Middlesex (novel): Difference between revisions

Middlesex

Author	Jeffrey Eugenides
Cover artist	William Webb (Bloomsbury paperback)
Language	English
Genre	Novel, family saga
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) Farrar, Straus and Giroux (USA)
Publication date	7 October 2002
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Paperback and Hardback) and audio-CD
Pages	529 pp (Bloomsbury paperback)
ISBN	[[Special:BookSources/ISBN+0-374-19969-8+%28Farrar%2C+Straus+and+Giroux+hardcover%29+%3Cbr%3E%0AISBN+0-7475-6162-1+%28Bloomsbury+paperback%29 |ISBN 0-374-19969-8 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover) ISBN 0-7475-6162-1 (Bloomsbury paperback)]] Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character
OCLC	48951262
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 21
LC Class	PS3555.U4 M53 2002

Middlesex is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Jeffrey Eugenides published in 2002. Despite slow initial sales, the book became a bestseller. Its characters and events are loosely based on the author's life and his observations of his Greek heritage. Eugenides decided to write Middlesex after he read the memoir, Herculine Barbin, and was unsatisfied with its discussion of a hermaphrodite's anatomy and emotions.

The narrator and protagonist, Cal Stephanides (initially called "Callie"), is an intersexed 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 Greek family, and depicts Cal's grandparents migrating from a small village in Asia Minor to the United States in 1922—followed by their assimilation into the American society. The latter half of the novel, which is set in the late 20th century, focuses on Cal's experiences while living in Detroit, Michigan.

Primarily a Bildungsroman and family saga, the novel portrays the journey of a mutated gene through three generations of a Greek family, causing momentous changes in the protagonist's life. According to scholars, the novel's main themes are nature vs. nurture, rebirth, and the differing experiences of polar opposites—such as those found between men and women. The novel contains many Greek mythical allusions such as the Minotaur, a half-man and half-bull creature, and the Chimera, a monster composed of various animal parts.

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. 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.

Two decades prior to writing Middlesex, Eugenides read Herculine Barbin,^[1][2][3] which was the diary of Herculine Barbin—a 19th century French hermaphrodite convent schoolgirl.^[1][4] Believing that the memoir evaded discussion about hermaphrodites' anatomy and emotions, he concluded he would "write the story [he] wasn't getting from the memoir".^[1] He sought expert advice to learn about hermaphroditism, sexology, and the formation of gender identity; however, he intentionally never met with a hermaphrodite, 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 and that I had lived through this as much as I could".^[1]

Praising the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire for its settling solitude and quiet, which Eugenides felt fostered productivity, he traveled to a New Hampshire art colony in order to write Middlesex.^[5] It took Eugenides nine years to write the novel, mainly because of the difficulty he had with its voice. Wanting to relate sagas in the third person while relating psychosexual events in the first person, Eugenides explained that the voice "had to render the experience of a teenage girl and an adult man, or an adult male-identified hermaphrodite".^[6] Middlesex was published by Bloomsbury Publishing on October 7, 2002—nine years after the publication of Eugenides' first novel, The Virgin Suicides.^[7][8] By 2007, 1.3 million copies of the book were sold.^[9]

The novel begins with the narrator, aged 41, recounting how the recessive gene, 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, caused him to be born with female characteristics. The name he is given at birth is Calliope or "Callie"—a feminine name. After learning about the syndrome as an adolescent, Calliope changes his name to the masculine name, Cal.

The first half of the story, Middlesex, is based on events that occurred prior to Callie's birth. At one point, the narrator briefly explains how his grandmother, Desdemona, predicted Cal would be a boy, while his parents made preparations for the birth of a girl. Throughout the novel, the narration periodically returns to the frame story of present-day Cal—a bearded man who is sexually attracted to women—foreshadowing the personal revelations of Callie. ^[10]

