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Middlesex (novel)
Encyclopedia
Middlesex is a Pulitzer Prize
-winning novel
by Jeffrey Eugenides
published in 2002. The book is a bestseller
, with more than three million copies sold as of May 2011. Its characters and events are loosely based on aspects of Eugenides' life and observations of his Greek heritage. It is not an autobiography; Eugenides is not intersex like the protagonist. The author decided to write Middlesex after he read the 1980 memoir Herculine Barbin
and was unsatisfied with its discussion of intersex anatomy and emotions.
Primarily a Bildungsroman
and family saga
, the novel chronicles the impact of a mutated gene on three generations of a Greek family, causing momentous changes in the protagonist's life. According to scholars, the novel's main themes are nature versus nurture
, rebirth, and the differing experiences of polar opposites—such as those found between men and women. It discusses the pursuit of the American Dream
and explores gender identity
. The novel contains many allusion
s to Greek mythology, including creatures such as the Minotaur
, half-man and half-bull, and the Chimera
, a monster composed of various animal parts.
Narrator and protagonist Cal Stephanides (initially called "Callie") is a hermaphrodite man of Greek
descent with a condition known as 5-alpha-reductase deficiency
, which causes him to have certain feminine traits. The first half of the novel is about Cal's family, and depicts his grandparents' migration from Smyrna
, a city in Asia Minor
, to the United States in 1922. It then follows their assimilation into the American society. The latter half of the novel, set in the late 20th century, focuses on Cal's experiences in his hometown Detroit, Michigan
, and his escape to San Francisco where he comes to terms with his modified gender identity
.
Entertainment Weekly
, the Los Angeles Times
, and The New York Times Book Review
considered Middlesex one of the best books of 2002, and some scholars believed the novel should be considered for the title of Great American Novel
. Generally, reviewers felt that the novel succeeded in portraying its Greek immigrant drama and were also impressed with Eugenides' depiction of his hometown of Detroit—praising him for his social commentary. Reviewers from the medical, queer, and intersex communities mostly praised Middlesex. In 2007, the book was featured in Oprah's Book Club
. In July 2009, HBO announced that Middlesex would be adapted into a one-hour drama series, with the script written by Donald Margulies
.
, in 1993, Jeffrey Eugenides
started on his next project Middlesex. His source of inspiration was Herculine Barbin
, the diary of a 19th-century French convent schoolgirl who was intersex. Eugenides had first read the memoir a decade earlier and believed it evaded discussion about the anatomy and emotions of intersex people. He intended Middlesex to be "the story [he] wasn't getting from the memoir".
Eugenides worked on Middlesex for nine years. He started writing during his short term residence at MacDowell Colony
in New Hampshire, United States, and finished the novel in Berlin, Germany; he had accepted a grant from the German Academic Exchange Service
in 1999. Eugenides spent the first few years trying to establish the narrative voice for his novel. He wanted to "[tell] epic events in the third person and psychosexual events in the first person". According to Eugenides, the voice "had to render the experience of a teenage girl and an adult man, or an adult male-identified hermaphrodite".
Although Eugenides sought expert advice about intersex, sexology
, and the formation of gender identity
, he refrained from meeting with intersex people, saying, "[I] decided not to work in that reportorial mode. Instead of trying to create a separate person, I tried to pretend that I had this [physical feature] and that I had lived through this as much as I could". Eugenides read books, sifted through many sheets of microfiche, and combed through videotapes and newsletters that dealt with the subject. He visited the New York Public Library
's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture to search for the sole copy of a book about an "elusive historical figure". He discovered details of what he considered a vivid intersex condition while browsing Columbia University's medical library. The condition formed the basis of his protagonist's tale.
Middlesex was published for the North American market in September 2002 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
in the United States and Vintage Canada for Canada. A month later, it was released in the United Kingdom by Bloomsbury Publishing. The novel has been translated into 34 languages; the Spanish-language edition was translated by Benito Gómez Ibáñez and released in 2003 after the publisher, Jorge Herralde, had acquired the rights in a "tough auction".
, a recessive condition, causes him to be born with female characteristics. The book continues with accounts of his family's history, starting with his paternal grandparents in their home village and ending with his father's funeral. These accounts cover the conception of Cal, his teenage years, and the discovery of his intersex condition. Throughout the book, Cal weaves his opinion of the events in hindsight and of his life after his father's funeral. Eugenides sets Middlesex in the 20th century and interjects historical elements, such as the Balkan Wars
, the Nation of Islam
, and the Watergate scandal
, in the story.
The accounts of Cal's family history start from 1922. His grandfather, Eleutherios "Lefty" Stephanides, lives in Bithynios, a village in Asia Minor
. Eugenides places the village high on the slope of Mount Olympos
, above the city of Bursa, and describes incestuous
marriages between cousins as a quietly accepted custom among the villagers. Lefty makes a living selling silkworm cocoons harvested by his sister, Desdemona. The siblings are orphans; their parents are victims of the ongoing Greco-Turkish War. As the war progresses, Lefty and Desdemona develop a romantic relationship. Fleeing the chaos brought by the war, they board a ship amid the Great Fire of Smyrna
and set sail for the United States. Their histories unknown to the other passengers, they marry each other onboard the vessel.
After arriving in New York
, they locate their cousin, Sourmelina "Lina" Zizmo, in Detroit, Michigan
, and stay with her. Lina is a closeted
lesbian
and the only person there to know of the siblings' incestuous relationship. Starting a new life, Lefty takes on a job at Ford Motor Company
, but is later retrenched. He unknowingly joins Lina's husband, Jimmy, in bootlegging
. Desdemona gives birth to a son, Milton, and later a daughter, Zoe. Lina gives birth to a daughter, Theodora or "Tessie". The relationship between Lefty and Desdemona declines after she learns that there is an increased chance of genetic disease for children born from incest
. In 1924, after Milton's birth, Lefty opens a bar and gambling room, calling it the Zebra Room.
Milton and Tessie marry in 1946. They have two children, Chapter Eleven and Calliope ("Callie"). Prior to Callie's birth, Desdemona predicts the child to be a boy, although the parents prepare for a girl. Chapter Eleven is a biologically "normal" boy; however, Callie is intersex. Her family members are unaware of her situation for many years, so they raise Callie as a girl. After the 1967 Detroit riot, the family moves to a house on Middlesex Boulevard, Grosse Pointe
.
When she is 14 years old, Callie falls in love with her female best friend, whom Callie refers to as the "Obscure Object". In separate encounters, Callie has her first sexual experiences with a woman, the Obscure Object, and with a man, the Obscure Object's brother. After Callie is injured by a tractor, a doctor discovers that she is intersex. She is taken to a clinic in New York and undergoes a series of tests and examinations. After learning about the syndrome and facing the prospect of sex reassignment surgery
, Callie runs away and assumes a male identity as Cal. He hitchhikes cross-country and reaches San Francisco, where he joins a burlesque show
.
Cal is arrested by the police during a raid on his workplace. He is released into Chapter Eleven's custody and learns of their father's death. The siblings return to their family home on Middlesex. In a private moment, Desdemona recognizes Cal's condition, associating it with stories from her old village about children born of incest. She confesses to Cal that her husband, Lefty, is also her brother. As Milton's funeral takes place at the church, Cal stands in the doorway of his family home, assuming the male-only role in Greek traditions to keep his father's spirit from re-entering the family home. Several years later, Cal becomes a diplomat stationed in Berlin. He meets Julie Kikuchi, a Japanese-American woman, and tentatively starts a relationship with her.
Eugenides blended fact and fiction in his book. Like Cal, the author was born in 1960; he is not intersex, unlike his creation. His family moved to a house on Middlesex Road in Grosse Pointe, after the Detroit riot in 1967. Eugenides studied at University Liggett School
, a private institution
that served as a model for Callie's Baker and Inglis School for Girls. He tapped into his own "locker room trauma", an adolescent experience of being naked among many other nude bodies, and used it to develop Callie's self-discovery of her body during puberty. He based the name of the character the "Obscure Object" on a Brown University
classmate whom he found alluring and to whom he gave that nickname. Eugenides married a Japanese American artist, Karen Yamauchi, and moved to Berlin.
Eugenides is also of Greek heritage, albeit only through his father's side. Although his paternal grandparents were not siblings like the Stephanides, they were of the same profession—silk farmers—as their fictional counterparts. Cal's learning of Greek customs to better understand his grandparents mirrored Eugenides' own actions to do likewise. The Zebra Room and the bartender profession are other items shared by their grandfathers; Eugenides said the inclusion of the bar was a deliberate "secret code of paying homage to my grandparents and my parents". Several aspects of Chapter Eleven were based on Eugenides' elder brother, who withdrew from society during a "hippie phase" in his life. While revising and editing the book, the author removed information that could be offensive to his relatives. Not all such material was excised, Eugenides said, "There may still be things in there that will sting."
called the novel "ponderous" and that the main story (that of Cal) does not "get off the ground until halfway through" the book. Time
s Richard Lacayo concurred; he considered the hundreds of pages about Cal's grandparents and several historical events to be trite, making Middlesexs focus "footloose" in some spots. Several passages in the novel exhibit Eugenides' obsession with "verbose voluptuousness". An example noted by Thea Hillman in her review is an incident in which Cal says, "I sat in my seat, in a state of voluptuous agitation, of agitated voluptuousness, until my stop. Then I staggered out." A contrary opinion on the verbosity is given by Daniel Soar in his article for London Review of Books
. According to Soar, Eugenides did "both background and foreground in all the necessary detail", seamlessly shifting from past to present. Despite the implausible tone of the novel's events, the author successfully makes them "elaborately justified and motivated". The quality of Middlesexs writing was uneven in the opinions of Hillman and another reviewer, Sebastian Smee. The latter pointed out that Eugenides occasionally moves from the heartfelt ("I remember the first time we took off our clothes in front of each other. It was like unwinding bandages") to the "trashily journalistic" ("You've heard of installation artists? Well, the Object [a heavy smoker] was an exhalation artist") on several occassions.
Humor and irony
are frequently used in the book. Mark Lawson
of The Guardian considered the narrator's tone to be "sardonic[ally] empath[etic]", and other critics have characterized the beginning of the novel as comical. When Cal is baptized as an infant by Father Mike, a Greek Orthodox clergyman, the priest receives a surprise: "From between my cherubic legs a stream of crystalline liquid shot into the air ... Propelled by a full bladder, it cleared the lip of the font ... [and] struck Father Mike right in the middle of the face." Derek Weiler
of the Toronto Star
noted that Eugenides has witty commentary about German compound words and the "horrific qualities of public men's rooms". The author employed another writing device—abrupt incongruity—in describing Desdemona's physical appearances to suggest that her incestuous acts should be taken lightly when judging her. In describing her hair, he wrote that her "braids were not delicate like a little girl's but heavy and womanly, possessing a natural power, like a beaver's tail". According to Penelope Music of Book Magazine
, the mismatch in tone of the final two words compared with the rest of the sentence was such that the reading experience was changed from "run-of-the-mill magical realism
to true, subversive comedy". An instance of irony is illustrated by Cal's grandparents and parents: His grandparents assimilate into American culture through hard work and struggles while retaining certain old customs. His parents, however, abandon their roots for a more comfortable lifestyle. In another incident, the diner owned by the Stephanides is engulfed in flames during the 1967 Detroit riot. Cal ironically notes that "[s]hameful as it is to say, the riots were the best thing that ever happened to us." The diner was insured and the Stephanides gain a windfall payout.
, and switches between the first
and the third person in several spots. Used as a comedic device
, the third person narratives illustrate Cal's estrangement from Calliope: When he refers to her in the third person, he is identifying her as someone other than him. Patricia Chu, a scholar of English literature, noted the effectiveness of this style in the chapter where the adolescent Callie searches for information on hermaphroditism. As the teenager reads Webster's Dictionary
, following the trail of definitions related to her condition, she reaches the entry for hermaphrodite. The narration switches from personal to external, lending poignancy to the character's final discovery as she is confronted by the word "monster".
Although the protagonist switches gender throughout the book, Cal's manners of speech and thought are not different from those of Callie. Believing that males and females have no inherent disparities in their writing styles, Eugenides treated Cal and Callie as essentially the same person. He also fixed the narrative voice in terms of age by setting up Cal to relate the entire story at one time. Eugenides gave his protagonist a mostly male outlook, justifying his treatment with the reasoning that Cal or Callie was a man in terms of appearance, sexual desires, and the brain. He asked his wife and other women to review his approaches on Cal's feminine views. The "emotional stuff" was accurate but Eugenides had to refine certain details, such as those about toenail polish
.
At the beginning of the book when Cal discusses about his family before his birth, he speaks in an androgynous
voice and seems to know all that is occurring and has occurred. His omniscience is "limited"; he acknowledges that he is fabricating some of the details. John Mullan
, University College London
's professor of English and a contributor to The Guardian
, wrote that by permitting Cal to be unrealistically aware of fellow characters' thoughts, Eugenides intentionally contravenes an elementary standard in storytelling fiction. In the novel's closing pages, Cal provides minute details about his father's dying moments and thoughts in a nonsensical car accident even though he is several thousand miles from the scene and only learns of the tragedy from his brother. Cal has the ability to dwell in the minds of others because as a female who has become a male, his identity is not confined by his own body. According to Mullan, this "mobility of identification becomes a narrative principle" and is thoroughly exploited in Middlesex. The novel follows the principle that people are molded by events prior to their birth, and Eugenides explores a character's prenatal life in terms of his or her genes; the narrator is, however, subject to the principle that whatever he does not know is of his imagination. As such, contradictory statements highlight the unreliable nature of Cal's narration. While narrating the story that pre-dates his birth, he remarks, "Of course, a narrator in my position (prefetal at the time) can't be entirely sure about any of this." However, he later says, "I alone, from the private box of my primordial egg, saw what was going on." Cal's dubious omniscience, doubtful narration, and parodies combine to show that his unreliability is an act of mischief.
described Middlesex as a "virtuosic combination of elegy
, sociohistorical study, and picaresque adventure", and Adam Begley
in The New York Observer called it "a hybrid form, epic crossed with history, romance, comedy, tragedy." Other reviews also categorized the book under various genres. Covering the lives of three generations of the Stephanides family, Middlesex is considered a family saga
by novelist Geraldine Bedell
. The book is more than a mere family saga, according to Samuel Cohen in his paper for Twentieth Century Literature; it depicts the Stephanides' trials and tribulations through historical events. Cohen is not convinced by Eugenides' declaration that Middlesex was not conceived as a historical novel
; he said the novel satisfied much of the criterion for the genre. Cal, narrating his story in 2002, describes events from the early 1920s to the mid-1970s. According to Cohen, the difference in timeframes, at least 25 years apart, "establishes that the novel is set safely in the past".
According to Stewart O'Nan
of The Atlantic, Cal's narration evokes the style of the picaresque novel
, retelling events that have already occurred and foreshadowing the future through "portentous glimpses". Francisco Collado-Rodríguez, a professor of American Literature, classified the beginning of Middlesex as a historiographical
and metafiction
al chronicle for its discussion of events such as the Greco-Turkish war and the Great Fire of Smyrna. He also considered the first section of the novel as a tragicomedy
about the Stephanides' migration from Greece and assimilation into America. Soar posited Desdemona and Lefty's passage as a romantic comedy
: the lovers, brother and sister, pretend to be strangers who meet for the first time, attempting "to unknow themselves, to remythologise themselves by developing a past they could live with, unfamiliar and therefore permissible". As the story progresses, Middlesex becomes a social novel
about Detroit, discussing the seclusion of living in a 1970s suburb. At the end of the novel, the story adopts the tone of the detective genre.
The novel is characterized as a "dramatic" Bildungsroman
with a "big twist" because the coming-of-age story is revealed to be the incorrect one: after being nurtured as a woman, Cal must instead learn to become a man. The book has "two distinct and occasionally warring halves". Whereas the first part is about hermaphrodites, the second is about Greeks. The latter half, "full of incest, violence, and terrible family secrets", was considered by Daniel Mendelsohn
, an author and critic, to be more effective because Middlesex is largely about how Callie inherited the momentous gene that "ends up defining her indefinable life".
Writing for The New Republic
, James Wood
classified Middlesex as a story written in the vein of hysterical realism
. He said the novel is influenced by its own recounting of "excitements, patternings, and implausibilities that lie on the soft side of magical realism". Such moments in the book include how two cousins conceive "on the same night and at the same moment" and how years later, those children marry each other. Woods also pointed out the seeming coincidences that involved locales. Smyrna is the burning city from which she flees to start a new life; New Smyrna Beach
is where she spends her retirement. Effectively serving as a double entendre
, the title of the book refers to the name of the street where Cal stays at and describes his situation: a hermaphrodite brought up as a girl but who decides to become a boy. Cal's condition is also reflected in his choice of locale to narrate the novel: Berlin
is a city formerly of "two halves or sexes" (East
and West
).
and synecdoche
for Calliope's hermaphroditic condition; Callie's paternal grandparents become Americanized
through the amalgamation of the elements of heredity, cultural metamorphoses, and probability. Callie's maternal grandfather, Jimmy Zizmo, undergoes a rebirth when he transforms from a bootlegger
into Farrad Mohammad, a Muslim minister.
. Beginning with Lefty and Desdemona, Cal's grandparents, fleeing from their homeland to Ellis Island
and the United States, the novel later depicts the family living in a suburban vista at Grosse Pointe, Michigan
. After they immigrate to the United States, Lefty and Desdemona find themselves in a blissful America on the brink of economic collapse. They dream about a perfect America where effort and morals will lead to good fortune. However, they must seek to attain this perfection during a period characterized by Prohibition and xenophobic
anti-immigration legislation. Middlesex depicts the tribulations of attaining an identity, especially while dealing with the revelation that the American Dream is a delusion that has already disappeared.
him. They visit his house to ascertain that he has been living as a typical American. For example, during his first English-language lesson, Lefty is taught that "[e]mployees should use plenty of soap and water in the home". The narrow-minded nativists
believe that immigrants from Southern
and Eastern Europe
are unaware of the value of soap and water.
According to scholar Robert Zecker, the novel depicts African-American poverty but does not illustrate its causes. None of the characters think about how 500,000 African-Americans were placed in cramped living areas of only 25 square blocks and the bitterness and rage that stems from such conditions. The African Americans do not forget the years of oppression they have endured. However, the Greek Americans, like other whites, fail to remember that the African Americans were assaulted by whites in 1943 and faced over two decades of oppression after that. Instead, Zecker noted that the characters in the novel believe that the 1967 Detroit riots are "inexplicable cataclysms that came out of nowhere".
The novel skims over the brutal attacks, lasting a week, on blacks in Detroit during World War II. Years later, in 1967, Lefty is incorrectly told that that year's Detroit riots were started by a black man raping a white woman; this falsehood is never rectified. However, despite this misinformation, Lefty denies service to a number of white customers who partook in the riots. One dismissed customer even yells at him, "[w]hy don't you go back to your own country?", returning the spotlight of racial prejudice on him.
The relationship between the Greek Americans and the African Americans is fraught with prejudice. For example, during the Depression, Desdemona is shocked and humiliated that she will have to work in the Black Bottom
, a predominantly black neighborhood. When African Americans are beaten or taken advantage of by whites, the characters in Middlesex "suddenly are nearsighted" to the racial prejudice. Despite being in the United States for only 10 years and having experienced racism
herself, she can, Zecker noted, "recite at heart the slights at blacks as lazy, dirty, sexually promiscuous, and incapable of self-help". She and other whites, including immigrants whites, feel rage because they are "convinced they were somehow forced out of Detroit following 1967". While walking through the neighborhood, a group of African-American men loafing in front of a barbershop wolf-whistle
to Desdemona and make lascivious comments, thus confirming the racial stereotype.
Zecker remarked that in an ironic twist, immediately after the riots, Desdemona's family is shamed by a white realtor who "doubts their fitness (whiteness)" to live in the rich city Grosse Point. In the 1970s, African Americans, instead of Mediterraneans, were discriminated against through redlining
. Zecker opined that by framing African Americans as the "eternal destroyers" and white ethnics as "yet again the oppressed innocents", Eugenides "captures perfectly the dominant narrative of urban decline in the early twenty-first century American Zeitgeist". Insurance settlement from the damage caused at the riots allows the Stephanides to purchase a home away from the African Americans. The family participates in the white flight
from the city to avoid the racial desegregation in the public schools, sends Cal to a private school.
Cal's father, Milton, and his friends and family cherish their Sunday gatherings. They debate and tell stories to each other, attempting to regain their ethnic roots. A "contrarian", Milton enjoys debating Richard Nixon
and Henry Kissinger
and lamenting the steep cost of church candles. Eugenides repeatedly returns the gathering prior to Cal's conception to "manufacture a psychology that drives his narration". As the immigrants attempt to maintain their identity, the stage is set for Cal's writing even before he is conceived.
Middlesex delves into the schism and reconciling of two opposites by contrasting the experiences and opinions of males and females; Greek Americans and White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
s; Greeks and Turks
; and, African American
s and White American
s. Book reviewer Raoul Eshelman noted that despite these conflicts, the narrator is able to achieve "ethnic reconciliation" when he moves to Berlin
and lives with the Turks
, people who had murdered his forebears in the early 20th century and who had indirectly allowed his grandparents to consummate their incestuous relationship. Alkarim Jivani opined on BBC Television
's current affairs
broadcast Newsnight
that "[o]nly a child of the Diaspora
can do that, because we stand on the threshold of two rooms." The novel also demonstrates that love and family are vital not only to people with unambiguous genders, but also hermaphrodites.
The Greek immigrant family experiences a three-phase acculturation that occurs to immigrant families, according to scholar Merton Lee's research about sociologist George A. Kourvetaris' work. Each generation identifies with different nationalities and cultures. In the first generation, the family members classify themselves as having a Greek nationality. In the second generation, the children classify themselves with an American nationality and Greek Orthodox religion. In the third generation, the grandchildren, who comprise the most acculturated group, characterize themselves with "Greek-immigration status as a class".
The Stephanides lineage is from Bithynios, a village in Asia Minor where the Greek middleman minority
is inclined to be in uneasy relations with the Turkish majority. The people of the middleman minority do not assimilate because of their small mercantile businesses and because their host country is antagonistic towards them. Desdemona, a first-generation Greek immigrant, reflects a fixation with not assimilating. She tells her husband Lefty that she does not want to become an "Amerikanidha" and is frightened that her cousin Lina's husband, Jimmy Zizmo, is a Pontian Greek
. Desdemona considers Pontians to be adulterated Greeks because Pontians inhabited Turkey, where some became Muslim
s and did not follow the Greek Orthodox religion.
Daniel Soar opined that Olympus
, a parallel to Bithynios, served well as the starting point of a debacle (the eventual birth of an intersex person) that is the "story's catalyst". In Mount Olympus during Justinian
's days, silkworm eggs were contraband transported from China to Byzantium by missionaries. A parallel is drawn when Desdemona, a raiser of silk cocoons, attempts to bring them to Detroit. Because the silkworm eggs are considered parasites by the immigration officials, Desdemona must dispose of them. Soar noted that "for the three generations of Greek Americans who people Middlesex, the mulberry trees of Mount Olympus are an appropriately antique beginning: they are the egg inside which everything began".
, the muse
of heroic poetry
. Eugenides was partly inspired by the explorations of hermaphrodism in Greek myths to write the novel about an intersex man. In Middlesex, Cal acts out the story of Hermaphroditus
, the Greek deity of bisexuality and effeminacy, while eking out a living in San Francisco. While narrating, Cal enters his ancestors' thoughts and empathizes with them, an ability possessed by Hermaphroditus. The protagonist compared himself to another mythical figure—Tiresias
, the blind prophet of Thebes
; the omniscient seer lived seven years as woman because of a curse.
Eugenides and several critics compared Cal's condition to mythical creatures described by the ancient Greeks. The author alluded his protagonist's nature and heritage to the Minotaur
, the half-man and half-bull creature. Cal's parents are conceived after his grandparents' attendance of a theatric play
entitled The Minotaur. The puzzle of Cal's genetic identity is akin to the creature's labyrinth and the thread that leads out of the maze is held here by his paternal grandmother, a former silk farmer. Frances Bartkowski, a scholar of English, named Callie in her puberty as a chimera
. The mythical monster is an analogy for a complex personality, a mixture of body parts from various animals that each represents a human aspect or characteristic. Similarly, adolescent Callie is an amalgamation of her genes, neither male nor female, neither adult nor child, and yet all of them at the same time.
In her book column for Detroit Free Press
, Marta Salij said that Cal's identity crisis resembles Odysseus
's fate. Whereas the mythical hero is troubled by Poseidon
and succored by Athena
, the intersex protagonist is affected by his chromosomes in a similar manner. John Sykes, Professor of English and Religion Education, noted another Greek-hero reference. In a manner similar to Oedipus
's fulfillment of Pythia
's prophecy to slay his father and marry his mother, Callie validates the prediction her grandmother made before her birth by adopting a male identity. Eugenides also used the allusions to Greek mythology and modern pop music
to show the passing of familial traits and idiosyncrasies from one generation to the next.
debate in detail. At the beginning of the novel, Cal writes, "Sing now, O Muse
, of the recessive mutation on my fifth chromosome." He then apologizes, saying, "Sorry if I get a little Homeric at times. That's genetic, too." This is an allusion to the poet Homer
, who was also captivated with the nature versus nurture debate. In fact, Cal himself confesses, "If you were going to devise an experiment to measure the relative influences of nature versus nurture, you couldn't come up with anything better than my life."
Callie inherited the mutation for a gene that causes 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, which impedes the conversion of testosterone
to dihydrotestosterone
. While the former hormone causes the brain to become masculine, it is the latter that molds male genitals. When Callie reaches puberty
, her testosterone levels increase significantly, resulting in the formation of a larger Adam's apple, the broadening of her muscles, the deepening of her voice, and the augmentation of her clitoris
to resemble a penis
. Doctors determine that Callie has the XY chromosomes
of a male after inspecting Callie's genitalia. Callie's parents bring her to New York City to see Dr. Peter Luce, a foremost expert on hermaphroditism, who believes she should retain her female identity. Luce plans a gender reassignment surgery to make her a female. However, Callie knows that she is sexually attracted to females, and decides to run away to pursue a male identity. When Cal has a sexual relationship with the Japanese-American photographer Julie at the end of the book, he is able to love "without the need to penetrate the object of his desire".
Mark Lawson
of The Guardian
noted that the cause of Cal's hermaphroditic condition is an inherited recessive gene. According to UC Riverside
psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky
, the novel examines how an individual's traits are due neither solely to nature nor solely to nurture. Similarly, Cal's gender cannot be defined solely as male or female. Rather, it is both male and female. Addressing how genetic determinism
may have renewed the antediluvian beliefs about destiny, Eugenides refutes the post-Freudian
beliefs that a person's traits are mainly due to nurture. Thus, the novel pits evolutionary biology against free will
. Eugenides sought to find a compromise between these two views. Explaining that gender is a "very American concept", he believes that "humans are freer than we realize. Less genetically encumbered".
position that gender identity is fully dependent on outer influences. However, when Callie discovers that he could have been raised as a boy, he renounces his female gender, recognizing his chosen sexual identity as a male. Disowning the female gender before he learned about masculine traits bolsters the argument for the "essentialist
ideology of identity". Cal's embrace of his inherent male identity and renunciation of his childhood female gender identity is articulated when he reflects, "I never felt out of place being a girl, I still don't feel entirely at home among men."
Cal exhibits many masculine characteristics when he is a child. He writes, "I began to exude some kind of masculinity, in the way I topped up and caught my eraser, for instance." In another incident, Cal discusses how his penchants were masculine. While his female classmates are turned off by the blood in The Iliad, Cal is "thrilled to [read about] the stabbings and beheadings, the gouging out of eyes, the juicy eviscerations". Cal ponders his gender identity and how males and females associate with each other, reflecting, "Did I see through the male tricks because I was destined to scheme that way myself? Or do girls see through the tricks, too, and just pretend not to notice?"
Cal also exhibits feminine characteristics, which allows Dr. Luce to classify her as possessing a female gender identity. In a home video taken when Cal was a child, his mother gives him a doll and he nurses it with a milk bottle. Luce carefully observes Callie's actions and diagnoses them as feminine, which causes him to determine that Callie has a feminine gender identity. Luce then concludes that gender identity is nurtured and etched into children at their young ages.
Determining sex is paradoxical because the characters believe that the outward view of genitalia identifies one's sex; Cal's transformation into a male shatters this belief and the methodology behind determining gender. Eugenides addresses how difficult it was for humans to devise a "universal classification for sex". Through Cal, scholar Angela Pattatucci Aragon stated, Eugenides opines that the 1876 system devised by Edwin Klebs
that used gonad
tissue to determine sex provides the most accurate answer.
According to book reviewer Morgan Holmes, Eugenides posits that a person's sexual attraction determines his or her gender. Cal's wish to become male because he desires females demonstrates a link between gender identity and sexuality. While Callie is not permitted to love the Obscure Object openly, Cal can freely love Julie. Holmes believed that the depiction of Callie "denies the legitimate place of lesbian desire and rewrites it as male heterosexuality". Book reviewer Georgia Warnke has a similar view. She wrote that by making these choices in the novel, Eugenides agrees with the belief that being attracted to females is "masculine" and thus it is "more natural" for a male to be attracted to a female than a female be attracted to a female. Daniel Mendelsohn
of The New York Review of Books
argued that Callie does not have to be a male in order to be drawn towards females; she could be gay. As an adult, Cal brags, "Breasts have the same effect on me as on anyone with my testosterone level." Mendelsohn noted that this assertion will astonish "Eugenides's (presumably testosterone-rich) gay male readership". Scholar Rachel Carroll agreed, writing that teenage Callie's erotic interest in girls is "retroactively explained and legitimized, by the discovery of his 'true biological nature'". Cal's gender identity postdates rather than predates his sexual interests. Carroll posited that Cal's inability to form heterosexual relationships as an adult is founded not upon his being intersex, but on his rejection of the sexual ambiguities that form his sexual interests as a youth.
When Callie is in New York, she goes to the New York Public Library
and searches for the meaning of the word "hermaphrodite
"; she is shocked when the dictionary entry concludes with "See synonyms at MONSTER". Callie is not a Frankenstein
; she is more like Bigfoot
or the Loch Ness Monster
. Scholar Frances Bartkowski stated that Eugenides' message is "we must let our monsters out—they demand and deserve recognition—they are us: our same, self, others."
