with Williams - in what starts at out as rage and slowly melts into sexual fascination. Toward the end of the novel, McCullers writes: “For a long time now he had ceased to attribute his feelings for Private Williams to hate. Also he no longer tried to find justification for the emotion that had so taken possession of him.” 

Unfortunately - and not surprisingly - the novel doesn’t end particularly happily. It’s a really quick read, just 117 pages long. Honestly, I’m wishing it had been longer - I think that there were a lot of fascinating ideas tossed around in the story, but the novel doesn’t really shake them into a harmonious narrative. We never really find out what’s going on with Private Williams, the relationship between Private Williams and Captain Penderton never really moves beyond excessive and toxic longing on Penderton’s part, and Langdon just sort of drops from the story after his wife’s death. Anacleto literally disappears after Alison dies, as well. 

It’s a little incoherent at times, but it’s a richly painted Southern Gothic novel. All and all, I liked it.

Quotations: 

“The air was so thick with the odors of ham, spareribs, and whiskey that it seemed one might almost eat it with a spoon.” (67). 

“‘They giveth it and then they taketh it away,’ said Leonora, whose intentions were better than her command of Scripture.” (105) 

“His memory of these times was wholly sensual. There was the thick rug beneath his feet, the silk spread, the faint scent of perfume. There was the soft luxurious warmth of woman-flesh, the quiet darkness - the alien sweetness in his heart and the tense power in his body as he crouched there near to her. Once having known this he could not let it go; in him was engendered a dark, drugged craving as certain of fulfillment of death.” (114). (So this is when Williams is being creepy as fuck and stalking Mrs. Penderton. This is bad. But do love the language that McCullers used to paint the scene.) 

And my favorite: