Ready Reference Treatise: Middlesex

By Raja Sharma

“Middlesex” is primarily a coming-of-age novel and a family saga. It chronicles the effect of a mutated gene on the three generations of a Greek family. Owing to that, momentous changes occur in the life of the protagonist.

Most of the scholars have often said that the novel deals with the themes such as rebirth, nature versus nature, people between men and women. The novel also investigates gender identity. There are several allusions to Greek mythology, depicting several creatures and a monster.

Ready Reference Treatise: Middlesex
Copyright
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two: Background
Chapter Three: Plot Overview
Chapter Four: Major Characters
Chapter Five: Complete Summary
Book One
Book Two
Book Three
Book Four
Chapter Six: Critical Analysis

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raja Sharma
• Release date: Mar 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311354976

Raja Sharma

Raja Sharma is a retired college lecturer.He has taught English Literature to University students for more than two decades.His students are scattered all over the world, and it is noticeable that he is in contact with more than ninety thousand of his students.

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Ready Reference Treatise: Middlesex

Copyright

Ready Reference Treatise: Middlesex

Raja Sharma

Copyright@2016 Raja Sharma

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Chapter One: Introduction

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides was first published in 2002. It is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. More than four million copies of the book have been sold up to January 2016. It has remained one of the bestsellers since its first publication.

Most of the characters and events in the novel have been inspired by the author’s own life and his observations of his Greek heritage. However, it is not an autobiography. The protagonist of the novel in intersex, but Eugenides, the author, is definitely not an intersex.

Having read the memoir published in 1980 Herculine Barbin, the author decided to write the present novel.

Middlesex is primarily a coming-of-age novel and a family saga. It chronicles the effect of a mutated gene on the three generations of a Greek family. Owing to that, momentous changes occur in the life of the protagonist.

Most of the scholars have often said that the novel deals with the themes such as rebirth, nature versus nature, people between men and women. The novel also investigates gender identity. There are several allusions to Greek mythology, depicting several creatures and a monster.

Cal Stephanides is the narrator and protagonist of the novel. Call is initially called ‘Callie." Cal happens to be an intersex man of Greek descent. He suffers with a condition known as a 5-alpha-reductase deficiency. Owing to that, the protagonist shows certain feminine traits.

The first half of the novel describes Cal’s family and the migration of his grandparents from Smyrna, a city in Asia Minor, to the United States of America in the year 1922.

The story describes how they have to make efforts to assimilate into American society in Detroit, Michigan. In those days, Detroit was a flourishing industrial city.

The other half of the novel is set in the late 20th century. This part of the novel mainly describes the protagonist’s experiences in his hometown of Detroit.

It also describes how he happens to have escaped to San Francisco. Having reached San Francisco, he comes to terms with his modified gender identity.

The novel does not present anything in black and white, or straightforward. The author does not provide any clear solutions to the problems presented in the novel.

The novel was not immediately successful after its first publication, but it began to gain popularity over time and eventually won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize and it was also included in Oprah’s Book Club.

Most of the reviews, after the publication of the book, were highly positive. Some present scholars think that Middlesex must be considered for the title of Great American Novel.

Chapter Two: Background

The Virgin Suicides was the first novel published by Jeffrey Eugenides in the year 1993. Then he started writing Middlesex. He was greatly inspired by Herculine Barbin, the diary of a 19th century French convent schoolgirl who was intersex. He had read that memoir about ten years before he began to write the present novel. However, having read the memoir, he realized that it evaded the discussion about the anatomy and emotions of the intersex people. He wanted something different in his novel Middlesex.

The author is said to have taken nine years to complete writing Middlesex. He began writing the novel while he was living at MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire for a short term. He eventually completed writing the novel in Berlin, Germany. He was given a grant by the German Academic Exchange Service in the year 1999.

He took the first few years trying to just establish narrative voice for the novel. His intention was to present epic events in the third person and psychosexual events in the first person.

The author decided to make the voice render the experience of a teenage girl and an adult man. He visited several places and people to seek advice about intersex, sexology, and the formation of gender identity, but he did not meet with intersex people. He read several books on the subject and learned everything by himself. He watched several videotapes and read innumerable newsletters that dealt with the subject.

He did an extensive research in Black Culture while spending a lot of time at the New York Public Library.

When he came to know about 5-alplha-reductase deficiency through the books he read in the library, his perception of his novel changed to a great extent. It was going to be an epic in scope, instead of being merely a slim fictional autobiography. The book was written with the intention of tracing the lives of three generations of Greek Americans.

When he started preparing the first draft of the novel, he was living in Brooklyn. It was a really very difficult task for him. He would write fifty pages in one voice, and then restart writing in a different voice with seventy five pages, and then follow a different narrative angle.

Through the novel, he wanted to show the transformation of the protagonist, Cal. The first person narrative he wrote in Cal’s voice. It was not possible to portray Cal’s grandparents intimately, so he switched to the third person, but continued to violate his narrative convention by restoring the first person voice amid the third person narration to show the mindsets of both