Sarah Graham of Ariel wrote that Eugenides' "persisen[t]" use of the word "hermaphrodite", instead of "intersex", alludes to Hermaphroditus
. Hermaphroditus, a young man, is chased by the nymph Salmacis
. She begs the Gods to bind her and Hermaphroditus together, and the Gods literally fulfill her wish. Hermphroditus' name is a compound of his parent's names—Hermes
and Aphrodite
. He instantaneously turns into someone of both sexes. Devastated because he is no longer fully male, he "curses" the location where he first met Salmacis. Graham stated that the use of "hermaphrodite" carries negative connotations:
Writing that he belongs to the Intersex Society of America, Cal notes that he has not participated in any of the group's rallies because he is not a "political person". While discussing political activism, Cal uses the word "intersex", though in other parts of the novel, he uses the word "hermaphrodite". In the 1920s, Bernice L. Hausman described "intersexuality" as a "continuum of physiological and anatomical sex differences", contesting the notion of a "true sex" concealed in the tissues of the body. Though "hermaphrodite" is burdened by the implications of the anomaly, "intersexuality" is a neologism that tries to "naturalize various sexes, which themselves are naturally occurring". Because Cal uses "hermaphrodite", he indicates that the sole normal genders are the classifications of male and female. Eugenides was asked by an Oprah's Book Club
member why he used the term "hermaphrodite" despite its usage being "either terribly ignorant or unforgivably callous". Eugenides replied that he reserved "hermaphrodite" for a literary character: Hermaphroditus. He further stated: "When speaking about real people, I should—and I do my best to—use the term 'intersex'." Noting that one of the initial sources he consulted was the journal Hermaphrodites with Attitude published by the Intersex Society of North America
, he said that those writers have "co-opted" the term "hermaphrodite". Their action is reminiscent, Eugenides wrote, of how some members of the gay community have "reclaimed" the term "queer". Eugenides stated that it is no surprise that Cal uses "hermaphrodite" and further elaborated: "It's paradoxical: Cal can say 'hermaphodite' but I can't. Or shouldn't."
and intersex is another theme in Middlesex. Eugenides examines the passionate feelings that siblings living in seclusion experience for each other. Milton and Tessie, second cousins, are conceived during the same night, hinting to the incest of Desdemona and Lefty. Desdemona and Lefty's incestuous relationship is a transgression of a powerful taboo, indicating that someone will suffer for their wrongs; in a way, Cal's intersex condition symbolizes this Greek hubris
. In another incestuous relationship, Milton makes love to Tessie using a clarinet
which he lovingly rubs against her; their incestuous relationship enables them to contribute mutated genes to their child Cal. Cal's mother interferes with fate by attempting to make her second child a daughter. Cal believes this interference was a factor in his being a hermaphrodite. Conversely, Cal's relationship with his brother, Chapter Eleven, is indicative of the possible dissimilarities that are products of the biosocial.
Thea Hillman, an intersex activist and board member for Intersex Society of North America
(ISNA), wrote in the Lambda Book Report that the combination of incest and intersex is "inaccurate and misleading". Noting that incest is a loathed social taboo that has "shameful, pathological and criminal repercussions", she criticized Eugenides for underscoring that Cal's intersex condition is due to incest. Hillman stated that this adds to the fallacious belief that intersex people are "shameful and sick" and a danger to society's wellbeing. Sarah Graham of the journal Ariel, published by University of Calgary
, agreed with Hillman. Graham wrote that Cal is paralleled with the tragic Greek mythological characters Hermaphroditus
, Tiresias
, and the Minotaur
. She opined that other "deviant" characters in the novel such as Lefty and Desdemona are spared the "tragic or monstrous" allusions even though there are numerous examples of incest in Greek mythology. She listed the marriage of Oedipus
and his mother Jocasta
, as well as the daughter Adonis
produced by the incest between Theias
and his daughter Smyrna
as examples. Therefore, Graham stated that comparing Cal, a hermaphrodite, to people who were "mythological monsters" is "complicit with [the] exploitation" of intersex people.
In 2003, Middlesex was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
. The Pulitzer Board wrote in their report that Middlesex is a "vastly realized, multi-generational novel as highspirited as it is intelligent . . . Like the masks of Greek drama, Middlesex is equal parts comedy and tragedy, but its real triumph is its emotional abundance, delivered with consummate authority and grace." Eugenides was attending the Prague Writers' Festival when Middlesex won the Pulitzer Prize. When a young Associated Press
photographer notified him about winning the award, Eugenides was dubious, noting that "[i]t seemed very unlikely that he would be the messenger of such news." At the time, Eugenides was with the Canadian author Yann Martel
who confirmed the photographer's words after checking on the hotel's computer. A waiter brought champagne to Eugenides, and Greek women started kissing him. When journalists called Eugenides, he declined to take their calls, saying in an interview later that he wanted to "celebrate the moment instead of leaping immediately into the media maelstrom".
The novel received the Ambassador Book Award
, Spain's Santiago de Compostela Literary Prize, and the Great Lakes Book Award. In 2003, it was a finalist in the fictional category of the National Book Critics Circle Award
. Middlesex was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award
, which is given to LGBT literature
. In 2003, the novel was shortlisted
for but did not win the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
. Entertainment Weekly
, the Los Angeles Times
, and The New York Times Book Review
considered Middlesex to be one of the best books in 2002. In 2007, Oprah Winfrey
chose Middlesex to be discussed in her book club
. Eugenides was a guest on Oprah's show
with several intersex individuals who told stories about their lives.
The audiobook version of Middlesex was released by Macmillan Audio
in September 2002. Read by Kristoffer Tabori
, the audiobook has 28 sides, each side having a unique style of introductory music that complements the atmosphere and plot of the saga. In 2003, the audiobook received an Audie Award
in the "unabridged fiction" category. In July 2009, HBO announced that it would create a one-hour drama series based on Middlesex. The script will be written by Donald Margulies
, and the project will be produced by Rita Wilson
and Margulies.
wrote that thematically, there was no reason that a Greek should be a hermaphrodite or vice versa and that Eugenides had two disconnected stories to tell. Caly Risen of Flak Magazine
believed that the immigrant experience was the "heart of the novel", lamenting that it minimized the story of Callie/Cal who is such a "fascinating character that the reader feels short-changed by his failure to take her/him further". Risen wished to read more about the events between Cal's adolescence and adulthood, such as Cal's experience in college as a hermaphrodite as well as the relationships he had. The Washington Post
s Lisa Zeidner opined that Eugenides purposefully devised this asymmetry. Stewart O'Nan of The Atlantic also felt that the brief description of Callie's childhood was lacking; the book "gloss[es] over" how her mother did not recognize that Callie had male genitalia when she was washing or clothing Callie. Further, O'Nan characterized Cal's relationship with the Japanese-American photographer Julie as "underdeveloped", causing the reader not to experience its entirety. Michelle Vellucci of People
had the same view about the novel's end, writing that the conclusion felt "rushed".
Lisa Schwarzbaum
of Entertainment Weekly
called the novel a "big-hearted, restless story" and rated it an A minus. Lisa Zeidner of the Washington Post opined that Middlesex "provides not only incest à la Ada and a Lolita-style road trip, but enough dense detail to keep fans of close reading manically busy." Tami Hoag of People
concurred, writing that "this feast of a novel is thrilling in the scope of its imagination and surprising in its tenderness". Andrew O'Hehir of Salon agreed, praising Middlesex as an "epic and wondrous" novel filled with numerous characters and historical occurrences. Mendelsohn praised Middlesex for its "dense narrative, interwoven with sardonic, fashionably postmodern commentary". However, he criticized the novel as a disjointed hybrid. He wrote Eugenides was successful with the story of the Greek immigrants, which he described as "authenti[c]", but mishandled the hermaphrodite material, which Mendelsohn characterized as "unpersuasiv[e]". The Economist
review stated that a more concise, concentrated depiction of hermaphroditism would have made the book more "fun to read". Jeff Zaleski of Publishers Weekly
praised Eugenides' portrayal of the girl, Callie, and the man Cal. Zaleski wrote that "[i]t's difficult to imagine any serious male writer of earlier eras so effortlessly transcending the stereotypes of gender." Paul Quinn of Contemporary Literary Criticism commended the novel, writing: "That Eugenides manages to move us without sinking into sentiment shows how successfully he has avoided the tentacles of irony which grip so many writers of his generation." Christina McCarroll of The Christian Science Monitor
wrote that "Eugenides wrangles with a destiny that mutates and recombines like restless chromosomes, in a novel of extraordinary flexibility, scope, and emotional depth."
Marta Salij of the Detroit Free Press
was impressed with the book's depiction of Detroit, writing "[a]t last Detroit has its novel. What Dublin got from James Joyce
—a sprawling, ambitious, loving, exasperated and playful chronicle of all its good and bad parts—Detroit has from native son Eugenides in these 500 pages." David Kipen of the San Francisco Chronicle
agreed, opining "[a]mong so many other things, this praiseworthy, prize-worthy yarn succeeds as a heartbroken mash note to the Detroit of Eugenides' birth, a city whose neighborhoods he sometimes appears to love—as he loves his characters—less for their virtues than for their defects. Any book that can make a reader actively want to visit Detroit must have one honey of a tiger in its tank.".
Several critics have nominated the book for the title of "Great American Novel
". Tim Morris, a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington
, wrote that the novel was "the latest in a long line of contenders for the status of Great American Novel", and compared Cal to Huckleberry Finn
, the narrator of Invisible Man
, and J. Sutter in John Henry Days
. Alexander Linklater of the Evening Standard
commented that American publishers chose Middlesex as the next Great American Novel to generate progress for American fiction and that Eugenides is considered the "next stepping stone along from Jonathan Franzen
". Dan Cryer of Newsday
wrote that with the publication of Middlesex, "[f]inally, Detroit has its very own great American novel".
David Gates
of Newsweek
contrasted Eugenides' debut novel The Virgin Suicides
with Middlesex, writing that the first novel was "ingenious", "entertaining", and "oddly moving", but that Middlesex is "ingenious", "entertaining", and "ultimately not-so-moving". Despite this criticism, Gates considered Middlesex to be the novel where Eugenides "finally plays his metafiction
al ace". Commenting that Middlesex is "more discursive and funnier" than The Virgin Suicides, Laura Miller of Salon wrote that the two novels deal with disunity. Max Watman
of The New Criterion
concurred, noting that Middlesex is "funny, big, embracing, and wonderful", unlike Eugenides' first novel. Mark Lawson
of The Guardian
praised Middlesex for having the same unique qualities as The Virgin Suicides, commenting that Middlesex had "an ability to describe the horrible in a comic voice, an unusual form of narration and an eye for bizarre detail". Lawson noted that whereas Middlesex deals with the "links" among gender, life, and genes, The Virgin Suicides deals with the "connections" between gender and death.
According to Olivia Banner of Signs
, medical journals generally had positive reviews of the novel for its depiction of the inner lives of intersex people. Writing in Archives of Disease in Childhood
, Simon Fountain-Polley praised the novel, writing: "All clinicians, and families who have faced gender crises or difficult life-changing decision[s] on identity should read this book; delve into an emotional trip of discovery—where the slightest direction change could lead to myriad different lives". Abraham Bergman wrote in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine
: "Yes, it is fiction, but I cannot imagine a more authentic and sensitive voice. Because our interactions usually take place in limited and structured setting such as offices and hospitals, pediatricians have scant opportunity to learn how our young patients think. One way to sharpen our awareness is to listen to children's voices as they are expressed in books. In Middlesex, the voice is loud and clear." Banner noted that most of the reviews in intersex and queer publications praised Middlesex. She posited that the problematic issues of a "heteromasculine-identified narrator" and the "fact that it was authored by a heterosexual man" may have been outweighed by the necessity for an appropriate reading that "destigmatizes ambiguous text".
. In the week following April 7, 2003, the day Middlesex won the Pulitzer Prize, the book sold 2,700 copies. The book later made the best-selling fiction list and kept its position for five weeks. In June 2007, the novel ranked seventh on USA Today
Best-Selling Books list. In the same month, after Eugenides appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show
to discuss the novel, Middlesex placed second on The New York Times best-selling paperback fiction list. The Pulitzer award nearly propelled Middlesex to The New York Times Best Seller list, which in 2003 published only the top 15 bestsellers; in the week after Middlesex was announced the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the novel placed 17th on the "expanded list". In 2007, 1.3 million copies of the book had been sold. The same year, the book placed ninth on the Library Journal
bestsellers list, which ranks "the books most borrowed in U.S. libraries". By May 2011, over three million copies of Middlesex had been sold.
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Jeffrey Eugenides
Jeffrey Eugenides
Jeffrey Kent Eugenides is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short story writer. Eugenides is most known for his first two novels, The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex . His novel The Marriage Plot was published in October, 2011.-Life and career:Eugenides was born in Detroit, Michigan,...
published in 2002. The book is a bestseller
Bestseller
A bestseller is a book that is identified as extremely popular by its inclusion on lists of currently top selling titles that are based on publishing industry and book trade figures and published by newspapers, magazines, or bookstore chains. Some lists are broken down into classifications and...
, with more than three million copies sold as of May 2011. Its characters and events are loosely based on aspects of Eugenides' life and observations of his Greek heritage. It is not an autobiography; Eugenides is not intersex like the protagonist. The author decided to write Middlesex after he read the 1980 memoir Herculine Barbin
Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-century French Hermaphrodite
Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-century French Hermaphrodite is a 1980 English-language translation of Herculine Barbin's nineteenth-century memoirs, which were originally written in French. The book contains an introduction by Michel Foucault, which only...
and was unsatisfied with its discussion of intersex anatomy and emotions.
Primarily a Bildungsroman
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
and family saga
Family saga
The family saga is a genre of literature which chronicles the lives and doings of a family or a number of related or interconnected families over a period of time...
, the novel chronicles the impact of a mutated gene on three generations of a Greek family, causing momentous changes in the protagonist's life. According to scholars, the novel's main themes are nature versus nurture
Nature versus nurture
The nature versus nurture debate concerns the relative importance of an individual's innate qualities versus personal experiences The nature versus nurture debate concerns the relative importance of an individual's innate qualities ("nature," i.e. nativism, or innatism) versus personal experiences...
, rebirth, and the differing experiences of polar opposites—such as those found between men and women. It discusses the pursuit of the American Dream
American Dream
The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success. In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each...
and explores gender identity
Gender identity
A gender identity is the way in which an individual self-identifies with a gender category, for example, as being either a man or a woman, or in some cases being neither, which can be distinct from biological sex. Basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to...
. The novel contains many allusion
Allusion
An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, people, places, events, literary work, myths, or works of art, either directly or by implication. M. H...
s to Greek mythology, including creatures such as the Minotaur
Minotaur
In Greek mythology, the Minotaur , as the Greeks imagined him, was a creature with the head of a bull on the body of a man or, as described by Roman poet Ovid, "part man and part bull"...
, half-man and half-bull, and the Chimera
Chimera (mythology)
The Chimera or Chimaera was, according to Greek mythology, a monstrous fire-breathing female creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of multiple animals: upon the body of a lioness with a tail that ended in a snake's head, the head of a goat arose on her back at the center of her...
, a monster composed of various animal parts.
Narrator and protagonist Cal Stephanides (initially called "Callie") is a hermaphrodite man of Greek
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
descent with a condition known as 5-alpha-reductase deficiency
5-alpha-reductase deficiency
5-Alpha-reductase deficiency is an autosomal recessive intersex condition caused by a mutation of the 5-alpha reductase type 2 gene.-Normal function:...
, which causes him to have certain feminine traits. The first half of the novel is about Cal's family, and depicts his grandparents' migration from Smyrna
Smyrna
Smyrna was an ancient city located at a central and strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia. Thanks to its advantageous port conditions, its ease of defence and its good inland connections, Smyrna rose to prominence. The ancient city is located at two sites within modern İzmir, Turkey...
