歐美研究季刊 第45卷第3期

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EURAMERICA Vol. 45, No. 3 ( September 2015), 409-444
© Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica
Desiring Brotherhood
—Alternative Masculinities and a Critique
of the American Empire in Carson
McCullers’s Reflections in a Golden Eye

Jen-yi Hsu
English Department, National Dong Hwa University
No. 1, Sec.2, Da-Hsueh Rd., Shou-Feng Hualien 97401, Taiwan
E-mail:
Abstract
This paper examines Carson McCullers’s second novel,
Reflections in a Golden Eye , a strange tale that received
accusations of morbidity when it was published in 1941.
Because of the novel’s shocking homosexual theme, critics
tend to read it as McCullers’s inheritance of the Gothic
school of southern writing. However, I argue that this
paradigmatic use of southern regionalism as the singular
model to interpret her novel is inadequate and ignores the
transnational imaginary of the story. One of the essential
clues to McCullers’s awareness of the imperialist expansion
of U.S. global power is the strange presence of the Filipino
houseboy, who alerts us to the more disturbing aspects of
American invasions into the international sphere. Set in a
traditionally male domain of a military post, the novel
explores the tensions and ambivalence inherent in a
Received July 4, 2014; accepted April 14, 2015; last revised April 30, 2015
Proofreaders: Tsai Min Fang, Pei-Yun Lee, Kuei-feng Hu