Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941), Carson McCullers’s second novel, is set at an American Southern army base during the 1930s and portrays the lives of six interconnected people who are alienated from themselves and the world in different ways. Though the story involves murder, voyeurism, sadism, self-mutilation, and repressed gay desire, it examines these topics through the filter of quotidian domestic life. Reflections in a Golden Eye is one of the few works of American literature published in the first half of the 20th century that explicitly presents themes of gay desire.

McCullers was born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1917 and died in Nyack, New York, in 1967. Her best-known works are The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940), The Member of the Wedding (1946), and The Ballad of the Sad Café (1951). Reflections in a Golden Eye shares themes with McCullers’s own life: She experienced chronic illness, and though she isn’t documented as having ever labeled her sexuality, she fell in love with (and openly pursued) women during an era of grave societal hostility toward such involvements.

This study guide cites the 2001 edition of McCullers: Complete Novels, published by the Library of America.

Content warning: The source material features depictions of self-harm.

Plot Summary

The novel opens by explaining that there was once a murder on a Southern army base at peacetime; this novel tells the story of that murder and the people involved.

Private Ellgee Williams, a soldier on base, keeps to himself and has no personal relationships. He is assigned to help an officer, Captain Weldon Penderton, clear out brush behind his house. Though Penderton is furious at the Private for his inept work, he notices that his hatred is strangely intense: He does not understand that this emotion is desire. The Captain then speaks to his wife, Leonora, who has been having an affair with their neighbor, Major Morris Langdon; the Captain is aware of this. They have a bitter argument in which the Captain describes his wife as uncouth, and Leonora strips in front of their fireplace as an act of defiance. Private Williams, who is still on the property, glimpses through the door and sees the naked Leonora. This sparks his obsession with her.

Major Langdon and his wife, Alison, come over for dinner and blackjack with the Pendertons. The Major is a jovial man who is well-liked around the army base. Alison has both mental and physical chronic illnesses. As she watches the blackjack game, she privately mourns her dead daughter, Catherine, who was born sickly and died not long after. After enduring the blackjack game, she returns home with her husband and spends time with Anacleto, her servant. She has plans to divorce the Captain and leave the base with Anacleto, but fear of what would happen has prevented her from leaving. After the blackjack game, Private Williams sneaks into Leonora’s room and watches her.

Anacleto and Alison make plans to leave the Major, but nothing determinate enough to act on. The Captain visits the stable where the Private works, and asks to take Leonora’s horse, Firebird, for a ride. The Captain goads the horse until he fears it will buck him off; Firebird sets off into a wild run, and the Captain believes he is about to die but instead experiences ecstatic joy. After dismounting his horse and fainting, he sees the Private leaning naked against a tree. The Captain becomes obsessed with the Private and begins following him.

That night, Leonora hosts a party. From the neighboring house, Alison sees Private Williams lurking outside the Pendertons’ and suspects she is hallucinating from mental illness. Anacleto comes to sit with her, and they discuss his painting of a peacock with a golden eye. She has a heart attack that night and is bedbound for two weeks. She then sees the Private going into the Penderton house again; she doesn’t clearly see him and assumes it is her husband, the Major, wandering over for a tryst with Leonora—but she goes over to the house herself and discovers the truth when she sees the Private in Leonora’s bedroom. Alison tells Captain Penderton to look in the bedroom, which he decides not to do, and then returns home. The next day, Major Langdon has her declared “insane” and takes her to a psychiatric institution; he is not entirely forthcoming about the details of his decision to commit her, but he does disclose that Alison asked for a divorce, thus making it clear to him that she had lost touch with reality. After two days at the institution, she dies of a heart attack.

The Captain continues to follow the Private, who stopped stalking Leonora after Alison caught him. However, the Private returns to the Penderton house one night, and the Captain finds him there in Leonora’s room as she sleeps. In a fit of clarity and rage, the Captain shoots the Private. The novel ends with Leonora waking up, bleary-eyed and stunned, looking on as the Private falls to the ground.