, a city in Asia Minor
Asia Minor
Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...
, to the United States in 1922. It then follows their assimilation into the American society. The latter half of the novel, set in the late 20th century, focuses on Cal's experiences in his hometown Detroit, Michigan
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...
, and his escape to San Francisco where he comes to terms with his modified gender identity
Gender identity
A gender identity is the way in which an individual self-identifies with a gender category, for example, as being either a man or a woman, or in some cases being neither, which can be distinct from biological sex. Basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to...
.
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
, the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, and The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...
considered Middlesex one of the best books of 2002, and some scholars believed the novel should be considered for the title of Great American Novel
Great American Novel
The "Great American Novel" is the concept of a novel that is distinguished in both craft and theme as being the most accurate representative of the zeitgeist in the United States at the time of its writing. It is presumed to be written by an American author who is knowledgeable about the state,...
. Generally, reviewers felt that the novel succeeded in portraying its Greek immigrant drama and were also impressed with Eugenides' depiction of his hometown of Detroit—praising him for his social commentary. Reviewers from the medical, queer, and intersex communities mostly praised Middlesex. In 2007, the book was featured in Oprah's Book Club
Oprah's Book Club
Oprah's Book Club was a book discussion club segment of the American talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, highlighting books chosen by host Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey started the book club in 1996, selecting a new novel for viewers to read and discuss each month. The Club ended its 15-year run, along with...
. In July 2009, HBO announced that Middlesex would be adapted into a one-hour drama series, with the script written by Donald Margulies
Donald Margulies
Donald Margulies is an American playwright and a professor of English and Theater Studies at Yale University...
.
Conception, research, and publication
After publishing his first novel, The Virgin SuicidesThe Virgin Suicides
The Virgin Suicides is the 1993 debut novel by American writer Jeffrey Eugenides. The story, which is set in Grosse Pointe, Michigan during the 1970s, centers on the suicides of five sisters. The Lisbon girls' suicides fascinate their community as their neighbors struggle to find an explanation for...
, in 1993, Jeffrey Eugenides
Jeffrey Eugenides
Jeffrey Kent Eugenides is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short story writer. Eugenides is most known for his first two novels, The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex . His novel The Marriage Plot was published in October, 2011.-Life and career:Eugenides was born in Detroit, Michigan,...
started on his next project Middlesex. His source of inspiration was Herculine Barbin
Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-century French Hermaphrodite
Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-century French Hermaphrodite is a 1980 English-language translation of Herculine Barbin's nineteenth-century memoirs, which were originally written in French. The book contains an introduction by Michel Foucault, which only...
, the diary of a 19th-century French convent schoolgirl who was intersex. Eugenides had first read the memoir a decade earlier and believed it evaded discussion about the anatomy and emotions of intersex people. He intended Middlesex to be "the story [he] wasn't getting from the memoir".
Eugenides worked on Middlesex for nine years. He started writing during his short term residence at MacDowell Colony
MacDowell Colony
The MacDowell Colony is an art colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, U.S.A., founded in 1907 by Marian MacDowell, pianist and wife of composer Edward MacDowell. She established the institution and its endowment chiefly with donated funds...
in New Hampshire, United States, and finished the novel in Berlin, Germany; he had accepted a grant from the German Academic Exchange Service
German Academic Exchange Service
The German Academic Exchange Service or DAAD is the largest German support organisation in the field of international academic co-operation....
in 1999. Eugenides spent the first few years trying to establish the narrative voice for his novel. He wanted to "[tell] epic events in the third person and psychosexual events in the first person". According to Eugenides, the voice "had to render the experience of a teenage girl and an adult man, or an adult male-identified hermaphrodite".
Although Eugenides sought expert advice about intersex, sexology
Sexology
Sexology is the scientific study of human sexuality, including human sexual interests, behavior, and function. The term does not generally refer to the non-scientific study of sex, such as political analysis or social criticism....
, and the formation of gender identity
Gender identity
A gender identity is the way in which an individual self-identifies with a gender category, for example, as being either a man or a woman, or in some cases being neither, which can be distinct from biological sex. Basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to...
, he refrained from meeting with intersex people, saying, "[I] decided not to work in that reportorial mode. Instead of trying to create a separate person, I tried to pretend that I had this [physical feature] and that I had lived through this as much as I could". Eugenides read books, sifted through many sheets of microfiche, and combed through videotapes and newsletters that dealt with the subject. He visited the New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture to search for the sole copy of a book about an "elusive historical figure". He discovered details of what he considered a vivid intersex condition while browsing Columbia University's medical library. The condition formed the basis of his protagonist's tale.
Middlesex was published for the North American market in September 2002 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger W. Straus, Jr. and John C. Farrar. Known primarily as Farrar, Straus in its first decade of existence, the company was renamed several times, including Farrar, Straus and Young and Farrar, Straus and Cudahy...
in the United States and Vintage Canada for Canada. A month later, it was released in the United Kingdom by Bloomsbury Publishing. The novel has been translated into 34 languages; the Spanish-language edition was translated by Benito Gómez Ibáñez and released in 2003 after the publisher, Jorge Herralde, had acquired the rights in a "tough auction".
Plot summary
The novel starts with a narration by its protagonist, Cal (his masculine identity), also known as Calliope (feminine): He recounts how 5-alpha-reductase deficiency5-alpha-reductase deficiency
5-Alpha-reductase deficiency is an autosomal recessive intersex condition caused by a mutation of the 5-alpha reductase type 2 gene.-Normal function:...
, a recessive condition, causes him to be born with female characteristics. The book continues with accounts of his family's history, starting with his paternal grandparents in their home village and ending with his father's funeral. These accounts cover the conception of Cal, his teenage years, and the discovery of his intersex condition. Throughout the book, Cal weaves his opinion of the events in hindsight and of his life after his father's funeral. Eugenides sets Middlesex in the 20th century and interjects historical elements, such as the Balkan Wars
Balkan Wars
The Balkan Wars were two conflicts that took place in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe in 1912 and 1913.By the early 20th century, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia, the countries of the Balkan League, had achieved their independence from the Ottoman Empire, but large parts of their ethnic...
, the Nation of Islam
Nation of Islam
The Nation of Islam is a mainly African-American new religious movement founded in Detroit, Michigan by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in July 1930 to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African-Americans in the United States of America. The movement teaches black pride and...
, and the Watergate scandal
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
, in the story.
The accounts of Cal's family history start from 1922. His grandfather, Eleutherios "Lefty" Stephanides, lives in Bithynios, a village in Asia Minor
Asia Minor
Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...
. Eugenides places the village high on the slope of Mount Olympos
Uludag
Uludağ , the ancient Mysian Olympus, is a mountain in Bursa Province, Turkey, with an altitude of . It is a popular center for winter sports such as skiing, and a national park of rich flora and fauna...
, above the city of Bursa, and describes incestuous
Incest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
marriages between cousins as a quietly accepted custom among the villagers. Lefty makes a living selling silkworm cocoons harvested by his sister, Desdemona. The siblings are orphans; their parents are victims of the ongoing Greco-Turkish War. As the war progresses, Lefty and Desdemona develop a romantic relationship. Fleeing the chaos brought by the war, they board a ship amid the Great Fire of Smyrna
Great Fire of Smyrna
The Great Fire of Smyrna or the Catastrophe of Smyrna was a fire that destroyed much of the port city of Izmir in September 1922. Eye-witness reports state that the fire began on 13 September 1922 and lasted until it was largely extinguished on September 22...
and set sail for the United States. Their histories unknown to the other passengers, they marry each other onboard the vessel.
After arriving in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, they locate their cousin, Sourmelina "Lina" Zizmo, in Detroit, Michigan
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...
, and stay with her. Lina is a closeted
Closeted
Closeted and in the closet are metaphors used to describe lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning and intersex people who have not disclosed their sexual orientation or gender identity and aspects thereof, including sexual identity and sexual behavior.-Background:In late 20th...
lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
and the only person there to know of the siblings' incestuous relationship. Starting a new life, Lefty takes on a job at Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK...
, but is later retrenched. He unknowingly joins Lina's husband, Jimmy, in bootlegging
Smuggling
Smuggling is the clandestine transportation of goods or persons, such as out of a building, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations.There are various motivations to smuggle...
. Desdemona gives birth to a son, Milton, and later a daughter, Zoe. Lina gives birth to a daughter, Theodora or "Tessie". The relationship between Lefty and Desdemona declines after she learns that there is an increased chance of genetic disease for children born from incest
Consanguinity
Consanguinity refers to the property of being from the same kinship as another person. In that respect, consanguinity is the quality of being descended from the same ancestor as another person...
. In 1924, after Milton's birth, Lefty opens a bar and gambling room, calling it the Zebra Room.
Milton and Tessie marry in 1946. They have two children, Chapter Eleven and Calliope ("Callie"). Prior to Callie's birth, Desdemona predicts the child to be a boy, although the parents prepare for a girl. Chapter Eleven is a biologically "normal" boy; however, Callie is intersex. Her family members are unaware of her situation for many years, so they raise Callie as a girl. After the 1967 Detroit riot, the family moves to a house on Middlesex Boulevard, Grosse Pointe
Grosse Pointe
Grosse Pointe refers to a coastal area in Metro Detroit, Michigan, United States that comprises five adjacent individual communities. From southwest to northeast, they are:*Grosse Pointe Park, city*Grosse Pointe, city*Grosse Pointe Farms, city...
.
When she is 14 years old, Callie falls in love with her female best friend, whom Callie refers to as the "Obscure Object". In separate encounters, Callie has her first sexual experiences with a woman, the Obscure Object, and with a man, the Obscure Object's brother. After Callie is injured by a tractor, a doctor discovers that she is intersex. She is taken to a clinic in New York and undergoes a series of tests and examinations. After learning about the syndrome and facing the prospect of sex reassignment surgery
Sex reassignment surgery
Sex reassignment surgery is a term for the surgical procedures by which a person's physical appearance and function of their existing sexual characteristics are altered to resemble...
, Callie runs away and assumes a male identity as Cal. He hitchhikes cross-country and reaches San Francisco, where he joins a burlesque show
American burlesque
American Burlesque is a genre of variety show. Derived from elements of Victorian burlesque, music hall and minstrel shows, burlesque shows in America became popular in the 1860s and evolved to feature ribald comedy and female striptease...
.
Cal is arrested by the police during a raid on his workplace. He is released into Chapter Eleven's custody and learns of their father's death. The siblings return to their family home on Middlesex. In a private moment, Desdemona recognizes Cal's condition, associating it with stories from her old village about children born of incest. She confesses to Cal that her husband, Lefty, is also her brother. As Milton's funeral takes place at the church, Cal stands in the doorway of his family home, assuming the male-only role in Greek traditions to keep his father's spirit from re-entering the family home. Several years later, Cal becomes a diplomat stationed in Berlin. He meets Julie Kikuchi, a Japanese-American woman, and tentatively starts a relationship with her.
Autobiographical elements
Reporters and critics noted that many characters and events in Middlesex parallel those in Eugenides' life. The author denied writing the novel as an autobiography. In an interview by National Public Radio in 2002, he commented on the similarities:Eugenides blended fact and fiction in his book. Like Cal, the author was born in 1960; he is not intersex, unlike his creation. His family moved to a house on Middlesex Road in Grosse Pointe, after the Detroit riot in 1967. Eugenides studied at University Liggett School
University Liggett School
University Liggett School, also known as ULS and Liggett, is a private, secular school inGrosse Pointe Woods, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1878, it is Michigan's oldest independent coeducational day school....
, a private institution
Private school
Private schools, also known as independent schools or nonstate schools, are not administered by local, state or national governments; thus, they retain the right to select their students and are funded in whole or in part by charging their students' tuition, rather than relying on mandatory...
that served as a model for Callie's Baker and Inglis School for Girls. He tapped into his own "locker room trauma", an adolescent experience of being naked among many other nude bodies, and used it to develop Callie's self-discovery of her body during puberty. He based the name of the character the "Obscure Object" on a Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
classmate whom he found alluring and to whom he gave that nickname. Eugenides married a Japanese American artist, Karen Yamauchi, and moved to Berlin.
Eugenides is also of Greek heritage, albeit only through his father's side. Although his paternal grandparents were not siblings like the Stephanides, they were of the same profession—silk farmers—as their fictional counterparts. Cal's learning of Greek customs to better understand his grandparents mirrored Eugenides' own actions to do likewise. The Zebra Room and the bartender profession are other items shared by their grandfathers; Eugenides said the inclusion of the bar was a deliberate "secret code of paying homage to my grandparents and my parents". Several aspects of Chapter Eleven were based on Eugenides' elder brother, who withdrew from society during a "hippie phase" in his life. While revising and editing the book, the author removed information that could be offensive to his relatives. Not all such material was excised, Eugenides said, "There may still be things in there that will sting."
Style
Several reviewers considered Middlesex to be overly verbose. The EconomistThe Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
called the novel "ponderous" and that the main story (that of Cal) does not "get off the ground until halfway through" the book. Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
s Richard Lacayo concurred; he considered the hundreds of pages about Cal's grandparents and several historical events to be trite, making Middlesexs focus "footloose" in some spots. Several passages in the novel exhibit Eugenides' obsession with "verbose voluptuousness". An example noted by Thea Hillman in her review is an incident in which Cal says, "I sat in my seat, in a state of voluptuous agitation, of agitated voluptuousness, until my stop. Then I staggered out." A contrary opinion on the verbosity is given by Daniel Soar in his article for London Review of Books
London Review of Books
The London Review of Books is a fortnightly British magazine of literary and intellectual essays.-History:The LRB was founded in 1979, during the year-long lock-out at The Times, by publisher A...
. According to Soar, Eugenides did "both background and foreground in all the necessary detail", seamlessly shifting from past to present. Despite the implausible tone of the novel's events, the author successfully makes them "elaborately justified and motivated". The quality of Middlesexs writing was uneven in the opinions of Hillman and another reviewer, Sebastian Smee. The latter pointed out that Eugenides occasionally moves from the heartfelt ("I remember the first time we took off our clothes in front of each other. It was like unwinding bandages") to the "trashily journalistic" ("You've heard of installation artists? Well, the Object [a heavy smoker] was an exhalation artist") on several occassions.
Humor and irony
Irony
Irony is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions...
are frequently used in the book. Mark Lawson
Mark Lawson
Mark Gerard Lawson is an English journalist, broadcaster and author.-Life and career:Born in Hendon, London, Lawson was raised in Yorkshire and is a Leeds United fan. He was educated at St Columba's College in St Albans and took a degree in English at University College London, where his lecturers...
of The Guardian considered the narrator's tone to be "sardonic[ally] empath[etic]", and other critics have characterized the beginning of the novel as comical. When Cal is baptized as an infant by Father Mike, a Greek Orthodox clergyman, the priest receives a surprise: "From between my cherubic legs a stream of crystalline liquid shot into the air ... Propelled by a full bladder, it cleared the lip of the font ... [and] struck Father Mike right in the middle of the face." Derek Weiler
Derek Weiler
Derek Xavier Weiler was a Canadian magazine editor and author. In a career that culminated in his editorship of Quill & Quire, Canada's national book trade magazine, he became an important figure in Canadian publishing...
of the Toronto Star
Toronto Star
The Toronto Star is Canada's highest-circulation newspaper, based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its print edition is distributed almost entirely within the province of Ontario...
noted that Eugenides has witty commentary about German compound words and the "horrific qualities of public men's rooms". The author employed another writing device—abrupt incongruity—in describing Desdemona's physical appearances to suggest that her incestuous acts should be taken lightly when judging her. In describing her hair, he wrote that her "braids were not delicate like a little girl's but heavy and womanly, possessing a natural power, like a beaver's tail". According to Penelope Music of Book Magazine
Book Magazine
Book Magazine was an American bi-monthly popular literary magazine founded in 1998 by Mark Gleason and Jerome Kramer and published by West Egg Communications...