The story continues with a flashback to a small village in Asia Minor, with the accounts of the protagonist's Greek paternal grandparents. Cal's grandfather, Eleutherios "Lefty" Stephanides, and grandmother, Desdemona Stephanides, are orphaned siblings who share a close bond, which later develops into a romantic relationship—despite their initial misgivings. Set in the aftermath of the 1922 Greco-Turkish War and amid graphic scenes of the Great Fire of Smyrna, the siblings are forced to seek refuge by emigrating to America. On the eve of their departure, Desdemona agrees to marry her brother. Despite legal and social prohibitions against marriage between siblings, their marriage is allowed since no one in America knows they are brother and sister. They reach the United States and settle in Detroit, Michigan, in the home of their cousin, Sourmelina "Lina" Zizmo, a closeted lesbian, and her husband, Jimmy, a bootlegger. Lefty goes into Jimmy's smuggling business, while Desdemona gives birth to a son, Milton, and Lina gives birth to a daughter, Theodora or "Tessie". Desdemona is made aware of the potential for disease in children through consanguinity and becomes anxious about her pregnancy and the morality of her sexual relationship with Lefty. As his marriage declines, Lefty decides to open a bar and gambling room, calling it the Zebra Room.

Eventually, Lefty and Desdemona's son, Milton, marries Lina's daughter, Tessie. Milton and Tessie, who are second cousins, have two children, Chapter Eleven and Callie. Chapter Eleven (a reference to the fact that he eventually drives the family business into bankruptcy)^[11] is a biologically "normal" boy, while Callie is intersexed; however, the family does not know this for many years, so Callie is raised as a girl. After the 1967 Detroit Riot, the family moves to a house on the street, Middlesex—located in the Grosse Pointe neighborhood. The novel's title is a double entendre,^[12] in that it describes both the name of the street on which Callie lived in the 1970s and his intersexual identity.^[6]

At 14 years old, Callie falls in love with her female best friend, who is referred to in the novel as the "Obscure Object" (a reference to the 1977 film That Obscure Object of Desire directed by Luis Buñuel).^[13] Around this time, Callie has her first sexual experiences with both genders, the Obscure Object and the Obscure Object's brother. After Callie is injured by a tractor, a doctor discovers that Callie is intersexed, and she is taken to a clinic in New York where she undergoes a series of tests and examinations. Faced with the prospect of sex reassignment surgery, Callie runs away and assumes a male identity as Cal. Cal hitchhikes cross-country until he reaches San Francisco, where he becomes a part of a burlesque show.

The club where Cal works is raided by police, and he is returned to Chapter Eleven's custody. Desdemona sees Cal as male for the first time, and she confesses to Cal that her husband, Lefty, was also her brother. After learning that Milton had just been killed in a car accident, Cal stands in the doorway of his family's Middlesex home (a male-only Greek tradition thought to keep spirits of the dead out of the family home) as Milton's funeral takes place. Later, as an adult, Cal becomes a diplomat and is stationed in Berlin, where he meets Julie Kikuchi, a Japanese-American woman with whom he tentatively starts a relationship.^[10]

The beginning of the novel is set in 1922 during the war between Greece and Turkey in Bithynios—a small village on Mount Olympus.^[14] For hundreds of years, the people of Bithynios have engaged in incestuous marriages.^[15] It is common for third cousins to marry, causing people who are cousins to become siblings.^[16] In 1913, many people moved away from Bithynios because of the Balkan Wars. Thus, by 1922, approximately one hundred people live in the village with fewer than half being female. ^[17] Due to this decline in Bithynios' population, there are few eligible girls that Lefty can marry.^[17] Additionally, the village lacks a post office, a bank, and shops; it only has a church and a tavern.^[18]

In Detroit, the 1913 Ford Model T assembly line came into effect. Workers revolted by leaving the factories because they could not acclimate themselves to the new speed. By 1922, the new workers are able to match the pace of the assembly line. The work is divided into groups of unskilled workers—allowing the company to employ or dismiss anybody.^[19] At Detroit, Desdemona finds work as a supervisor of girls who make silk chadors for the Nation of Islam, which is a religious organization founded in Detroit, Michigan by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in the 1930s.^[20]

One of the novel's main settings is Grosse Pointe^[21]—an area of Detroit—where a Point System exists because of white flight; thus, houses are only sold to the "right sort of people", which does not include Greeks or Italians.^[22] The incidents that occur to Cal's family parallel the important historical events of the 1960s. For instance, Milton's family business is destroyed by fire in the 1967 Detroit riot, Milton empathizes with President Richard Nixon when the Watergate scandal occurs, and Milton's son, "Chapter Eleven", frets over the draft to fight in the Vietnam War.^[23] The novel also depicts Prohibition, the Great Depression, and the Civil Rights Movement.^[15]

Jeffrey Eugenides, the son of a Kentuckian mother and a Greek father, parallels several people and events in Callie's life with his own. For example, they are both born in 1960, they both have to learn about Greek customs in order to understand their grandparents' way of life,^[1] and Eugenides' grandfather—like Callie's grandfather—also owned a bar named Zebra Room.^[24] According to Eugenides, the parallel of the Zebra Room was intended as a "secret code of paying homage to my grandparents and my parents".^[1] He noted that "[d]uring my whole life, it was crumbling and being destroyed little by little. And in a way my upbringing is just like a slow time-lapse film of everything falling apart on that street, because we would have to go down it almost every day."^[1]

Eugenides and Callie both have lived on a street called Middlesex Boulevard, ^[6] grew up in Detroit, were raised in the middle-class setting of Grosse Pointe, and lived through the 1967 Detroit riot.^[25][26] Additionally, they both have grandparents that had been silk farmers,^[27]they both moved to Berlin,^[26] and while Cal has a romantic relationship with a Japanese American woman, Julie Kikuchi, Eugenides married a Japanese-American artist he met at the MacDowell Colony in 1995, Karen Yamauchi.^[28][29]

Eugenides also recalled how he, like Cal, grew slowly and felt much embarrassment.^[27] The all-girls' private school that Callie attends resembles University Liggett School—a private school that Eugenides attended before he went to Brown University.^[30] Both the author and his protagonist have an older brother who would disappear from society for awhile during what Eugenides called "hippie phases".^[29] In an interview with the online magazine, Salon, Eugenides explained that to write a novel people could relate to, "I drew on my memories of my own adolescence and, as they call it, locker room trauma."^[27]

Eugenides denied that the book was an autobiography. Explaining why his life paralleled Cal's, he remarked, "I think most writers use bits of their life to add credibility to their work, and that's certainly the case with Middlesex. I knew I was writing about something far from my own experience, so it seemed wise to blend that with a lot of things that I do know well, to make this story real for me, and hopefully for the reader as well."^[26]

While writing the novel, Eugenides did not worry about how his family would react to the book. However, he admitted that when he was revising the book, he removed some information that would be potentially offensive to his relatives. Eugenides explained, "I keep filial respect out of my mind until I'm done. And then compunction rushes in. During the editing of Middlesex, I took a few things out that might have stung my relatives. There may still be things in there that will sting."^[31]

Middlesex is written in the form of a memoir.^[33] The book, when it discusses Cal's family before he was born, is written with a "limited" omniscient point of view in an androgynous voice.^[34][35] Cal is knowledgeable of all that is occurring and that has occurred, but sometimes acknowledges that he is fabricating some of the details.^[35]

The book shifts back and forth from third person to first person.^[4] Scholar Patricia Chu notes that the influences of the older genetic dissertations are highlighted by the shift from first person to third person in the middle of the passage where Cal researches hermaphroditism.^[36] For instance, Cal asks the questions "How did Calliope feel about her crocus?"^[37] and "What was Cal's official position on penises?"^[38][39] When Cal discusses Callie, he uses the comedic device of adopting the third person to dissociate himself from her.^[40][39] Eugenides explained that "[t]he voice had to be elastic enough to narrate the epic stuff, the third-person material, and it had to be a highly individualized first-person voice, too."^[31] Cal's voice is able to maintain the interest and empathy of readers because Cal is "[f]unny, humane, [and] endearingly self-aware".^[41]

That Cal is an unreliable narrator is exemplified by the contradictory statements he makes.^[42] 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."^[42][43] However, he later says, "I alone, from the private box of my primordial egg, saw what was going on."^[42][44] The amalgamation of dubious omniscience and doubtful narration indicates Cal's "playful unreliability".^[42]

