The Origins Of Terror In Reflections In A Golden Eye

Carson McCullers is one of the most distinguished writers of the second generation of American Southern Renaissance.Her writing boasts regional features,a prominent one of which is that it follows the tradition of the Southern Gothic.The Gothic tradition is displayed almost in all her works,which is very efficient to unveil various sorts of terror in the American South.The Southern Gothic is the sub-genre of the Gothic tradition and endowed with distinctive features in the writing experiment of Southern writers.Besides,the Southern Gothic is highly featured by the description of irrational,insane,and transgressive thoughts,grotesque characters,and repressive desires that are not congruous with the accepted notion of normalcy.Thus in this sense,the Southern Gothic resembles the genre adopted by writers that gives voice to the marginalized in the South to express their deep anxieties and haunting desires.This thesis aims to investigate the origins of terror in McCullers’ Reflections in a Golden Eye with the theory of Southern Gothic and Henry Lefebvre’s theory of “Spatial Triad.” It focuses on the terror of patriarchy,racism and the puritanical idea about sex.Accordingly,the thesis analyzes the origins of the terror prevalent in this novel in threeaspects,namely,patriarchal oppression,racial discrimination,and repressed sexual desires.The major content of this thesis consists of three chapters.The first chapter investigates the terror triggered by the oppression of the patriarchal force,which is particularly manifest in the entrapped situation of female protagonist Alison and her madness.The Gothic imprisoned settings in the novel echo with the patriarchal South where women are deprived of independence and freedom,and rendered mad.The second chapter explores the terror caused by racism in the South,which is revealed in Williams’ bloody murder and verbal assaults against Anacleto.However,the more serious violence lies in internalized racism harbored in the racial ambivalent who all the more hate the colored.Racial oppression makes the South a Gothic place where the colored are living in lingering fear from slavery history.The third chapter probes into the terror triggered by sexual repression in Southern puritan culture.The Southerners think highly of the role of community and family and advocate monogamy in society.Furthermore,they harbor great antagonism toward the queers whose behavior run counter to the norm of mainstream society,which gives rise to the sexual repression of Williams and Penderton.Their sexual repression is accordingly revealed by a series of aberrant behaviors like stealing,abusing and murdering,which creates a terrifying and haunting atmosphere in the novel.The thesis gives a reinterpretation of Carson McCullers’ most controversial work Reflections in a Golden Eye.It makes apparent that patriarchal dominance,racial violence,and puritanical repression of sex all constitute the origins of the terror ubiquitous in Reflections in a Golden Eye to the extent that reveals the author’s audacious challenge against mainstream American Southern society suffocating human nature and its free expression.