Middlesex is a
novelA novel is a 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 EugenidesJeffrey Kent Eugenides is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short story writer. He is of Greek and Irish descent.-Biography:...
. It was published in 2002 and won the
Pulitzer Prize for FictionThe Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been awarded since 1948 for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. It replaced the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel.* 1948: Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener...
in 2003.
The
narratorA narrator is, within any story , the entity that conveys the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the viewpoint character. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for story-telling of any kind...
and
protagonistA protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, video game, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to share the most empathy...
, Calliope Stephanides (later called "Cal"), an
intersexIntersexuality in humans refers to intermediate or atypical combinations of physical features that usually distinguish male from female. This is usually understood to be congenital, involving chromosome, morphologic, genital and/or gonadal anomalies, such as diversion from stereotypical XX=female...
ed person of Greek descent, has
5-alpha-reductase deficiency5-alpha-reductase deficiency is an autosomal recessive intersex condition caused by a mutation of the 5-alpha reductase type 2 gene.-Normal function:...
. The bulk of the novel is devoted to telling his
coming-of-age storyA bildungsroman is a coming-of-age kind of novel. It arose during the German Enlightenment, and in it, the author presents the psychological, moral and social shaping of the personality of a usually young main character...
growing up in
Detroit, MichiganDetroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the seat of Wayne County. Detroit is a major port city on the Detroit River, in the Midwest region of the United States. Located north of Windsor, Ontario, Detroit is the only major U.S. city that looks south to Canada. It was founded...
in the late 20th century. This story, however, is intertwined with elements of a
family sagaThe 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...
, meditations on the era's
zeitgeistZeitgeist is a German language expression referring to "the spirit of the times" and/or "the spirit of the age." The word Zeitgeist is used to describe the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and/or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general...
and bits of contemporary history.
The novel begins with the narrator, aged 41, deciding to tell the story of his recessive gene that caused him to be born Calliope and later to become Cal.
Middlesex is a
novelA novel is a 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 EugenidesJeffrey Kent Eugenides is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short story writer. He is of Greek and Irish descent.-Biography:...
. It was published in 2002 and won the
Pulitzer Prize for FictionThe Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been awarded since 1948 for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. It replaced the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel.* 1948: Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener...
in 2003.
The
narratorA narrator is, within any story , the entity that conveys the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the viewpoint character. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for story-telling of any kind...
and
protagonistA protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, video game, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to share the most empathy...
, Calliope Stephanides (later called "Cal"), an
intersexIntersexuality in humans refers to intermediate or atypical combinations of physical features that usually distinguish male from female. This is usually understood to be congenital, involving chromosome, morphologic, genital and/or gonadal anomalies, such as diversion from stereotypical XX=female...
ed person of Greek descent, has
5-alpha-reductase deficiency5-alpha-reductase deficiency is an autosomal recessive intersex condition caused by a mutation of the 5-alpha reductase type 2 gene.-Normal function:...
. The bulk of the novel is devoted to telling his
coming-of-age storyA bildungsroman is a coming-of-age kind of novel. It arose during the German Enlightenment, and in it, the author presents the psychological, moral and social shaping of the personality of a usually young main character...
growing up in
Detroit, MichiganDetroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the seat of Wayne County. Detroit is a major port city on the Detroit River, in the Midwest region of the United States. Located north of Windsor, Ontario, Detroit is the only major U.S. city that looks south to Canada. It was founded...
in the late 20th century. This story, however, is intertwined with elements of a
family sagaThe 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...
, meditations on the era's
zeitgeistZeitgeist is a German language expression referring to "the spirit of the times" and/or "the spirit of the age." The word Zeitgeist is used to describe the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and/or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general...
and bits of contemporary history.
Plot summary
The novel begins with the narrator, aged 41, deciding to tell the story of his recessive gene that caused him to be born Calliope and later to become Cal. The narration periodically returns to the
frame storyA frame story employs a narrative technique whereby an introductory main story is composed, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage for a fictive narrative or organizing a set of shorter stories, each of which is a story within a story...
of present-day Cal, who is bearded, male and interested in women, foreshadowing the personal revelations of Callie. The narration briefly explains how Desdemona, Cal's grandmother, predicted her grandchild to be male while Calliope's parents had already made schemes they believed would result in a daughter.
The story starts again further back in time, in a small village in Asia Minor, with the story of the protagonist's Greek paternal grandparents. In the aftermath of the 1922
war between Greece and TurkeyThe Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, also called the War in Asia Minor or the Greek campaign of the Turkish War of Independence or The Asia Minor Catastrophe, was a series of military events occurring during the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire after World War I between May 1919 and October 1922...
, and amid graphic scenes of the
Great Fire of SmyrnaThe Great Fire of Smyrna was a fire that destroyed much of the port city of İzmir/Smyrna in September 1922. The fire is reported to have began on 13 September 1922 and lasted for several days...