As Cal transitions from being a female to being a male, the voice does not change significantly. The reason for this is that Eugenides does not believe that males and females have inherent disparities in their writing styles. That is, he believes that there are greater disparities between the ways that individuals write than between people of the opposite sex. Furthermore, the voice does not change significantly because throughout his life, Cal possessed a male brain and was a heterosexual male, and he wrote the saga when he was an adult.^[31] However, Cal was female at one point, so Eugenides sought to get the "emotional stuff right".^[31] He consulted his wife and several other women who told him that the emotion was accurately portrayed. The women also helped him with the more feminine aspects of the novel such as toenail polish.^[31]

Mark Lawson of The Guardian considers the narrator's tone to be "sardonic[ally] empath[etic]", and other critics have characterized the beginning of the novel as comical.^[45][21] When Cal is baptized as an infant by Father Mike, a Greek Orthodox clergyman, the priest receives a surprise. Cal writes, "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."^[46][47] Derek Weiler of the Toronto Star notes that Eugenides has witty commentary about German compound words and the "horrific qualities of public men's rooms".^[48]

The depiction of Stephanides' relationship with the African-American characters, such as Marius Grimes, as well as America's race issues, have been criticized as having a "preachy and nervous" tone.^[21] Middlesex also has an ironic tone; while his grandparents assimilate into American culture through Greektown cathedrals and car factories, Cal's parents go on the typical journey of immigrants' children, leaving their small ethnic groups and moving from city to suburb.^[49] In one incident, the diner owned by the Stephanides is engulfed in flames as a result of 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."^[50][51] The diner was insured, so the Stephanides have a windfall gain.^[51]

Using modern pop music and Greek myths allusions, Eugenides depicts how family characteristics and idiosyncrasies are passed on from one generation to the next. He also employs leitmotifs to depict how chance affects the family's way of life.^[23]

The novel frequently alludes to Greek myths. Eugenides said in an interview that "[h]ermaphrodism is an idea in human culture that has existed for thousands of thousands of years in classical Greek myths. A person changing genders is not something most people haven't wondered about or aren't a little bit fascinated about."^[52] Cal repeatedly compares himself to Tiresias, the male prophet who also switched genders.^[35] Both are omniscient narrators.^[42] Cal is compared to the Minotaur, a creature that, like her, was half and half—part man and part bull;^[35] she is in her own labyrinth and only her grandmother, who used to raise silkworms, possesses the thread that solves the enigma.^[53] Cal has the Greek deity Hermaphroditus' ability to emphathize and to enter the his ancestor's thoughts.^[20] The protagonist is named after Calliope, the muse of heroic poetry.^[33]

Cal resembles the hero Odysseus. Just as Poseidon and Athena beset Odysseus, so did the chromosomes hassle Cal.^[54] 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."^[55] Book reviewer Frances Bartkowski identified Callie to be like a Chimera—a monster composed of multiple animal parts—in that in the end, she would transform into her own sibling of the other sex.^[56] When Callie is in New York, she goes to the New York Public Library and searches for the meaning of the word "hermaphrodite".^[57] She becomes shocked when the dictionary entry concludes with "See synonyms at MONSTER."^[57][58] Callie is not a Frankenstein; she is more like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. Eugenides' message is that "we must let our monsters out—they demand and deserve recognition—they are us: our same, self, others."^[57] The book discusses Sapphic love; Callie has sexual relations with the Obscure Object, her closest friend.^[56][49]

Middlesex is characterized as a Bildungsroman with a "big twist" because the coming-of-age story is revealed to be the incorrect one.^[21] After being nurtured as a woman, Cal must instead learn to become a man.^[21] The book has "two distinct and occasionally warring halves".^[21] Whereas the first part is about hermaphrodites, the second is about Greeks. The latter aspect of the novel is considered by critics to be more effective because Middlesex is largely about how Cal inherited the momentous gene that "ends up defining her indefinable life".^[21] Also considered a family saga, the book covers the lives of three generations of the Stephanides family.^[6]

According to Stewart O'Nan of The Atlantic, the narrator, in the style of the picaresque novel, sometimes retells events that have already occurred. Stewart O'Nan of The Atlantic notes that Cal also foreshadows the upcoming events in the book through "portentous glimpses".^[60] Kirkus Reviews describes Middlesex as a "virtuosic combination of elegy, sociohistorical study, and picaresque adventure".^[61]