, the mismatch in tone of the final two words compared with the rest of the sentence was such that the reading experience was changed from "run-of-the-mill magical realism
Magic realism
Magic realism or magical realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction in which magical elements blend with the real world. The story explains these magical elements as real occurrences, presented in a straightforward manner that places the "real" and the "fantastic" in the same stream of...
to true, subversive comedy". An instance of irony is illustrated by Cal's grandparents and parents: His grandparents assimilate into American culture through hard work and struggles while retaining certain old customs. His parents, however, abandon their roots for a more comfortable lifestyle. In another incident, the diner owned by the Stephanides is engulfed in flames during the 1967 Detroit riot. Cal ironically notes that "[s]hameful as it is to say, the riots were the best thing that ever happened to us." The diner was insured and the Stephanides gain a windfall payout.
Narrative modes
Middlesex is written in the form of a memoirMemoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
, and switches between the first
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
and the third person in several spots. Used as a comedic device
Comedic device
A comedic device is used in comedy to write humor in a common structure. They can become so common that they are difficult for writers to use without being perceived as cheesy.-Double entendre:...
, the third person narratives illustrate Cal's estrangement from Calliope: When he refers to her in the third person, he is identifying her as someone other than him. Patricia Chu, a scholar of English literature, noted the effectiveness of this style in the chapter where the adolescent Callie searches for information on hermaphroditism. As the teenager reads Webster's Dictionary
Webster's Dictionary
Webster's Dictionary refers to the line of dictionaries first developed by Noah Webster in the early 19th century, and also to numerous unrelated dictionaries that added Webster's name just to share his prestige. The term is a genericized trademark in the U.S.A...
, following the trail of definitions related to her condition, she reaches the entry for hermaphrodite. The narration switches from personal to external, lending poignancy to the character's final discovery as she is confronted by the word "monster".
Although the protagonist switches gender throughout the book, Cal's manners of speech and thought are not different from those of Callie. Believing that males and females have no inherent disparities in their writing styles, Eugenides treated Cal and Callie as essentially the same person. He also fixed the narrative voice in terms of age by setting up Cal to relate the entire story at one time. Eugenides gave his protagonist a mostly male outlook, justifying his treatment with the reasoning that Cal or Callie was a man in terms of appearance, sexual desires, and the brain. He asked his wife and other women to review his approaches on Cal's feminine views. The "emotional stuff" was accurate but Eugenides had to refine certain details, such as those about toenail polish
Nail polish
Nail polish, or nail varnish, is a lacquer applied to human fingernails or toenails to decorate and/or protect the nail plate.-History:...
.
At the beginning of the book when Cal discusses about his family before his birth, he speaks in an androgynous
Androgyny
Androgyny is a term derived from the Greek words ανήρ, stem ανδρ- and γυνή , referring to the combination of masculine and feminine characteristics...
voice and seems to know all that is occurring and has occurred. His omniscience is "limited"; he acknowledges that he is fabricating some of the details. John Mullan
John Mullan
John Mullan is a Professor of English at University College London. He specialises in 18th century fiction. He is currently working on the 18th-century section of the new Oxford English Literary History....
, University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
's professor of English and a contributor to The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, wrote that by permitting Cal to be unrealistically aware of fellow characters' thoughts, Eugenides intentionally contravenes an elementary standard in storytelling fiction. In the novel's closing pages, Cal provides minute details about his father's dying moments and thoughts in a nonsensical car accident even though he is several thousand miles from the scene and only learns of the tragedy from his brother. Cal has the ability to dwell in the minds of others because as a female who has become a male, his identity is not confined by his own body. According to Mullan, this "mobility of identification becomes a narrative principle" and is thoroughly exploited in Middlesex. The novel follows the principle that people are molded by events prior to their birth, and Eugenides explores a character's prenatal life in terms of his or her genes; the narrator is, however, subject to the principle that whatever he does not know is of his imagination. As such, contradictory statements highlight the unreliable nature of Cal's narration. While narrating the story that pre-dates his birth, he remarks, "Of course, a narrator in my position (prefetal at the time) can't be entirely sure about any of this." However, he later says, "I alone, from the private box of my primordial egg, saw what was going on." Cal's dubious omniscience, doubtful narration, and parodies combine to show that his unreliability is an act of mischief.
Genres
The Kirkus ReviewsKirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus . Kirkus serves the book and literary trade sector, including libraries, publishers, literary and film agents, film and TV producers and booksellers. Kirkus Reviews is published on the first and 15th of each month...
described Middlesex as a "virtuosic combination of elegy
Elegy
In literature, an elegy is a mournful, melancholic or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead.-History:The Greek term elegeia originally referred to any verse written in elegiac couplets and covering a wide range of subject matter, including epitaphs for tombs...
, sociohistorical study, and picaresque adventure", and Adam Begley
Adam Begley
Adam Begley is an American freelance writer, and was the books editor for the New York Observer.He graduated from Harvard College, and from Stanford University with a Ph.D...
in The New York Observer called it "a hybrid form, epic crossed with history, romance, comedy, tragedy." Other reviews also categorized the book under various genres. Covering the lives of three generations of the Stephanides family, Middlesex is considered a family saga
Family saga
The family saga is a genre of literature which chronicles the lives and doings of a family or a number of related or interconnected families over a period of time...
by novelist Geraldine Bedell
Geraldine Bedell
Geraldine Bedell is a British novelist. She is a writer for The Observer. She is married to Charles Leadbeater and sister of Elaine Bedell....
. The book is more than a mere family saga, according to Samuel Cohen in his paper for Twentieth Century Literature; it depicts the Stephanides' trials and tribulations through historical events. Cohen is not convinced by Eugenides' declaration that Middlesex was not conceived as a historical novel
Historical novel
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is-Development:An early example of historical prose fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 14th century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history and left a lasting impact on Chinese culture.The...
; he said the novel satisfied much of the criterion for the genre. Cal, narrating his story in 2002, describes events from the early 1920s to the mid-1970s. According to Cohen, the difference in timeframes, at least 25 years apart, "establishes that the novel is set safely in the past".
According to Stewart O'Nan
Stewart O'Nan
- Life and work :Born on February 4, 1961 to John Lee O'Nan and Mary Ann O'Nan, née Smith. He and his brother were raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania....
of The Atlantic, Cal's narration evokes the style of the picaresque novel
Picaresque novel
The picaresque novel is a popular sub-genre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts, in realistic and often humorous detail, the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society...
, retelling events that have already occurred and foreshadowing the future through "portentous glimpses". Francisco Collado-Rodríguez, a professor of American Literature, classified the beginning of Middlesex as a historiographical
Historiography
Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...
and metafiction
Metafiction
Metafiction, also known as Romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion...
al chronicle for its discussion of events such as the Greco-Turkish war and the Great Fire of Smyrna. He also considered the first section of the novel as a tragicomedy
Tragicomedy
Tragicomedy is fictional work that blends aspects of the genres of tragedy and comedy. In English literature, from Shakespeare's time to the nineteenth century, tragicomedy referred to a serious play with either a happy ending or enough jokes throughout the play to lighten the mood.-Classical...
about the Stephanides' migration from Greece and assimilation into America. Soar posited Desdemona and Lefty's passage as a romantic comedy
Romantic Comedy
Romantic Comedy can refer to* Romantic Comedy , a 1979 play written by Bernard Slade* Romantic Comedy , a 1983 film adapted from the play and starring Dudley Moore and Mary Steenburgen...
: the lovers, brother and sister, pretend to be strangers who meet for the first time, attempting "to unknow themselves, to remythologise themselves by developing a past they could live with, unfamiliar and therefore permissible". As the story progresses, Middlesex becomes a social novel
Social novel
Social novels, also known as social problem novels or realist fiction, originated in the 18th century but gained a popular following in the 19th century with the rise of the Victorian Era and in many ways was a reaction to industrialization, social, political and economic issues and movements...
about Detroit, discussing the seclusion of living in a 1970s suburb. At the end of the novel, the story adopts the tone of the detective genre.
The novel is characterized as a "dramatic" Bildungsroman
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
with a "big twist" because the coming-of-age story is revealed to be the incorrect one: after being nurtured as a woman, Cal must instead learn to become a man. The book has "two distinct and occasionally warring halves". Whereas the first part is about hermaphrodites, the second is about Greeks. The latter half, "full of incest, violence, and terrible family secrets", was considered by Daniel Mendelsohn
Daniel Mendelsohn
-Life and career:Mendelsohn was born on Long Island. He graduated with a B. A. in Classics from the University of Virginia, which he attended from 1978 to 1982 as an Echols Scholar, and received his M. A. and Ph. D. in Classics from Princeton University, where he was a Mellon Fellow in the...
, an author and critic, to be more effective because Middlesex is largely about how Callie inherited the momentous gene that "ends up defining her indefinable life".
Writing for The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
, James Wood
James Wood (critic)
James Wood is a literary critic, essayist and novelist. he is Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine.-Background and education:...
classified Middlesex as a story written in the vein of hysterical realism
Hysterical realism
Hysterical realism, also called recherché postmodernism, is a term coined in 2000 by the English critic James Wood in an essay on Zadie Smith's White Teeth to describe what he sees as a literary genre typified by a strong contrast between elaborately absurd prose, plotting, or characterization and...
. He said the novel is influenced by its own recounting of "excitements, patternings, and implausibilities that lie on the soft side of magical realism". Such moments in the book include how two cousins conceive "on the same night and at the same moment" and how years later, those children marry each other. Woods also pointed out the seeming coincidences that involved locales. Smyrna is the burning city from which she flees to start a new life; New Smyrna Beach
New Smyrna Beach, Florida
New Smyrna Beach is a city in Volusia County, Florida, United States. The population was 20,048 according to the 2000 census. As of 2007, the population recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau is 23,161.-History:...
is where she spends her retirement. Effectively serving as a double entendre
Double entendre
A double entendre or adianoeta is a figure of speech in which a spoken phrase is devised to be understood in either of two ways. Often the first meaning is straightforward, while the second meaning is less so: often risqué or ironic....
, the title of the book refers to the name of the street where Cal stays at and describes his situation: a hermaphrodite brought up as a girl but who decides to become a boy. Cal's condition is also reflected in his choice of locale to narrate the novel: Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
is a city formerly of "two halves or sexes" (East
East Berlin
East Berlin was the name given to the eastern part of Berlin between 1949 and 1990. It consisted of the Soviet sector of Berlin that was established in 1945. The American, British and French sectors became West Berlin, a part strongly associated with West Germany but a free city...
and West
West Berlin
West Berlin was a political exclave that existed between 1949 and 1990. It comprised the western regions of Berlin, which were bordered by East Berlin and parts of East Germany. West Berlin consisted of the American, British, and French occupation sectors, which had been established in 1945...
).
Rebirth
Following the Great Fire of Smyrna, Lefty and Desdemona must start life anew. When she is 14 years old, Callie experiences a second birth to become Cal. To become a male, Callie peregrinates across the United States and becomes a midwife of her new life by teaching herself to forget what she has learned as a female. Likewise, Cal's grandparents undergo a transformation, becoming husband and wife instead of brother and sister. Middlesex delves into the concept of identity, including how it is formed and how it is administered. The immigrant predicament is a metaphorMetaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
and synecdoche
Synecdoche
Synecdoche , meaning "simultaneous understanding") is a figure of speech in which a term is used in one of the following ways:* Part of something is used to refer to the whole thing , or...
for Calliope's hermaphroditic condition; Callie's paternal grandparents become Americanized
Americanization
Americanization is the influence of the United States on the popular culture, technology, business practices, or political techniques of other countries. The term has been used since at least 1907. Inside the U.S...
through the amalgamation of the elements of heredity, cultural metamorphoses, and probability. Callie's maternal grandfather, Jimmy Zizmo, undergoes a rebirth when he transforms from a bootlegger
Rum-running
Rum-running, also known as bootlegging, is the illegal business of transporting alcoholic beverages where such transportation is forbidden by law...
into Farrad Mohammad, a Muslim minister.
American Dream
Middlesex traces the trials and adversity faced by the Stephanides family as they pursue the American DreamAmerican Dream
The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success. In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each...
. Beginning with Lefty and Desdemona, Cal's grandparents, fleeing from their homeland to Ellis Island
Ellis Island
Ellis Island in New York Harbor was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States. It was the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954. The island was greatly expanded with landfill between 1892 and 1934. Before that, the much smaller original island was the...
and the United States, the novel later depicts the family living in a suburban vista at Grosse Pointe, Michigan
Grosse Pointe, Michigan
Grosse Pointe is a suburban city bordering Detroit in Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The city covers just over one square mile, and had a population of 5,421 at the 2010 census. It is bordered on the west by Grosse Pointe Park, on the north by Detroit, on the east by Grosse Pointe...
. After they immigrate to the United States, Lefty and Desdemona find themselves in a blissful America on the brink of economic collapse. They dream about a perfect America where effort and morals will lead to good fortune. However, they must seek to attain this perfection during a period characterized by Prohibition and xenophobic
Xenophobia
Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...
anti-immigration legislation. Middlesex depicts the tribulations of attaining an identity, especially while dealing with the revelation that the American Dream is a delusion that has already disappeared.
Race relations
Middlesex portrays the race relations between people of different cultures; Mendelsohn considered the handling of this theme "preachy and nervous". In the United States, a strongly nativist country in the 1920s, Greek immigrants must suffer numerous humiliations at the hands of prejudiced whites. When Cal's grandfather Lefty, a recent Greek immigrant, is working at one of Henry Ford's automobile factories, Ford investigators attempt to AmericanizeAmericanization
Americanization is the influence of the United States on the popular culture, technology, business practices, or political techniques of other countries. The term has been used since at least 1907. Inside the U.S...
him. They visit his house to ascertain that he has been living as a typical American. For example, during his first English-language lesson, Lefty is taught that "[e]mployees should use plenty of soap and water in the home". The narrow-minded nativists
Nativism (politics)
Nativism favors the interests of certain established inhabitants of an area or nation as compared to claims of newcomers or immigrants. It may also include the re-establishment or perpetuation of such individuals or their culture....
believe that immigrants from Southern
Southern Europe
The term Southern Europe, at its most general definition, is used to mean "all countries in the south of Europe". However, the concept, at different times, has had different meanings, providing additional political, linguistic and cultural context to the definition in addition to the typical...
and Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
are unaware of the value of soap and water.
According to scholar Robert Zecker, the novel depicts African-American poverty but does not illustrate its causes. None of the characters think about how 500,000 African-Americans were placed in cramped living areas of only 25 square blocks and the bitterness and rage that stems from such conditions. The African Americans do not forget the years of oppression they have endured. However, the Greek Americans, like other whites, fail to remember that the African Americans were assaulted by whites in 1943 and faced over two decades of oppression after that. Instead, Zecker noted that the characters in the novel believe that the 1967 Detroit riots are "inexplicable cataclysms that came out of nowhere".
