Greece, the myth, immigrants, epic, and the combination of these elements easily make people reminiscent of the Greek movie director Theodoros Angelopoulos immediately. After the last page of “Middlesex”, we can realize that Jeffrey Eugenides tells us about the dispute between Greece and Turkey, the immigration to the United States, the Great Depression, the temperance movement, the Watergate, Detroit race riots grand event, plus up to eight years the fate of the ups and downs strung plots with three generations. The works of Theodoros Angelopoulos also full of compassion and pity usual Greek nationalism, history, religion, culture, and those things seems to be hidden under the paper, but faint surging. However, Jeffrey Eugenides is not Theodoros Angelopoulos. He described Calliope as Middlesex who has both male and female reproductive organs. This unique character, as the author’s writing style: serious and harmonic that converse between Greek tragedy and American comedy freely. Also, the perspective of first and third person combined and converted is to become one of the biggest bright spot in the novel. If say Homer is the ancestors of the story, Darwin is another. Once returned to Homer, to return to the field of the history of the novel, we immediately can be found, “Middlesex” is not a new trend, just the old tradition.
Plato said that the earliest human beings are bisexual, body like a ball, half male and half female, later on it was split from the middle, so everyone is trying to get back for the other half, in order to re-attributed to the full. By the 1970s, everyone believes that the postnatal environment created man, and now everyone thinks genetic edifying. Before come to be him or her, there is always an unknown phase or period. Concerned of philosophy, Jeffrey Eugenides needs the unknown phase to get rid of the gender shackles. What could be more appropriate than Middlesex do? So Cal as a Middlesex walks between the very different worlds of the sexes.
A pair of eyes, one is belonging to a 14-year-old girl, one is belonging to the 14-year-old boy. Moreover, even if it is under the dual perspectives of women and men, Jeffrey Eugenides still concerned about the reality. This is kind of reality reflects in the “Middlesex”: not only described the boom and slump of Detroit and a hundred years of history of the United States on the macro level, but also from the micro level, described the emotion of Calliope who is the descendant of immigrants. As to this novel, the micro level is more particular.
From eyes of Calliope, we can see alertness, unfamiliar, estrangement and even at a loss of the future in his or her life. Those may from human malformations lust of previous generations. But Jeffrey Eugenides let her grew up and became men “Cal” from women “Callie” ultimately. By Cal’s eyes, Jeffrey Eugenides showed that this world contains so many lives, every life, every event, which may be ignored, is the most important thing in life. And in the “Middlesex” Jeffrey Eugenides may want to express the understanding for life, the respect for humanity and the extended human dignity to the dead and disabled.
Cal experiencing all kinds of things in the world, we can realize the other side of the world of ourselves by following him. The two sides of the world just as a pair of cuff links, which belongs to Milton, father of Cal, one, is a comedy, a tragedy. We can perceive one side of the world, but for another side, which is far from us, we indeed need a kind of media to feel it. The media for Cal probable is the “change”.
As to the “change”, I want to about the change of Cal from childhood to adulthood. Those changes happen in different aspects and related to his family culture and even society. The thought of Calliope, the thought of Cal about the Middlesex, the life of before and after, also the social interaction in family and society even in his love all involved in “changing”. The anxiety of Calliope in her Middlesex is not any better than his grandparents faced with incestuous temptation. And he is brave to show his peculiar body in sex club rather than do the sex reassignment surgery, which may seems lack of impulses compare to he his father’s madness to join the Navy for his beloved cousin. He is a teenager when he faced those changing, he needs to help himself to have a new life and do the decision by himself rather than others. So the finding of his particular biological body is not only a turning point of his life, but also a turning point of psychology.
Calliope Stephanides undergoes birth and rebirth as she discovers that she is a hermaphrodite. At the beginning, when Cal was Calliope who rose as a girl, she found she was falling in love with her female best friend, a girl with red hair loves smoking, then after Calliope went a tractor in New York City, she realized that she is Middlesex. It is a big shock to Callie who was just 14 years old and she was too young to have to be psychologically mature to accept the reality of her special body. Callie comes to realize her body change when she grows up. When she saw Carol Horning came to school with brand-new breasts, she anxious about she was still have nothing, later on, she noticed that her voice was beginning to change, she didn’t know if the way she felt about the obscure object was normal or not, even when she know she hasn’t gotten her period, those evidences thoughtout her childhood had filled her with sense of security, had become a source of anxiety and panic (Middlesex, Page. 295, 303, 327). From there we can realize that when Callie feels the anxiety about her body she does not want to accept the reality, thus she did cramps the way Meryl Streep did accents, she pretend she got the pain at the period time. She imagined there was the twinge, the dull ache, the sucker punch that made her curl up on her bed (Middlesex, Page. 361). After she went to doctor for “Sexual Disorders and Gender Identity Clinic”, she goes to the New York Public Library and searches for the meaning of the word “hermaphrodite” she was shocked when the Webster dictionary entry concludes with “See synonyms at monster” and after she went with extremely complex mental activity and struggle, Callie decide to go away to where no one knows her and lead her life as Cal. Although she did not do the operation, the changing is based on Cal himself. Not only the physical body changed, but also the emotion changed. Not to deal with sexuality openly can and does separate sexuality and emotions, which can create distrust between men and women, fostering feelings of threat to the self and problems for society. (Weil, Mildred W. Sex and Sexuality) During the Callie aging, she just was a little girl in school, the immature psychology promote the anxiety about her own physical body. After Cal decide to live as a man he becomes more mature and calmly to accept the reality.
It would seem that a more appropriate approach is one, which looks at the differences between gender sex roles, recognizing that the differing behaviors of man and woman are complicated in their psychodynamics. (DeFries, Zira, Richard C. Friedman, and Ruth Corn. Sexuality, New Perspectives). The biological genetic differences are the basis for behavioral differences that can be a way to decide gender identity. Some researchers found that in hermaphrodites, when biological sex was incorrectly diagnosed at birth and later reversed due to a subsequent correct identification of the biological sex (Oakley, Ann. Sex, Gender and Society). Callie showed her characteristics of female when she was a child and her mother Tessie gave her a doll and she knew to nurses the doll with a milk bottle, which makes Dr. Luce to classify her as possessing a female gender identity. Dr. Luce observes Callie’s behaviors carefully and diagnoses them as feminine and then concluded that gender identity is nurtured and etched into children at young ages.
Man and woman are biologically and psychologically prepared for different responsibilities, social status and personality in the family, in the society. (Yip, Kam-Shing. Psychology of Gender Identity) Gender belief system can be served as a point of reference with a complex social interaction. When Callie got the idea of her Middlesex, Cal decided to be a man, a real man both in physical and psychosocial, he went to San Francisco and showed his special body in burlesque show. After heard about the death of his father from his bother Chapter Elven, he went back home. Being the male-only role in Greek traditions to keep Milton’s spirit from re-entering the family home. After the ending of this story I just surprised that how can a people has such a big change and how Callie and Cal be responsible to her or his family. The idea I thought is not associated too much about the physical change, but the emotional change and the mature psychology of Cal.
Reference:
-Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2002. Print.
-Weil, Mildred W. Sex and Sexuality: From Repression to Expression. Lanham: University Press of America, 1990. Print.
-DeFries, Zira, Richard C. Friedman, and Ruth Corn. Sexuality, New Perspectives. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1985. Print.
-Oakley, Ann. Sex, Gender and Society. Aldershot, Hants., England: Gower/Maurice Temple Smith, 1985. Print.
-Yip, Kam-Shing. Psychology of Gender Identity: An International Perspective. New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2006. Print.
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