The start of the novel is considered a tragicomedy about the Stephanides family's migration from Greece and assimilation into America. The novel's beginning is also classified as a historiographic metafictional chronicle in that it discusses events such as the 1922 war between Greece and Turkey and the Great Fire of Smyrna.^[42] As the story progresses, Middlesex shifts into a social novel about Detroit, discussing the seclusion of living in a 1970s suburb.^[35] At the end of the novel, the story adopts the tone of the detective genre.^[42]

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 becoming a midwife of her new life by teaching herself to forget what she has learned as a female.^[62] Likewise, Cal's grandparents undergo a transformation, becoming husband and wife instead of brother and sister.^[63] Middlesex delves into the concept of identity, including how it is formed and how it is administered.^[49] The immigrant predicament is a metaphor and synecdoche for Callipe's hermaphroditic condition; Callie's paternal grandparents become Americanized through the amalgamation of the elements of heredity, cultural metamorphoses, and probability.^[33] Callie's maternal grandfather, Jimmy Zizmo, undergoes a rebirth when he transforms from a bootlegger into Farrad Mohammad, a Muslim minister.^[46]

Middlesex traces the trials and adversity of the Stephanides family as they pursue the American Dream.^[64] 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.^[23] After they immigrate to the United States, Lefty and Desdemona find themselves in a blissful American that is 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.^[64] 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.^[65]

Middlesex portrays the race relations between people of different cultures. When Lefty, Cal's grandfather, a recent Greek immigrant, is working at one of Henry Ford's automobile factories, Ford investigators attempt to Americanize him.^[66] 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".^[67][68] The narrow-minded nativists believe that immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe are unaware of the value of soap and water.^[67]

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. Despite being in the United States for only 10 years and having experienced racism herself, she can, scholar Robert Zecker notes, "recite at heart the slights at blacks as lazy, dirty, sexually promiscuous, and incapable of self-help".^[66] 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.^[66]

When African Americans are beaten or taken advantage of by whites, none of the characters in Middlesex feels compassion for them. The novel skims over the brutal attacks, lasting a week, on blacks in Detroit during World War II.^[66] Years later, in 1967, Lefty is incorrectly told that the 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.^[66] One dismissed customer even yells at him, "[w]hy don't you go back to your own country?"^[69][67]

According to 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.^[66] 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 notes that the characters in the novel believe that the 1967 Detroit riots are "inexplicable cataclysms that came out of nowhere".^[66]

Middlesex delves into the schism and reconciling of two opposites by contrasting the experiences and opinions of males and females; Greek Americans and WASPs; Greeks and Turks; and, African Americans and White Americans.^[10][59][70] Book reviewer Raoul Eshelman notes 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.^[71] 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."^[72] The novel also demonstrates that love and family are vital to not only people with unambiguous genders, but also hermaphrodites.^[73]

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 identify 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".^[74]

The Stephanides lineage is from Bithynios, a village in Greece where the middleman minority is inclined to be in uneasy relations with the majority. The people of the middleman majority do not assimilate because of their small mercantile businesses and because their host country is antagonistic towards them.^[75] 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.^[75][76] Desdemona considers Pontians to be adulterated Greeks because Pontians inhabited Turkey, where some became Muslims and did not follow the Greek Orthodox religion.^[77]

The novel examines the nature versus nurture debate in detail. At the beginning of the novel, Cal writes, "Sing now, O Muse, of the recessive mutation on my fifth chromosome."^[78][10] He then apologizes, saying, "Sorry if I get a little Homeric at times. That's genetic, too."^[78][10] This is an allusion to the poet Homer, who was also captivated with the nature vs. nurture debate.^[10] 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."^[79][10]

Callie has inherited the mutation for a gene that causes 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, which impedes the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone.^[80] While the former hormone causes the brain to become masculine, it is the latter that molds male genitals.^[80] When Callie reaches puberty, her testosterone levels increase significantly, resulting in the formation of a larger Adam's apple, the broadening of the muscles, the deepening of her voice, and the augmentation of her clitoris to resemble a penis.^[81] Doctors determine that Callie has the XY chromosomes of a male after inspecting Callie's genitalia.^[82] 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.^[81] 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".^[71]