The novel skims over the brutal attacks, lasting a week, on blacks in Detroit during World War II. Years later, in 1967, Lefty is incorrectly told that that year's Detroit riots were started by a black man raping a white woman; this falsehood is never rectified. However, despite this misinformation, Lefty denies service to a number of white customers who partook in the riots. One dismissed customer even yells at him, "[w]hy don't you go back to your own country?", returning the spotlight of racial prejudice on him.
The relationship between the Greek Americans and the African Americans is fraught with prejudice. For example, during the Depression, Desdemona is shocked and humiliated that she will have to work in the Black Bottom
Black Bottom, Detroit
Black Bottom was a predominantly black neighborhood in Detroit, Michigan, that was demolished for redevelopment in the early 1960s. It was replaced with Lafayette Park. It was located on Detroit's near East side bounded by Gratiot Avenue, Brush Street, Vernor Highway, and the Grand Trunk railroad...
, a predominantly black neighborhood. When African Americans are beaten or taken advantage of by whites, the characters in Middlesex "suddenly are nearsighted" to the racial prejudice. Despite being in the United States for only 10 years and having experienced racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
herself, she can, Zecker noted, "recite at heart the slights at blacks as lazy, dirty, sexually promiscuous, and incapable of self-help". She and other whites, including immigrants whites, feel rage because they are "convinced they were somehow forced out of Detroit following 1967". While walking through the neighborhood, a group of African-American men loafing in front of a barbershop wolf-whistle
Wolf-whistling
Wolf-whistling or finger whistling is a type of whistling in which fingers are inserted in the mouth to produce a louder and more penetrating tone....
to Desdemona and make lascivious comments, thus confirming the racial stereotype.
Zecker remarked that in an ironic twist, immediately after the riots, Desdemona's family is shamed by a white realtor who "doubts their fitness (whiteness)" to live in the rich city Grosse Point. In the 1970s, African Americans, instead of Mediterraneans, were discriminated against through redlining
Redlining
Redlining is the practice of denying, or increasing the cost of services such as banking, insurance, access to jobs, access to health care, or even supermarkets to residents in certain, often racially determined, areas. The term "redlining" was coined in the late 1960s by John McKnight, a...
. Zecker opined that by framing African Americans as the "eternal destroyers" and white ethnics as "yet again the oppressed innocents", Eugenides "captures perfectly the dominant narrative of urban decline in the early twenty-first century American Zeitgeist". Insurance settlement from the damage caused at the riots allows the Stephanides to purchase a home away from the African Americans. The family participates in the white flight
White flight
White flight has been a term that originated in the United States, starting in the mid-20th century, and applied to the large-scale migration of whites of various European ancestries from racially mixed urban regions to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions. It was first seen as...
from the city to avoid the racial desegregation in the public schools, sends Cal to a private school.
Ethnic identity
When Lefty and Desdemona are forced to immigrate to the United States, they have different mindsets. Whereas Lefty embraces his new country's customs, Desdemona is adamant that she will follow her old country's ways. For example, she is angered that her "immigrant hair" is chopped off because she does not want to "look like an Amerikanidha" and decides to regrow her hair immediately. Lefty attempts to assimilate into American culture by zealously learning English. Lina, the cousin of Lefty and Desdemona, is the paragon of immigrant integration. Cal noted: "In the five years since leaving Turkey, Sourmelina had managed to erase just about everything identifiably Greek about her."Cal's father, Milton, and his friends and family cherish their Sunday gatherings. They debate and tell stories to each other, attempting to regain their ethnic roots. A "contrarian", Milton enjoys debating Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
and Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
and lamenting the steep cost of church candles. Eugenides repeatedly returns the gathering prior to Cal's conception to "manufacture a psychology that drives his narration". As the immigrants attempt to maintain their identity, the stage is set for Cal's writing even before he is conceived.
Middlesex delves into the schism and reconciling of two opposites by contrasting the experiences and opinions of males and females; Greek Americans and White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant or WASP is an informal term, often derogatory or disparaging, for a closed group of high-status Americans mostly of British Protestant ancestry. The group supposedly wields disproportionate financial and social power. When it appears in writing, it is usually used to...
s; Greeks and Turks
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
; and, African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
s and White American
White American
White Americans are people of the United States who are considered or consider themselves White. The United States Census Bureau defines White people as those "having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa...
s. Book reviewer Raoul Eshelman noted that despite these conflicts, the narrator is able to achieve "ethnic reconciliation" when he moves to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and lives with the Turks
Turkish people
Turkish people, also known as the "Turks" , are an ethnic group primarily living in Turkey and in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire where Turkish minorities had been established in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Romania...
, people who had murdered his forebears in the early 20th century and who had indirectly allowed his grandparents to consummate their incestuous relationship. Alkarim Jivani opined on BBC Television
BBC Television
BBC Television is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation, which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927, has produced television programmes from its own studios since 1932, although the start of its regular service of television...
's current affairs
Current affairs (news format)
Current Affairs is a genre of broadcast journalism where the emphasis is on detailed analysis and discussion of news stories that have recently occurred or are ongoing at the time of broadcast....
broadcast Newsnight
Newsnight
Newsnight is a BBC Television current affairs programme noted for its in-depth analysis and often robust cross-examination of senior politicians. Jeremy Paxman has been its main presenter for over two decades....
that "[o]nly a child of the Diaspora
Diaspora
A diaspora is "the movement, migration, or scattering of people away from an established or ancestral homeland" or "people dispersed by whatever cause to more than one location", or "people settled far from their ancestral homelands".The word has come to refer to historical mass-dispersions of...
can do that, because we stand on the threshold of two rooms." The novel also demonstrates that love and family are vital not only to people with unambiguous genders, but also hermaphrodites.
The Greek immigrant family experiences a three-phase acculturation that occurs to immigrant families, according to scholar Merton Lee's research about sociologist George A. Kourvetaris' work. Each generation identifies with different nationalities and cultures. In the first generation, the family members classify themselves as having a Greek nationality. In the second generation, the children classify themselves with an American nationality and Greek Orthodox religion. In the third generation, the grandchildren, who comprise the most acculturated group, characterize themselves with "Greek-immigration status as a class".
The Stephanides lineage is from Bithynios, a village in Asia Minor where the Greek middleman minority
Middleman minority
Middleman minority, also known as 'market-dominant minorities', is a term used to describe minority populations that while victim to discrimination do not hold an "extreme subordinate" status in society....
is inclined to be in uneasy relations with the Turkish majority. The people of the middleman minority do not assimilate because of their small mercantile businesses and because their host country is antagonistic towards them. Desdemona, a first-generation Greek immigrant, reflects a fixation with not assimilating. She tells her husband Lefty that she does not want to become an "Amerikanidha" and is frightened that her cousin Lina's husband, Jimmy Zizmo, is a Pontian Greek
Pontic Greeks
The Pontians are an ethnic group traditionally living in the Pontus region, the shores of Turkey's Black Sea...
. Desdemona considers Pontians to be adulterated Greeks because Pontians inhabited Turkey, where some became Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
s and did not follow the Greek Orthodox religion.
Daniel Soar opined that Olympus
Uludag
Uludağ , the ancient Mysian Olympus, is a mountain in Bursa Province, Turkey, with an altitude of . It is a popular center for winter sports such as skiing, and a national park of rich flora and fauna...
, a parallel to Bithynios, served well as the starting point of a debacle (the eventual birth of an intersex person) that is the "story's catalyst". In Mount Olympus during Justinian
Justinian I
Justinian I ; , ; 483– 13 or 14 November 565), commonly known as Justinian the Great, was Byzantine Emperor from 527 to 565. During his reign, Justinian sought to revive the Empire's greatness and reconquer the lost western half of the classical Roman Empire.One of the most important figures of...
's days, silkworm eggs were contraband transported from China to Byzantium by missionaries. A parallel is drawn when Desdemona, a raiser of silk cocoons, attempts to bring them to Detroit. Because the silkworm eggs are considered parasites by the immigration officials, Desdemona must dispose of them. Soar noted that "for the three generations of Greek Americans who people Middlesex, the mulberry trees of Mount Olympus are an appropriately antique beginning: they are the egg inside which everything began".
Greek mythical allusions
Middlesex has several allusions to Greek classical myths; for example, the protagonist is named after CalliopeCalliope
In Greek mythology, Calliope was the muse of epic poetry, daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne, and is now best known as Homer's muse, the inspiration for the Odyssey and the Iliad....
, the muse
Muse
The Muses in Greek mythology, poetry, and literature, are the goddesses who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge, related orally for centuries in the ancient culture, that was contained in poetic lyrics and myths...
of heroic poetry
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
. Eugenides was partly inspired by the explorations of hermaphrodism in Greek myths to write the novel about an intersex man. In Middlesex, Cal acts out the story of Hermaphroditus
Hermaphroditus
In Greek mythology, Hermaphroditus or Hermaphroditos was the child of Aphrodite and Hermes. He was a minor deity of bisexuality and effeminacy. According to Ovid, born a remarkably handsome boy, he was transformed into an androgynous being by union with the water nymph Salmacis...
, the Greek deity of bisexuality and effeminacy, while eking out a living in San Francisco. While narrating, Cal enters his ancestors' thoughts and empathizes with them, an ability possessed by Hermaphroditus. The protagonist compared himself to another mythical figure—Tiresias
Tiresias
In Greek mythology, Tiresias was a blind prophet of Thebes, famous for clairvoyance and for being transformed into a woman for seven years. He was the son of the shepherd Everes and the nymph Chariclo; Tiresias participated fully in seven generations at Thebes, beginning as advisor to Cadmus...
, the blind prophet of Thebes
Thebes
Thebes may refer to one of the following places:* Thebes, Egypt, Thebes of the Hundred Gates, one-time capital of the New Kingdom of Egypt* Thebes, Greece, a city in Boeotia Prefecture**Ancient Thebes , Thebes of the Seven Gates...
; the omniscient seer lived seven years as woman because of a curse.
Eugenides and several critics compared Cal's condition to mythical creatures described by the ancient Greeks. The author alluded his protagonist's nature and heritage to the Minotaur
Minotaur
In Greek mythology, the Minotaur , as the Greeks imagined him, was a creature with the head of a bull on the body of a man or, as described by Roman poet Ovid, "part man and part bull"...
, the half-man and half-bull creature. Cal's parents are conceived after his grandparents' attendance of a theatric play
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
entitled The Minotaur. The puzzle of Cal's genetic identity is akin to the creature's labyrinth and the thread that leads out of the maze is held here by his paternal grandmother, a former silk farmer. Frances Bartkowski, a scholar of English, named Callie in her puberty as a chimera
Chimera (mythology)
The Chimera or Chimaera was, according to Greek mythology, a monstrous fire-breathing female creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of multiple animals: upon the body of a lioness with a tail that ended in a snake's head, the head of a goat arose on her back at the center of her...
. The mythical monster is an analogy for a complex personality, a mixture of body parts from various animals that each represents a human aspect or characteristic. Similarly, adolescent Callie is an amalgamation of her genes, neither male nor female, neither adult nor child, and yet all of them at the same time.
In her book column for Detroit Free Press
Detroit Free Press
The Detroit Free Press is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, USA. The Sunday edition is entitled the Sunday Free Press. It is sometimes informally referred to as the "Freep"...
, Marta Salij said that Cal's identity crisis resembles Odysseus
Odysseus
Odysseus or Ulysses was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle....
's fate. Whereas the mythical hero is troubled by Poseidon
Poseidon
Poseidon was the god of the sea, and, as "Earth-Shaker," of the earthquakes in Greek mythology. The name of the sea-god Nethuns in Etruscan was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon...
and succored by Athena
Athena
In Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...
, the intersex protagonist is affected by his chromosomes in a similar manner. John Sykes, Professor of English and Religion Education, noted another Greek-hero reference. In a manner similar to Oedipus
Oedipus
Oedipus was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. He fulfilled a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother, and thus brought disaster on his city and family...
's fulfillment of Pythia
Pythia
The Pythia , commonly known as the Oracle of Delphi, was the priestess at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. The Pythia was widely credited for her prophecies inspired by Apollo. The Delphic oracle was established in the 8th century BC...
's prophecy to slay his father and marry his mother, Callie validates the prediction her grandmother made before her birth by adopting a male identity. Eugenides also used the allusions to Greek mythology and modern pop music
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
to show the passing of familial traits and idiosyncrasies from one generation to the next.
Nature versus nurture
The novel examines the nature versus nurtureNature versus nurture
The nature versus nurture debate concerns the relative importance of an individual's innate qualities versus personal experiences The nature versus nurture debate concerns the relative importance of an individual's innate qualities ("nature," i.e. nativism, or innatism) versus personal experiences...
debate in detail. At the beginning of the novel, Cal writes, "Sing now, O Muse
Muse
The Muses in Greek mythology, poetry, and literature, are the goddesses who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge, related orally for centuries in the ancient culture, that was contained in poetic lyrics and myths...
, of the recessive mutation on my fifth chromosome." He then apologizes, saying, "Sorry if I get a little Homeric at times. That's genetic, too." This is an allusion to the poet Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
, who was also captivated with the nature versus nurture debate. In fact, Cal himself confesses, "If you were going to devise an experiment to measure the relative influences of nature versus nurture, you couldn't come up with anything better than my life."
Callie inherited the mutation for a gene that causes 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, which impedes the conversion of testosterone
Testosterone
Testosterone is a steroid hormone from the androgen group and is found in mammals, reptiles, birds, and other vertebrates. In mammals, testosterone is primarily secreted in the testes of males and the ovaries of females, although small amounts are also secreted by the adrenal glands...
to dihydrotestosterone
Dihydrotestosterone
Dihydrotestosterone is an androgen or male sex hormone. The enzyme 5α-reductase synthesises DHT in the prostate, testes, hair follicles, and adrenal glands...
. While the former hormone causes the brain to become masculine, it is the latter that molds male genitals. When Callie reaches puberty
Puberty
Puberty is the process of physical changes by which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of reproduction, as initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads; the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy...
, her testosterone levels increase significantly, resulting in the formation of a larger Adam's apple, the broadening of her muscles, the deepening of her voice, and the augmentation of her clitoris
Clitoris
The clitoris is a sexual organ that is present only in female mammals. In humans, the visible button-like portion is located near the anterior junction of the labia minora, above the opening of the urethra and vagina. Unlike the penis, which is homologous to the clitoris, the clitoris does not...
to resemble a penis
Penis
The penis is a biological feature of male animals including both vertebrates and invertebrates...
. Doctors determine that Callie has the XY chromosomes
XY sex-determination system
The XY sex-determination system is the sex-determination system found in humans, most other mammals, some insects and some plants . In this system, females have two of the same kind of sex chromosome , and are called the homogametic sex. Males have two distinct sex chromosomes , and are called...
of a male after inspecting Callie's genitalia. Callie's parents bring her to New York City to see Dr. Peter Luce, a foremost expert on hermaphroditism, who believes she should retain her female identity. Luce plans a gender reassignment surgery to make her a female. However, Callie knows that she is sexually attracted to females, and decides to run away to pursue a male identity. When Cal has a sexual relationship with the Japanese-American photographer Julie at the end of the book, he is able to love "without the need to penetrate the object of his desire".
Mark Lawson
Mark Lawson
Mark Gerard Lawson is an English journalist, broadcaster and author.-Life and career:Born in Hendon, London, Lawson was raised in Yorkshire and is a Leeds United fan. He was educated at St Columba's College in St Albans and took a degree in English at University College London, where his lecturers...
of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
noted that the cause of Cal's hermaphroditic condition is an inherited recessive gene. According to UC Riverside
University of California, Riverside
The University of California, Riverside, commonly known as UCR or UC Riverside, is a public research university and one of the ten general campuses of the University of California system. UCR is consistently ranked as one of the most ethnically and economically diverse universities in the United...
psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky
Sonja Lyubomirsky
Sonja Lyubomirsky is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside and author of The How of Happiness, a book of strategies backed by scientific research that can be used to increase happiness....
