Reflections in a Golden Eye

Content warning: The section of the guide addresses plot events involving graphic self-harm.

On the morning after Private Williams sees Leonora Penderton naked, he arrives at the stables at dawn. Leonora and Major Langdon arrive shortly after, which is usual, but Captain Penderton is with them, which is unusual. The three of them take a morning ride, and Private Williams watches them. That evening, Private Williams walks through the woods to the Pendertons’ house and observes the Captain from behind the shrubs in the yard. This begins a “strange time” during which Private Williams returns to watch the house every night. This lasts for almost two weeks.

There are only four times in his life when the Private has acted on his own, and he has always done so spontaneously: He bought a cow, declared his faith in the Lord, committed a crime, and joined the military.

On the 12th night of this “strange time,” Private Williams goes through the woods more slowly, wearing tennis shoes and carrying a pocketknife. He heads to the Pendertons’ house, where he hides among some trees and looks inside.

On this same night, Major Langdon and Leonora Penderton play blackjack while Captain Penderton and Alison Langdon sit before the hearth. There is a general mood of unease. This is partly because the Major “was not altogether the same easy-go-lucky man he used to be” (327), but Leonora remembers that there is another reason, too. A few months ago, when they were sitting together in the same way, Alison got up and went to her own house. Later, Anacleto, the Langdons’ Filipino servant, came into the Pendertons’ house crying. They found Alison unconscious in the Langdon house; she’d cut off her nipples with a pair of garden shears.

The Captain is uneasy because he loves the Major: “[Penderton] was just as jealous of his wife as he was of her love” (327). Captain Penderton also hates the Major’s wife, Alison, both because she is indifferent to him and because she knows that he steals things. While the others play blackjack, Alison knits a sweater for nobody in particular and thinks about her daughter, Catherine, who died as a baby three years prior. She is “in pain and nervous” (328); she has felt constant shame ever since hurting herself a few months ago. She assumes everyone who looks at her must be thinking about it, but nobody outside of the room knows except a doctor, a nurse, and Anacleto. She wants to leave the room and leave her husband, but she is trapped by fear and apprehension.

Major Langdon hopes that Alison knows nothing about his affair with Leonora, but it’s become increasingly difficult to convince himself that this is the case. He has decided that her unhappiness is due to something “female and morbid” (330). As they leave the house, he remembers their baby Catherine and how relieved he was when, after 11 months, she finally died.

Before the Langdons leave—Alison slightly before the Major—the narration gives a small aside about Alison Langdon’s friend, Lieutenant Weincheck. At nearly 50 years old, Lieutenant Weincheck is a relatively older man on the base who keeps a small apartment filled with books, plants, a cat, and a piano. Alison visits him in the afternoon, and sometimes they and Anacleto drive to concerts in a faraway city.

The Major comes home and asks Anacleto about his wife’s health. Anacleto loves the theater, classical music, dancing, and speaks “soft[ly] and vivacious[ly]” (333). He’s also very protective of Alison and keeps up a frivolous front for the Major. Anacleto talks to Alison about a fabric he wants to order, and the Major overhears them, noticing their similarities in speech. Anacleto leaves the room and tells Alison, “Call me if you need me” (336). He then trips down the stairs, and the Major mouths at him that he wishes he’d broken his neck.

Alison tries to make plans to divorce the Major, but she doesn’t know what she would do to survive. She remembers discovering the Major’s affair eight months prior, when she and Anacleto were coming back from a show with Lieutenant Weincheck. Anacleto saw it happening in their own home and tried to protect Alison, but she found out anyway. Afterward, she and Anacleto drove off, and a new soldier stopped them at the outpost and asked for their name. Anacleto was too upset to say anything, and Alison couldn’t speak her husband’s name. She’ll remember that soldier’s face forever.

The Major, in the other room, remembers meeting Leonora. It happened about a year after the baby died, and they’d had sex within hours. To the Major, it felt like the sun coming out after rain.

In the Pendertons’ house, the Captain frets about Alison and the fact that she has caught him stealing. However, the Captain can’t truly hate Alison or his own wife. He leaves his study and discovers Leonora lying asleep before the sitting-room fire; he drags her to bed. The Captain then takes sleeping pills and falls asleep.

Private Williams is still waiting outside the house. Two hours after the lights go off, he uses the pocketknife to unlock the screen door and enters the house. He sneaks into Leonora’s room (he thinks of her as “The Lady”) and leans over her, watching her until almost dawn. He feels “a keen, strange sweetness that never before in his life had he known” (343). Private Williams sometimes takes a horse with him during his ramblings, riding the horse naked.