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E
UR
A
MERICA
2014). That notwithstanding, power is relational; that is, resistance
and domination coexist. As America was emerging as a new empire,
protest and opposition abounded. Dissenters, who can be called
anti-imperialists, were critical of the expansion of American
power.
5
To be sure, McCullers shared this anti-imperialist
sentiment when she was writing in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
During the late 1930s, the federal militarization of the South was
intensified, preparing for the U.S. entry into World War II.
McCullers’s exposure to the army base in her adolescence and
adulthood sensitized her to the nation’s imperial unconscious. In
Reflections in a Golden Eye
, life in the southern army base in terms
of its hierarchy, repression, and rigidity becomes a microcosm of
the rising American Empire, which is closely linked to a particular
gender ideology that promotes patriotic manliness.
The military’s promotion of hegemonic masculinity and its
concomitant oppression of homosexuality and minority
masculinities were keenly apparent and frequently noted by
McCullers. In
The Members of the Wedding
, one character named
Honey Brown is rejected by the Army because of his homosexuality.
Moreover, his sexual nonconformity is inseparable from his racial
difference and class marginality. In
Reflections in a Golden Eye
,
Major Langdon epitomizes a military masculinity that, as Aaron
Belkin argues, aligns white-male-straight-man with state-military-
empire (Belkin, 2012: 58). Concerned himself with only two
things
—
“a healthy body and patriotism” (McCullers, 2001c: 386),
the Major is proud of his flawless masculinity and robust heroism.
Reckless and shameless, Langdon first made love to Leonora
in a blackberry patch two hours after they met. He is described as
5
For example, one of the significant opponents of American expansion during this
period is Marine General Smedley Butler, who, during his thirty-three years in the
Marines, had participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, Central
America, the Caribbean and France in WWI. He later became an outspoken critic
of American imperialism. See Robert Buzzanco’s “Anti-Imperialism” for details
(2014).