, the novel examines how an individual's traits are due neither solely to nature nor solely to nurture. Similarly, Cal's gender cannot be defined solely as male or female. Rather, it is both male and female. Addressing how genetic determinism
Genetic determinism
Genetic determinism is the belief that genes determine morphological and behavioral traits and do so with little or no influence from environmental factors....
may have renewed the antediluvian beliefs about destiny, Eugenides refutes the post-Freudian
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
beliefs that a person's traits are mainly due to nurture. Thus, the novel pits evolutionary biology against free will
Free will
"To make my own decisions whether I am successful or not due to uncontrollable forces" -Troy MorrisonA pragmatic definition of free willFree will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints. The existence of free will and its exact nature and definition have long...
. Eugenides sought to find a compromise between these two views. Explaining that gender is a "very American concept", he believes that "humans are freer than we realize. Less genetically encumbered".
Gender identity
Raised as a girl, Cal views himself as a girl who likes other girls. His ability to have a "feminine gender schema" despite his having male genes, substantiates the constructionistSocial constructionism
Social constructionism and social constructivism are sociological theories of knowledge that consider how social phenomena or objects of consciousness develop in social contexts. A social construction is a concept or practice that is the construct of a particular group...
position that gender identity is fully dependent on outer influences. However, when Callie discovers that he could have been raised as a boy, he renounces his female gender, recognizing his chosen sexual identity as a male. Disowning the female gender before he learned about masculine traits bolsters the argument for the "essentialist
Essentialism
In philosophy, essentialism is the view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must possess. Therefore all things can be precisely defined or described...
ideology of identity". Cal's embrace of his inherent male identity and renunciation of his childhood female gender identity is articulated when he reflects, "I never felt out of place being a girl, I still don't feel entirely at home among men."
Cal exhibits many masculine characteristics when he is a child. He writes, "I began to exude some kind of masculinity, in the way I topped up and caught my eraser, for instance." In another incident, Cal discusses how his penchants were masculine. While his female classmates are turned off by the blood in The Iliad, Cal is "thrilled to [read about] the stabbings and beheadings, the gouging out of eyes, the juicy eviscerations". Cal ponders his gender identity and how males and females associate with each other, reflecting, "Did I see through the male tricks because I was destined to scheme that way myself? Or do girls see through the tricks, too, and just pretend not to notice?"
Cal also exhibits feminine characteristics, which allows Dr. Luce to classify her as possessing a female gender identity. In a home video taken when Cal was a child, his mother gives him a doll and he nurses it with a milk bottle. Luce carefully observes Callie's actions and diagnoses them as feminine, which causes him to determine that Callie has a feminine gender identity. Luce then concludes that gender identity is nurtured and etched into children at their young ages.
Determining sex is paradoxical because the characters believe that the outward view of genitalia identifies one's sex; Cal's transformation into a male shatters this belief and the methodology behind determining gender. Eugenides addresses how difficult it was for humans to devise a "universal classification for sex". Through Cal, scholar Angela Pattatucci Aragon stated, Eugenides opines that the 1876 system devised by Edwin Klebs
Edwin Klebs
Theodor Albrecht Edwin Klebs was a German-Swiss pathologist. He is mainly known for his work on infectious diseases. He is the father of Arnold Klebs.-Life:...
that used gonad
Gonad
The gonad is the organ that makes gametes. The gonads in males are the testes and the gonads in females are the ovaries. The product, gametes, are haploid germ cells. For example, spermatozoon and egg cells are gametes...
tissue to determine sex provides the most accurate answer.
According to book reviewer Morgan Holmes, Eugenides posits that a person's sexual attraction determines his or her gender. Cal's wish to become male because he desires females demonstrates a link between gender identity and sexuality. While Callie is not permitted to love the Obscure Object openly, Cal can freely love Julie. Holmes believed that the depiction of Callie "denies the legitimate place of lesbian desire and rewrites it as male heterosexuality". Book reviewer Georgia Warnke has a similar view. She wrote that by making these choices in the novel, Eugenides agrees with the belief that being attracted to females is "masculine" and thus it is "more natural" for a male to be attracted to a female than a female be attracted to a female. Daniel Mendelsohn
Daniel Mendelsohn
-Life and career:Mendelsohn was born on Long Island. He graduated with a B. A. in Classics from the University of Virginia, which he attended from 1978 to 1982 as an Echols Scholar, and received his M. A. and Ph. D. in Classics from Princeton University, where he was a Mellon Fellow in the...
of The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
argued that Callie does not have to be a male in order to be drawn towards females; she could be gay. As an adult, Cal brags, "Breasts have the same effect on me as on anyone with my testosterone level." Mendelsohn noted that this assertion will astonish "Eugenides's (presumably testosterone-rich) gay male readership". Scholar Rachel Carroll agreed, writing that teenage Callie's erotic interest in girls is "retroactively explained and legitimized, by the discovery of his 'true biological nature'". Cal's gender identity postdates rather than predates his sexual interests. Carroll posited that Cal's inability to form heterosexual relationships as an adult is founded not upon his being intersex, but on his rejection of the sexual ambiguities that form his sexual interests as a youth.
When Callie is in New York, she goes to the New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
and searches for the meaning of the word "hermaphrodite
Hermaphrodite
In biology, a hermaphrodite is an organism that has reproductive organs normally associated with both male and female sexes.Many taxonomic groups of animals do not have separate sexes. In these groups, hermaphroditism is a normal condition, enabling a form of sexual reproduction in which both...
"; she is shocked when the dictionary entry concludes with "See synonyms at MONSTER". Callie is not a Frankenstein
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...
; she is more like Bigfoot
Bigfoot
Bigfoot, also known as sasquatch, is an ape-like cryptid that purportedly inhabits forests, mainly in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. Bigfoot is usually described as a large, hairy, bipedal humanoid...
or the Loch Ness Monster
Loch Ness Monster
The Loch Ness Monster is a cryptid that is reputed to inhabit Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. It is similar to other supposed lake monsters in Scotland and elsewhere, though its description varies from one account to the next....
. Scholar Frances Bartkowski stated that Eugenides' message is "we must let our monsters out—they demand and deserve recognition—they are us: our same, self, others."
Sarah Graham of Ariel wrote that Eugenides' "persisen[t]" use of the word "hermaphrodite", instead of "intersex", alludes to Hermaphroditus
Hermaphroditus
In Greek mythology, Hermaphroditus or Hermaphroditos was the child of Aphrodite and Hermes. He was a minor deity of bisexuality and effeminacy. According to Ovid, born a remarkably handsome boy, he was transformed into an androgynous being by union with the water nymph Salmacis...
. Hermaphroditus, a young man, is chased by the nymph Salmacis
Salmacis
In Greek mythology, Salmacis was an atypical naiad who rejected the ways of the virginal Greek goddess Artemis in favour of vanity and idleness. Her attempted rape of Hermaphroditus places her as the only nymph rapist in the Greek mythological canon ."There dwelt a Nymph, not up for hunting or...
. She begs the Gods to bind her and Hermaphroditus together, and the Gods literally fulfill her wish. Hermphroditus' name is a compound of his parent's names—Hermes
Hermes
Hermes is the great messenger of the gods in Greek mythology and a guide to the Underworld. Hermes was born on Mount Kyllini in Arcadia. An Olympian god, he is also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of the cunning of thieves, of orators and...
and Aphrodite
Aphrodite
Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.Her Roman equivalent is the goddess .Historically, her cult in Greece was imported from, or influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia....
. He instantaneously turns into someone of both sexes. Devastated because he is no longer fully male, he "curses" the location where he first met Salmacis. Graham stated that the use of "hermaphrodite" carries negative connotations:
Based on this origin story, the hermaphrodite's lot is miserable, associated with disempowerment, the theft of identity and an unhappy dual existence. In addition, the term "hermaphrodite" may be deemed problematic because it alludes to an impossible state of being: no-one can be equally male and female and the preferred term "intersex" indicates a blended rather than divided state. While the modern term might indicate the possibility of redefining sexual ambivalence, Cal is associated in the novel with the mythic term and all it connotes. His connection to this tragic figure is confirmed by his performance as "Hermaphroditus" in a sex show at the age of fourteen, just as he is beginning his female to male transition.
Writing that he belongs to the Intersex Society of America, Cal notes that he has not participated in any of the group's rallies because he is not a "political person". While discussing political activism, Cal uses the word "intersex", though in other parts of the novel, he uses the word "hermaphrodite". In the 1920s, Bernice L. Hausman described "intersexuality" as a "continuum of physiological and anatomical sex differences", contesting the notion of a "true sex" concealed in the tissues of the body. Though "hermaphrodite" is burdened by the implications of the anomaly, "intersexuality" is a neologism that tries to "naturalize various sexes, which themselves are naturally occurring". Because Cal uses "hermaphrodite", he indicates that the sole normal genders are the classifications of male and female. Eugenides was asked by an Oprah's Book Club
Oprah's Book Club
Oprah's Book Club was a book discussion club segment of the American talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, highlighting books chosen by host Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey started the book club in 1996, selecting a new novel for viewers to read and discuss each month. The Club ended its 15-year run, along with...
member why he used the term "hermaphrodite" despite its usage being "either terribly ignorant or unforgivably callous". Eugenides replied that he reserved "hermaphrodite" for a literary character: Hermaphroditus. He further stated: "When speaking about real people, I should—and I do my best to—use the term 'intersex'." Noting that one of the initial sources he consulted was the journal Hermaphrodites with Attitude published by the Intersex Society of North America
Intersex Society of North America
The Intersex Society of North America was a non-profit advocacy group founded in 1993 by Cheryl Chase to represent the interest of intersex people. Their objective was to end shame, secrecy, and unwanted genital surgeries...
, he said that those writers have "co-opted" the term "hermaphrodite". Their action is reminiscent, Eugenides wrote, of how some members of the gay community have "reclaimed" the term "queer". Eugenides stated that it is no surprise that Cal uses "hermaphrodite" and further elaborated: "It's paradoxical: Cal can say 'hermaphodite' but I can't. Or shouldn't."
Incest and intersex
IncestIncest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
and intersex is another theme in Middlesex. Eugenides examines the passionate feelings that siblings living in seclusion experience for each other. Milton and Tessie, second cousins, are conceived during the same night, hinting to the incest of Desdemona and Lefty. Desdemona and Lefty's incestuous relationship is a transgression of a powerful taboo, indicating that someone will suffer for their wrongs; in a way, Cal's intersex condition symbolizes this Greek hubris
Hubris
Hubris , also hybris, means extreme haughtiness, pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power....
. In another incestuous relationship, Milton makes love to Tessie using a clarinet
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
which he lovingly rubs against her; their incestuous relationship enables them to contribute mutated genes to their child Cal. Cal's mother interferes with fate by attempting to make her second child a daughter. Cal believes this interference was a factor in his being a hermaphrodite. Conversely, Cal's relationship with his brother, Chapter Eleven, is indicative of the possible dissimilarities that are products of the biosocial.
Thea Hillman, an intersex activist and board member for Intersex Society of North America
Intersex Society of North America
The Intersex Society of North America was a non-profit advocacy group founded in 1993 by Cheryl Chase to represent the interest of intersex people. Their objective was to end shame, secrecy, and unwanted genital surgeries...
(ISNA), wrote in the Lambda Book Report that the combination of incest and intersex is "inaccurate and misleading". Noting that incest is a loathed social taboo that has "shameful, pathological and criminal repercussions", she criticized Eugenides for underscoring that Cal's intersex condition is due to incest. Hillman stated that this adds to the fallacious belief that intersex people are "shameful and sick" and a danger to society's wellbeing. Sarah Graham of the journal Ariel, published by University of Calgary
University of Calgary
The University of Calgary is a public research university located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1966 the U of C is composed of 14 faculties and more than 85 research institutes and centres.More than 25,000 undergraduate and 5,500 graduate students are currently...
, agreed with Hillman. Graham wrote that Cal is paralleled with the tragic Greek mythological characters Hermaphroditus
Hermaphroditus
In Greek mythology, Hermaphroditus or Hermaphroditos was the child of Aphrodite and Hermes. He was a minor deity of bisexuality and effeminacy. According to Ovid, born a remarkably handsome boy, he was transformed into an androgynous being by union with the water nymph Salmacis...
, Tiresias
Tiresias
In Greek mythology, Tiresias was a blind prophet of Thebes, famous for clairvoyance and for being transformed into a woman for seven years. He was the son of the shepherd Everes and the nymph Chariclo; Tiresias participated fully in seven generations at Thebes, beginning as advisor to Cadmus...
, and the Minotaur
Minotaur
In Greek mythology, the Minotaur , as the Greeks imagined him, was a creature with the head of a bull on the body of a man or, as described by Roman poet Ovid, "part man and part bull"...
. She opined that other "deviant" characters in the novel such as Lefty and Desdemona are spared the "tragic or monstrous" allusions even though there are numerous examples of incest in Greek mythology. She listed the marriage of Oedipus
Oedipus
Oedipus was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. He fulfilled a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother, and thus brought disaster on his city and family...
and his mother Jocasta
Jocasta
In Greek mythology, Jocasta, also known as Jocaste , Epikastê, or Iokastê was a daughter of Menoeceus and Queen consort of Thebes, Greece. She was the wife of Laius. Wife and mother of Oedipus by Laius, and both mother and grandmother of Antigone, Eteocles, Polynices and Ismene by Oedipus...
, as well as the daughter Adonis
Adonis
Adonis , in Greek mythology, the god of beauty and desire, is a figure with Northwest Semitic antecedents, where he is a central figure in various mystery religions. The Greek , Adōnis is a variation of the Semitic word Adonai, "lord", which is also one of the names used to refer to God in the Old...
produced by the incest between Theias
Theias
In Greek mythology, Theias was the King of Assyria and father of Myrrha and Adonis. The birth of Adonis existed in two different versions:#The most commonly accepted version is that Aphrodite urged Myrrha or Smyrna to commit incest with her father, Theias. Myrrha's nurse helped with the scheme....
and his daughter Smyrna
Myrrha
Myrrha , also known as Smyrna , is the mother of Adonis in Greek mythology. She was transformed into a myrrh tree after having had intercourse with her father and gave birth to Adonis as a tree...
as examples. Therefore, Graham stated that comparing Cal, a hermaphrodite, to people who were "mythological monsters" is "complicit with [the] exploitation" of intersex people.
Honors and adaptation
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been awarded for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. It originated as the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, which was awarded between 1918 and 1947.-1910s:...
. The Pulitzer Board wrote in their report that Middlesex is a "vastly realized, multi-generational novel as highspirited as it is intelligent . . . Like the masks of Greek drama, Middlesex is equal parts comedy and tragedy, but its real triumph is its emotional abundance, delivered with consummate authority and grace." Eugenides was attending the Prague Writers' Festival when Middlesex won the Pulitzer Prize. When a young Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
photographer notified him about winning the award, Eugenides was dubious, noting that "[i]t seemed very unlikely that he would be the messenger of such news." At the time, Eugenides was with the Canadian author Yann Martel
Yann Martel
Yann Martel is a Canadian author best known for the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi.-Early life:Martel was born in Salamanca, Spain where his father was posted as a diplomat for the Canadian government. He was raised in Costa Rica, France, Mexico, and Canada...
who confirmed the photographer's words after checking on the hotel's computer. A waiter brought champagne to Eugenides, and Greek women started kissing him. When journalists called Eugenides, he declined to take their calls, saying in an interview later that he wanted to "celebrate the moment instead of leaping immediately into the media maelstrom".
