Middlesex is a Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Jeffrey Eugenides published in 2002. The book is a bestseller, with more than four million copies sold since its publication. Its characters and events are loosely based on aspects of Eugenides' life and observations of his Greek heritage. It is not an autobiography; unlike the protagonist, Eugenides is not intersex. The author decided to write Middlesex after reading the 1980 memoir Herculine Barbin and finding himself dissatisfied with its discussion of intersex anatomy and emotions.
Primarily a coming-of-age story (Bildungsroman) and family saga, the 21st-century gender novel chronicles the effect 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 what society constructs as 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 allusions 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 "Calliope") is an intersex man of Greek descent with 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 Bursa, a city in Turkey, to the United States in 1922. It follows their assimilation into U.S. society in Detroit, Michigan, then a booming industrial city. The latter half of the novel, set in the late 20th century, focuses on Cal's experiences in his hometown of Detroit 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, gay, and intersex communities mostly praised Middlesex, though some intersex commentators have been more critical. In 2007, the book was featured in Oprah's Book Club.
Conception, research, and publication
After publishing his first novel, The Virgin Suicides, in 1993, Jeffrey Eugenides started on his next project Middlesex. He was inspired by having read Herculine Barbin, the diary of a 19th-century French convent schoolgirl who was intersex. Eugenides had first read the memoir in 1984<!--Two decades from 2003 per source, one decade from 1993 at this point of time in prose.--> 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".|group="note" 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". He discovered details of what he considered a vivid intersex condition while browsing Columbia University's medical library.
After discovering in his library research 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, an autosomal recessive condition manifested primarily in inbred, isolated population groups, his perception of the novel significantly changed. Rather than a "slim fictional autobiography" of an intersex individual, the novel would be epic in scope, tracing the lives of three generations of Greek Americans. Eugenides lived in Brooklyn when he began his first draft of the novel. He went through a lengthy brainstorming process. He would write 50 pages in one voice, restart in a different voice with 75 pages, and then pursue a different narrative angle. He wanted the novel to be an "intimate" portrayal of protagonist Cal's transformation, so he wrote a draft in the first-person narrative in Cal's voice. He could not, however, portray Cal's grandparents intimately, so he completely abandoned his preceding year's draft in favor of writing the book in the third-person. He gradually violated his narrative convention by restoring the first-person voice amid the third-person narration to depict the mindsets of both Cal and Cal's grandparents. During the writing process, Eugenides moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan and later returned to Brooklyn. Worried about the narrative's sounding forced, he added instances of "self-reflexivity" to Cal's voice. After several years of struggling with the narrative voice, Eugenides finally seated himself at his desk and wrote Middlesexs initial page, "500 words that contained the DNA for the protein synthesis of the entire book."
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".
Plot
Cal Stephanides (his masculine identity), also known as Calliope (feminine), recounts how 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, a recessive condition, caused him to be born with female characteristics. The book continues with accounts of his family's history and the conception of Cal, his childhood and teenage years being raised as a girl, and the discovery of his intersex condition. Cal weaves his opinion of the events in hindsight from his life after his father's funeral. Middlesex is set in the 20th century and interjects historical elements, such as the Balkan Wars, the Nation of Islam, the 1967 Detroit riot, and the Watergate scandal into the story.
thumb|alt=A city burns in flames; in the foreground, a large battleship sits in the water. A smaller vessel is berthed next to her. Another small ship sails away from the city on the left.|Cal's grandparents flee from Smyrna, boarding a passenger ship, as the city burns in flames.
In 1922, Cal's paternal grandfather, Eleutherios "Lefty" Stephanides, lives in Bithynios, a village in Asia Minor. In the small village, high on the slope of Mount Olympos above the city of Bursa, incestuous marriages between cousins are a quietly accepted practice. 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. Lefty and Desdemona develop a romantic relationship as the war progresses. They flee the chaos brought by the war on a ship to the United States amid the Great Fire of Smyrna. Their histories unknown to the other passengers, they marry each other on board the vessel.
After arriving in New York, they locate and stay with their cousin Sourmelina "Lina" Zizmo, in Detroit, Michigan, a closeted lesbian and the only person who knows of the siblings' incestuous relationship. Lefty takes 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 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 den called 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. Unaware of this, her family raise Callie as a girl. Elements of family life are portrayed against struggles in the rise and fall of industrial Detroit. The family gets caught up in the 1967 Detroit riot resulting from racial tensions, after President Johnson authorizes the use of federal troops, and the family restaurant is raided during this period. Fleeing school integration, 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 undergoes tests and examinations at a clinic in New York, and it is determined that her body will naturally develop more masculine traits. After learning about the syndrome and facing the prospect of sex reassignment surgery to make her anatomy appear "normally" female, Callie runs away and assumes a male identity as Cal, who hitchhikes cross-country and reaches San Francisco, where he joins a burlesque show as Hermaphroditus.
Cal is arrested by police during a raid on his workplace. He is released into Chapter Eleven's custody and learns of their father's recent death. The siblings return to their family home on Middlesex. Desdemona privately confesses to Cal that her husband is also her brother, recognizing Cal's condition and associating it with stories from her old village about children born of incest. 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 home.<!-- 691 words -->
Autobiographical elements
thumb|Although the novel is not autobiographical, Jeffrey Eugenides based many details of Middlesex on his own life
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; unlike his creation, he is not intersex or transgender. His family moved to a house on Middlesex Road in Grosse Pointe 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.|group=note Eugenides married a Japanese-American artist, Karen Yamauchi,