Middlesex

The first-person narrator is omniscient. Even before his own birth, he’s able to penetrate the thoughts and relive the experiences of his grandparents and, later, his parents. This is, in part, due to the narrator’s cultural inheritance: His ancestry is Greek, and he uses the conventions of the Homeric epic throughout the novel. Thus, he must have access to the broad outlines of history in addition to the intimate feelings of the actors involved. Immediately, he declares himself, “[l]ike Tiresias […] first one thing and then the other” (3). Tiresias is the blind prophet of Greek mythology, who lived both as a man and as a woman—another of the novel’s central concerns. The narrator also invokes the muse to initiate his story: “Sing now, O Muse, of the recessive mutation on my fifth chromosome!” (4). All of this signals the narrator’s project: This will be an epic tale of a hero’s journey, caught up in the forces of history and the vagaries of genealogical inheritance. Thus, the narrator introduces one of the novel’s main themes: The Burden of Inheritance: Family History and Personal Identity.

The first chapter introduces the extended Stephanides family. Tessie Stephanides is pregnant with the narrator, and her mother-in-law, Desdemona, predicts that the child will be a boy. However, her American-born son disagrees; he believes instead in the rigors of science to ensure that the child will be a girl. Thus, the narrator—alternately Calliope and Cal—will inherit both his grandmother’s faith in the predictive power of her silver spoon and his father’s inherent disdain for such old-world superstitions. He’ll become the repository both of Greek traditions, steeped in mysterious beliefs and Orthodox faith, and of American ingenuity, where anyone can reinvent themselves anew, thus introducing the theme of Middlesex Boulevard: The Liminality of Experience. Thus, he’ll also become a point of contention between these two worlds, in no small part due to the facts of his birth as a girl: Desdemona’s “American-born son had been proven right, and with this fresh defeat, the old country, in which she still tried to live […] receded one more notch” (17). Ultimately, however, Desdemona’s predictions will prove scientifically true, as Calliope is discovered to be a biological male. Cal becomes the focal point at which cultures, histories, and family legacies collide.

Indeed, everything that happens to the Stephanides family occurs against the roiling backdrop of history. For example, the narrator is conceived during a period of postwar American optimism:

I can only explain the scientific mania that overtook my father during that spring of ’59 as a symptom of the belief in progress that was infecting everyone back then. Remember, Sputnik had been launched only two years earlier (9).

He then provides further context about this era: Important events included the launch of the first satellite and the discovery of the polio vaccine (and with it, the growing certainty that infectious diseases might soon be a relic of the past). The implication is that, without these historical events, the narrator might not have been conceived, or, at least, he wouldn’t have been conceived as the person he turns out to be. An accident of history—or, conversely, the inexorable pull of destiny—engenders an individual as such.

Beyond the narrator’s conception are the real, and devastating, events of world history. His grandparents come of age during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, amid the years of war between Greece and Turkey. They’re of Greek ancestry, living in Turkey near the city of Bursa; they’re in grave danger once the Greek army is defeated and the Turks invade. It becomes clear over the course of Part 1 that his grandparents would never have become his grandparents without the tragedy of these events: Born as brother and sister, Lefty and Desdemona would never have married if their parents hadn’t been killed in the war and their village hadn’t been destroyed during the invasion. The sweeping narrative of history enables individual reinvention: On the way to the US, Lefty and Desdemona create their own story, posing as strangers who meet on the boat. Nobody need know of their incestuous relationship.

The scale of loss and displacement brought about by the Greco-Turkish war can only be described as epic. In an aside, the narrator imagines a lieutenant reading the latest report to his superior: “The refugee population is now 180,000. That’s an increase of 30,000 people since yesterday” (44). The Greek city of Smyrna is lost in the devastating fire that follows, and the narrator relays its past glories in an epic digression. He emphasizes the city’s liminal nature and its historical and cultural importance: “Homer was born there, and Aristotle Onassis. In Smyrna, East and West, opera and politakia, violin and zourna, piano and daouli blended as tastefully as did the rose petals and honey in the local pastries” (50). This is the place from which Lefty and Desdemona begin their journey, from old world to New, from Orthodox faith to American scientific belief, from history to future. Cal inherits all of these paradoxes—and then some, via the inheritance of a genetic mutation that causes confusion regarding Cal’s gender/sex. In this way, the character of Cal embodies the liminality inherent to the immigrant condition.

Each chapter title reveals something about the novel’s thematic concerns: “The Silver Spoon” symbolizes the complicated gift of inheritance, while “Matchmaking” gestures toward the importance of family ties and its complex brew of genes. “An Immodest Proposal” conveys the incestuous nature of the grandparents’ marriage while implicitly invoking Johnathan Swift’s satirical essay—suggesting that this tale might not be as straightforward as it seems. “The Silk Road” refers to the historical trade routes between the East and the West. Here, it represents the migration of Lefty and Desdemona and the tradeoffs in leaving the old world for the new, or the cultural exchanges in which certain qualities are gained while others are lost.