The novel received the Ambassador Book Award
Ambassador Book Award
The Ambassador Book Award is awarded annually by the English Speaking Union. It recognizes important literary works that contribute to the understanding and interpretation of American life and culture. Winners of the award are considered literary ambassadors who provide, in the best contemporary...
, Spain's Santiago de Compostela Literary Prize, and the Great Lakes Book Award. In 2003, it was a finalist in the fictional category of the National Book Critics Circle Award
National Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Award is an annual award given by the National Book Critics Circle to promote the finest books and reviews published in English....
. Middlesex was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Awards are awarded yearly by the US-based Lambda Literary Foundation to published works which celebrate or explore LGBT themes. Categories include Humor, Romance and Biography. To qualify, a book must have been published in the United States in the year current to the award...
, which is given to LGBT literature
LGBT literature
Gay literature is a collective term for literature produced by or for the LGBT community, or which involves characters, plot lines or themes portraying male homosexual behavior.-Subgenres:...
. In 2003, the novel was shortlisted
Short list
A short list or shortlist is a list of candidates for a job, prize, award, political position, etc., that has been reduced from a longer list of candidates . The length of short lists varies according to the context.-U.S...
for but did not win the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is an international literary award for a work of fiction, jointly sponsored by the city of Dublin, Ireland and the company IMPAC. At €100,000 it is one of the richest literary prizes in the world...
. Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
, the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, and The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...
considered Middlesex to be one of the best books in 2002. In 2007, Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her self-titled, multi-award-winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011...
chose Middlesex to be discussed in her book club
Oprah's Book Club
Oprah's Book Club was a book discussion club segment of the American talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, highlighting books chosen by host Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey started the book club in 1996, selecting a new novel for viewers to read and discuss each month. The Club ended its 15-year run, along with...
. Eugenides was a guest on Oprah's show
The Oprah Winfrey Show
The Oprah Winfrey Show is an American syndicated talk show hosted and produced by its namesake Oprah Winfrey. It ran nationally for 25 seasons beginning in 1986, before concluding in 2011. It is the highest-rated talk show in American television history....
with several intersex individuals who told stories about their lives.
The audiobook version of Middlesex was released by Macmillan Audio
Macmillan Publishers (United States)
Macmillan Publishers USA, also known as Macmillan Publishing, is a privately held American publishing company owned by the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than 30 others....
in September 2002. Read by Kristoffer Tabori
Kristoffer Tabori
Kristoffer Tabori is an American actor and television director.-Early life:Tabori was born in Malibu, California, the son of director Don Siegel and Swedish-American actress Viveca Lindfors. He appeared in one of his mother's films, Weddings and Babies, as a young boy...
, the audiobook has 28 sides, each side having a unique style of introductory music that complements the atmosphere and plot of the saga. In 2003, the audiobook received an Audie Award
Audie Awards
The Audie Awards are annually bestowed annually in the USA for outstanding audiobooks. The Audies have been granted by the Audio Publishers Association, a not-for-profit trade organization, since 1996. The nominees are announced each year in January, and the winners are announced at a gala banquet...
in the "unabridged fiction" category. In July 2009, HBO announced that it would create a one-hour drama series based on Middlesex. The script will be written by Donald Margulies
Donald Margulies
Donald Margulies is an American playwright and a professor of English and Theater Studies at Yale University...
, and the project will be produced by Rita Wilson
Rita Wilson
-Early life:Wilson was born Margarita Ibrahimoff in Los Angeles, California.Her father, a Bulgarian who worked at a racetrack, was born in Greece. Before immigrating to the US, he had lived in Bulgaria and Turkey....
and Margulies.
Critical reception
Some critics were dissatisfied with the scope of the novel. Daniel Mendelsohn of The New York Times Book ReviewThe New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...
wrote that thematically, there was no reason that a Greek should be a hermaphrodite or vice versa and that Eugenides had two disconnected stories to tell. Caly Risen of Flak Magazine
Flak Magazine
Flak Magazine was a pioneering American online magazine, founded in 1998. The chief editor is James Norton, the managing editor is Joey Rubin. , it reported over 250,000 unique visitors monthly. In 2008, Flak suspended publication....
believed that the immigrant experience was the "heart of the novel", lamenting that it minimized the story of Callie/Cal who is such a "fascinating character that the reader feels short-changed by his failure to take her/him further". Risen wished to read more about the events between Cal's adolescence and adulthood, such as Cal's experience in college as a hermaphrodite as well as the relationships he had. The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
s Lisa Zeidner opined that Eugenides purposefully devised this asymmetry. Stewart O'Nan of The Atlantic also felt that the brief description of Callie's childhood was lacking; the book "gloss[es] over" how her mother did not recognize that Callie had male genitalia when she was washing or clothing Callie. Further, O'Nan characterized Cal's relationship with the Japanese-American photographer Julie as "underdeveloped", causing the reader not to experience its entirety. Michelle Vellucci of People
People (magazine)
In 1998, the magazine introduced a version targeted at teens called Teen People. However, on July 27, 2006, the company announced it would shut down publication of Teen People immediately. The last issue to be released was scheduled for September 2006. Subscribers to this magazine received...
had the same view about the novel's end, writing that the conclusion felt "rushed".
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Lisa Schwarzbaum is an American film critic. She joined Entertainment Weekly as film critic in the 1990s. She has been featured on CNN, co-host on Siskel & Ebert At the Movies as well as a cultural, theater and television reviewer....
of Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
called the novel a "big-hearted, restless story" and rated it an A minus. Lisa Zeidner of the Washington Post opined that Middlesex "provides not only incest à la Ada and a Lolita-style road trip, but enough dense detail to keep fans of close reading manically busy." Tami Hoag of People
People (magazine)
In 1998, the magazine introduced a version targeted at teens called Teen People. However, on July 27, 2006, the company announced it would shut down publication of Teen People immediately. The last issue to be released was scheduled for September 2006. Subscribers to this magazine received...
concurred, writing that "this feast of a novel is thrilling in the scope of its imagination and surprising in its tenderness". Andrew O'Hehir of Salon agreed, praising Middlesex as an "epic and wondrous" novel filled with numerous characters and historical occurrences. Mendelsohn praised Middlesex for its "dense narrative, interwoven with sardonic, fashionably postmodern commentary". However, he criticized the novel as a disjointed hybrid. He wrote Eugenides was successful with the story of the Greek immigrants, which he described as "authenti[c]", but mishandled the hermaphrodite material, which Mendelsohn characterized as "unpersuasiv[e]". The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
review stated that a more concise, concentrated depiction of hermaphroditism would have made the book more "fun to read". Jeff Zaleski of Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
praised Eugenides' portrayal of the girl, Callie, and the man Cal. Zaleski wrote that "[i]t's difficult to imagine any serious male writer of earlier eras so effortlessly transcending the stereotypes of gender." Paul Quinn of Contemporary Literary Criticism commended the novel, writing: "That Eugenides manages to move us without sinking into sentiment shows how successfully he has avoided the tentacles of irony which grip so many writers of his generation." Christina McCarroll of The Christian Science Monitor
The Christian Science Monitor
The Christian Science Monitor is an international newspaper published daily online, Monday to Friday, and weekly in print. It was started in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist. As of 2009, the print circulation was 67,703.The CSM is a newspaper that covers...
wrote that "Eugenides wrangles with a destiny that mutates and recombines like restless chromosomes, in a novel of extraordinary flexibility, scope, and emotional depth."
Marta Salij of the Detroit Free Press
Detroit Free Press
The Detroit Free Press is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, USA. The Sunday edition is entitled the Sunday Free Press. It is sometimes informally referred to as the "Freep"...
was impressed with the book's depiction of Detroit, writing "[a]t last Detroit has its novel. What Dublin got from James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
—a sprawling, ambitious, loving, exasperated and playful chronicle of all its good and bad parts—Detroit has from native son Eugenides in these 500 pages." David Kipen of the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
agreed, opining "[a]mong so many other things, this praiseworthy, prize-worthy yarn succeeds as a heartbroken mash note to the Detroit of Eugenides' birth, a city whose neighborhoods he sometimes appears to love—as he loves his characters—less for their virtues than for their defects. Any book that can make a reader actively want to visit Detroit must have one honey of a tiger in its tank.".
Several critics have nominated the book for the title of "Great American Novel
Great American Novel
The "Great American Novel" is the concept of a novel that is distinguished in both craft and theme as being the most accurate representative of the zeitgeist in the United States at the time of its writing. It is presumed to be written by an American author who is knowledgeable about the state,...
". Tim Morris, a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington
University of Texas at Arlington
The University of Texas at Arlington is a public research university located in Arlington, Texas, United States. The campus is situated southwest of downtown Arlington, and is located in the Dallas–Fort Worth metropolitan area. The university was founded in 1895 and served primarily a military...
, wrote that the novel was "the latest in a long line of contenders for the status of Great American Novel", and compared Cal to Huckleberry Finn
Huckleberry Finn (character)
Huckleberry "Huck" Finn is a fictional character created by Mark Twain, who first appeared in the book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and is the protagonist and narrator of its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He is 12 or 13 years old during the former and a year older at the time of the latter...
, the narrator of Invisible Man
Invisible Man
Invisible Man is a novel written by Ralph Ellison, and the only one that he published during his lifetime . It won him the National Book Award in 1953...
, and J. Sutter in John Henry Days
John Henry Days
John Henry Days is a 2001 Pulitzer Prize shortlisted novel by African American author Colson Whitehead.John Henry Days is a portrait of America...
. Alexander Linklater of the Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
commented that American publishers chose Middlesex as the next Great American Novel to generate progress for American fiction and that Eugenides is considered the "next stepping stone along from Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Franzen is an American novelist and essayist. His third novel, The Corrections , a sprawling, satirical family drama, drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction...
". Dan Cryer of Newsday
Newsday
Newsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...
wrote that with the publication of Middlesex, "[f]inally, Detroit has its very own great American novel".
David Gates
David Gates (author)
David Gates is an American journalist and novelist. His first novel, Jernigan , about a dysfunctional one-parent family, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. This was followed by a second novel, Preston Falls , and a short story collection, The Wonders of the Invisible World...
of Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
contrasted Eugenides' debut novel The Virgin Suicides
The Virgin Suicides
The Virgin Suicides is the 1993 debut novel by American writer Jeffrey Eugenides. The story, which is set in Grosse Pointe, Michigan during the 1970s, centers on the suicides of five sisters. The Lisbon girls' suicides fascinate their community as their neighbors struggle to find an explanation for...
with Middlesex, writing that the first novel was "ingenious", "entertaining", and "oddly moving", but that Middlesex is "ingenious", "entertaining", and "ultimately not-so-moving". Despite this criticism, Gates considered Middlesex to be the novel where Eugenides "finally plays his metafiction
Metafiction
Metafiction, also known as Romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion...
al ace". Commenting that Middlesex is "more discursive and funnier" than The Virgin Suicides, Laura Miller of Salon wrote that the two novels deal with disunity. Max Watman
Max Watman
Max Watman is an American author. Born in Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, he holds degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University and Columbia University, and currently lives in Hudson Valley, New York with his wife and son. He has published two books of nonfiction, both concerned with the American...
of The New Criterion
The New Criterion
The New Criterion is a New York-based monthly literary magazine and journal of artistic and cultural criticism, edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball. It has sections for criticism of poetry, theater, art, music, the media, and books...
concurred, noting that Middlesex is "funny, big, embracing, and wonderful", unlike Eugenides' first novel. Mark Lawson
Mark Lawson
Mark Gerard Lawson is an English journalist, broadcaster and author.-Life and career:Born in Hendon, London, Lawson was raised in Yorkshire and is a Leeds United fan. He was educated at St Columba's College in St Albans and took a degree in English at University College London, where his lecturers...
of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
praised Middlesex for having the same unique qualities as The Virgin Suicides, commenting that Middlesex had "an ability to describe the horrible in a comic voice, an unusual form of narration and an eye for bizarre detail". Lawson noted that whereas Middlesex deals with the "links" among gender, life, and genes, The Virgin Suicides deals with the "connections" between gender and death.
According to Olivia Banner of Signs
Signs (journal)
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society is a feminist academic journal established in 1975. It is published quarterly by the University of Chicago Press. Signs publishes articles on women's studies.- See also :* Cultural studies...
, medical journals generally had positive reviews of the novel for its depiction of the inner lives of intersex people. Writing in Archives of Disease in Childhood
Archives of Disease in Childhood
Archives of Disease in Childhood is a peer reviewed medical journal of the BMJ Publishing Group Ltd in the field of paediatrics...
, Simon Fountain-Polley praised the novel, writing: "All clinicians, and families who have faced gender crises or difficult life-changing decision[s] on identity should read this book; delve into an emotional trip of discovery—where the slightest direction change could lead to myriad different lives". Abraham Bergman wrote in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine
Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine
The Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine is a monthly peer-reviewed medical journal published by the American Medical Association. It publishes original clinical and basic research articles covering all aspects of pediatric primary care. The journal was established in 1911 as the American...
: "Yes, it is fiction, but I cannot imagine a more authentic and sensitive voice. Because our interactions usually take place in limited and structured setting such as offices and hospitals, pediatricians have scant opportunity to learn how our young patients think. One way to sharpen our awareness is to listen to children's voices as they are expressed in books. In Middlesex, the voice is loud and clear." Banner noted that most of the reviews in intersex and queer publications praised Middlesex. She posited that the problematic issues of a "heteromasculine-identified narrator" and the "fact that it was authored by a heterosexual man" may have been outweighed by the necessity for an appropriate reading that "destigmatizes ambiguous text".
Sales
From the book's publication until the early months of 2003, its sales were unsatisfactory, according to Bill Goldstein of The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. In the week following April 7, 2003, the day Middlesex won the Pulitzer Prize, the book sold 2,700 copies. The book later made the best-selling fiction list and kept its position for five weeks. In June 2007, the novel ranked seventh on USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
Best-Selling Books list. In the same month, after Eugenides appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show
The Oprah Winfrey Show
The Oprah Winfrey Show is an American syndicated talk show hosted and produced by its namesake Oprah Winfrey. It ran nationally for 25 seasons beginning in 1986, before concluding in 2011. It is the highest-rated talk show in American television history....
to discuss the novel, Middlesex placed second on The New York Times best-selling paperback fiction list. The Pulitzer award nearly propelled Middlesex to The New York Times Best Seller list, which in 2003 published only the top 15 bestsellers; in the week after Middlesex was announced the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the novel placed 17th on the "expanded list". In 2007, 1.3 million copies of the book had been sold. The same year, the book placed ninth on the Library Journal
Library Journal
Library Journal is a trade publication for librarians. It was founded in 1876 by Melvil Dewey . It reports news about the library world, emphasizing public libraries, and offers feature articles about aspects of professional practice...
bestsellers list, which ranks "the books most borrowed in U.S. libraries". By May 2011, over three million copies of Middlesex had been sold.
External links
- Middlesex at Oprah's Book ClubOprah's Book ClubOprah's Book Club was a book discussion club segment of the American talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, highlighting books chosen by host Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey started the book club in 1996, selecting a new novel for viewers to read and discuss each month. The Club ended its 15-year run, along with...
- Middlesex at The Pulitzer PrizesPulitzer PrizeThe Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...