, the orphaned siblings Eleutherios ("Lefty") Stephanides and his sister Desdemona seek refuge by emigrating to America. With great ambivalence, but with few other options amidst tremendous upheaval and trauma, Desdemona agrees to marry her brother, who has been increasingly regarding her not as a sister, but as a potential lover. Fleeing incognito by ship, they are free to marry without risking the legal and social prohibitions of marriage between siblings. While traveling to the United States, they plan and carry out a feigned courtship in which they genuinely attempt to suppress (or at least deny) memories of their former life together as brother and sister. Having successfully deceived their fellow passengers, the ship's officers, and to some extent themselves, Lefty and Desdemona are married by the captain in as traditional a Greek Orthodox ceremony as can be improvised. They reach the United States, and settle in
Detroit, MichiganDetroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the seat of Wayne County. Detroit is a major port city on the Detroit River, in the Midwest region of the United States. Located north of Windsor, Ontario, Detroit is the only major U.S. city that looks south to Canada. It was founded...
, home of their cousin Sourmelina ("Lina"), their American sponsor, and her husband Jimmy Zizmo. Learning the ups and downs of the American culture, Desdemona and Lefty run into many hardships. Lefty soon goes into an illegal business run by Jimmy. After both Lina and Desdemona become pregnant on the same night after seeing a sexual play, Jimmy soon becomes suspicious. Increasingly paranoid, Jimmy starts to question Lefty on the pregnancy of Lina while driving across thin ice to Canada. Realizing that both men could die if the car plunged into the ice, Lefty jumps out the car leaving Jimmy driving. After a while, the car is heard plunging into the ice with Jimmy still inside. In time, Desdemona gives birth to a son, Milton, while Lina gives birth to a daughter, Theodora, called "Tessie".
Desdemona is made aware of the potential for disease in children due to
consanguinityConsanguinity refers to the property of being from the same lineage as another person. In that respect, consanguinity is the quality of being descended from the same ancestor as another person...
and becomes anxious about her pregnancy. After the death of his brother-in-law, and a decline of his marriage, Lefty decides to open a bar and gambling room, calling it the Zebra Room. The Zebra Room is a great success for the family until the Great Depression, which forces Desdemona to get a job as well. Only having experience with
sericultureSericulture, or silk farming, is the rearing of silkworms for the production of raw silk.Although there are several commercial species of silkworms, Bombyx mori is the most widely used and intensively studied. According to Confucian texts, the discovery of silk production by B...
, she is hired by the early Nation of Islam and hears the leader named
Wallace Fard MuhammadWallace Fard Muhammad was a preacher and founder of the Nation of Islam . He established the Nation of Islam's first mosque in Detroit, Michigan in 1930 and preached his distinctive religion there for three years before mysteriously disappearing in June 1934...
, speak through the building ventilation system. Since Desdemona is white, she is restricted from hearing or even participating in the teachings of Islam. After the church is closed down because of FBI accusations, curiosity gets the best of her and she decides to examine the restricted area. She accidentally bumps into Fard who identifies himself as Jimmy Zizmo, Lina's husband and Lefty's business partner in running liquor in the 1920s. After yelling at Jimmy for leaving Lina alone to care for their child, Jimmy states to her that he faked his death out of his distrust of his wife, Desdemona and Lefty. He believed that the three of them used him to get into the United States and that Lefty later impregnated Lina. After Jimmy and Desdemona's argument, Jimmy soon leaves, never to be seen again.
Lefty and Desdemona's son, Milton, marries Lina's daughter, Tessie. Milton and Tessie, who are second cousins, have two children. "Chapter Eleven" (a reference to the fact that he eventually becomes
bankruptBankruptcy is a legally declared inability or impairment of ability of an individual or organization to pay its creditors. Creditors may file a bankruptcy petition against a debtor in an effort to recoup a portion of what they are owed or initiate a restructuring...
) is a normal boy but Callie is intersexed, although the family doesn't know about it for many years, and is raised as a girl.
At fourteen, Callie falls in love with her female best friend (referred to in the novel as "The Obscure Object") and has her first sexual experiences with both sexes, a brother and sister. After an accident, 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 surgerySex 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 that of the other sex...
, Callie runs away and takes the male identity of Cal. Cal hitchhikes cross-country, finally arriving in San Francisco, where he becomes an attraction in a burlesque show.
Milton, back in
DetroitDetroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the seat of Wayne County. Detroit is a major port city on the Detroit River, in the Midwest region of the United States. Located north of Windsor, Ontario, Detroit is the only major U.S. city that looks south to Canada. It was founded...
, repeatedly receives phone calls from an anonymous man saying he knows where Callie is, and will release her for a ransom of $25,000. Milton questions the man on family details, to which the man replies correctly. Milton drops the money but changes his mind, figuring that something isn't right, and finds it's his priest brother-in-law and his wife's former fiancé, Father Mike. This leads to a car chase to the Canadian border, where Milton is killed in a pile-up, and Father Mike is arrested.
The club where Cal worked is raided by police, and Cal is returned into Chapter Eleven's custody in time for Milton's funeral back in Grosse Pointe. Desdemona sees Cal as male for the first time, and the book ends when Desdemona confesses to Cal that Lefty was her brother. Cal stands in the doorway to the family's Middlesex home (a Greek
traditionThe word tradition comes from the Latin traditionem, acc. of traditio which means "handing over, passing on", and is used in a number of ways in the English language:...
touted to keep spirits of the dead out of the family home) while Milton's funeral takes place.
External links