Mark Lawson of The Guardian notes that the cause of Cal's hermaphroditic condition is an inherited recessive gene.^[45] 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.^[83] 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.^[6] Eugenides seeks 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".^[31]

Raised as a girl, Cal views himself as a girl who likes other girls.^[84] His ability to have a "feminine gender schema" despite his having male genes, substantiates the constructionist position that gender identity is fully dependent on outer influences.^[85] 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".^[85] Cal's embrace of his inherent male identity and renunciation of his childhood female gender identity is articulated by Cal when he reflects,^[85] "I never felt out of place being a girl, I still don't feel entirely at home among men."^[85][86]

Cal exhibits many masculine characteristics when he is a child.^[87] He writes, "I began to exude some kind of masculinity, in the way I topped up and caught my eraser, for instance."^[88] In another incident, Cal discusses how his penchants were masculine.^[87] 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".^[87][89] Cal ponders his gender identity and how males and females associate with each other,^[87] 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?"^[87][90]

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.^[87]

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".^[85] Through Cal, Eugenides opines that the 1876 system devised by Edwin Klebs that used gonad tissue to determine sex provides the most accurate answer.^[85]

According to book reviewer Morgan Holmes, Eugenides posits that a person's sexual attraction determines his or her gender.^[91] Cal's wish to become male because he desires females demonstrates a link between gender identity and sexuality.^[92] While Callie is not permitted to love the Obscure Object openly, Cal can freely love Julie.^[93] Holmes believes that the depiction of Callie "denies the legitimate place of lesbian desire and rewrites it as male heterosexuality".^[94] Book reviewer Georgia Warnke has a similar view. She writes 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.^[92] Daniel Mendelsohn of The New York Review of Books argues 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."^[21][95] Mendelsohn notes that this assertion will astonish "Eugenides's (presumably testosterone-rich) gay male readership".^[21]

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".^[74] 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.^[74] Though "hermaphrodite" is burdened by the implications of the abnomaly, "intersexuality" is a neologism that tries to "naturalize various sexes, which themselves are naturally occurring".^[74] Because Cal uses "hermaphrodite", he indicates that the sole normal genders are the classifications of male and female.^[74]

Incest is another theme in Middlesex. Eugenides examines the passionate feelings that siblings living in seclusion experience for each other.^[21] Milton and Tessie, second cousins, are conceived during the same night, hinting to the incest of Desdemona and Lefty.^[62] 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.^[62] 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.^[96] Cal's mother interferes with fate by attempting to make her second child a daughter. Cal believes this interference was a factor in him being a hermaphrodite.^[23] Conversely, Cal's relationship with his brother, Chapter Eleven, is indicative of the possible dissimilarities that are products of the biosocial.^[56]

From the book's publication until the early months of 2003, its sales were unsatisfactory.^[1] However, in the week following April 7, 2003, the day Middlesex won the Pulitzer Prize, the book sold 2,700 copies. The Pulitzer award nearly propelled Middlesex to The New York Times Best Seller list, which publishes 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."^[97] The book later made the best-selling fiction list and kept its position for five weeks.^[98] In June 2007, the novel ranked seventh on USA Today's Best-Selling Books list.^[99] In the same month, after Eugenides appeared on Oprah to discuss the novel, Middlesex placed second on The New York Times best-selling paperback fiction list.^[100] Since 2002, three million copies of Middlesex have been sold.^[28]

Some critics were dissatisfied with the scope of the novel.^[21][101] Daniel Mendelsohn of The New York Times Book Review wrote that thematically, there was no reason that a Greek should be a hermaphrodite or a hermaphrodite should be a Greek, but that Eugenides had two disconnected stories to tell.^[21] 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".^[33] 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.^[33] However, Eugenides purposefully devised this asymmetry.^[102] 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.^[60] Further, O'Nan characterized Cal's relationship with the Japanese-American photographer Julie as "underdeveloped", causing the reader not to experience its entirety.^[60]

Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly called the novel a "big-hearted, restless story" and rated it an A minus.^[32] 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."^[102] 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".^[103] Andrew O'Hehir of Salon agreed, praising Middlesex as an "epic and wondrous" novel filled with numerous characters and historical occurrences.^[35] Mendelsohn praised Middlesex for its "dense narrative, interwoven with sardonic, fashionably postmodern commentary".^[21] However, he criticized the novel as a disjointed hybrid. He wrote that Eugenides mishandled the hermaphrodite material, characterized by Mendelsohn as "unpersuasiv[e]", but was successful with the story of Greek immigrants, described as "authenti[c]".^[21] Jeff Zaleski of Publishers Weekly praises Eugenides' portrayal of the girl, Callie, and the man Cal. Zaleski writes that "[i]t's difficult to imagine any serious male writer of earlier eras so effortlessly transcending the stereotypes of gender."^[104]

Marta Salij of the Detroit Free Press was impressed with the book's depiction of Detroit, writing "[a]t last Detroit has its great 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."^[54] 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."^[41]

Several critics have called the book a candidate for the title of "Great American Novel".^[33][105] 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",^[105] and compared Cal to Huckleberry Finn, the narrator of Invisible Man, and J. Sutter in John Henry Days.^[105] 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".^[53] Dan Cryer of Newsday wrote that with the publication of Middlesex, "[f]inally, Detroit has its very own great American novel".^[106]

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".^[107] Despite this criticism, Gates considered Middlesex to be the novel where Eugenides "finally plays his metafictional ace".^[107] Commenting that Middlesex is "more discursive and funnier" than The Virgin Suicides, Laura Miller of Salon wrote that the two novels deal with disunity.^[10] 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".^[45] Lawson noted that whereas Middlesex deals with gender, life, and genes, The Virgin Suicides deals with gender and death.^[45]

In 2003, Middlesex was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.^[34] 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 triumphs is its emotional abundance, delivered with consummate authority and grace."^[108] Eugenides was attending the Prague Writers' Festival when Middlesex won the Pulitzer Prize.^[109] 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."^[9] 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.^[9] When journalists called Eugenides, he declined to take their calls, saying in a interview later that he wanted to "celebrate the moment instead of leaping immediately into the media maelstrom".^[109]

The novel received the Ambassador Book Award, Spain's Santiago de Compostela Literary Prize, and the Great Lakes Book Award.^[110] In 2003, it was a finalist in the fictional category of the National Book Critics Circle Award.^[55][111]

Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times Book Review consider Middlesex to be one of the best books in 2002. In spite of this acclamation, its sales were initially underwhelming;^[1] it later became a best-selling book.^[112] In 2007, Oprah Winfrey chose Middlesex to be discussed in her book club.^[7] Eugenides was a guest on Oprah's show with several intersex individuals who told stories about their lives.^[28]

The audiobook version of Middlesex was released by Macmillan Audio in September 2002. Read by Kristoffer Tabori, the audio book has 28 sides, each side having a unique style of introductory music that complements the atmosphere and plot of the saga.^[113]

In July 2009, HBO announced that it would create a one-hour drama series based on Middlesex.^[114] The script will be written by Donald Margulies,^[115] and the project will be produced by Rita Wilson and Margulies.^[114] Appearing on Newsnight, Alkarim Jivani opined that he believes Middlesex is superior to The Virgin Suicides because Eugenides is intimately connected to the Greek diaspora and is thus able to recognize the divisive elements.^[72]

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• Lee, Merton (2009). "Why Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex Is So Inoffensive". Critique. 51 (1). Taylor & Francis: 31–46. doi:10.1080/00111610903249856.
• Holmes, Morgan (2008). Intersex: A Perilous Difference. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses. ISBN 1575911175.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
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• Shostak, Debra (2008). ""Theory Uncompromised by Practicality": Hybrid ity in Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex". Contemporary Literature. 49 (3). University of Wisconsin Press: 383–412. doi:10.1353/cli.0.0034. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |isn= ignored (help)
• Salinsky, John (2009). The Green Bookshop: Recommended Reading for Doctors and Others from the Medical Journal Education for Primary Care. Abingdon: Radcliffe Publishing. ISBN 1846193303. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
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• Middlesex at Oprah's Book Club