“See synonyms at MONSTER”: En-Freaking Transgender in Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex
2009; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 40; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1920-1222
Autores Tópico(s)American and British Literature Analysis
ResumoMiddlesex, the title of Jeffrey Eugenides's epic 2002 novel, promises ambiguity. However, the opening line, was born twice: first, as baby ... and then again, as teenage boy (3), presents sequential and distinctly separate categories. The inconsistency between the hybridity implied by Eugenides's title and his contrastingly boundary-conscious first line points to contradiction at the heart of the narrative. This discrepancy is underscored by the novel's conclusion, which apparently celebrates intersexuality while simultaneously endorsing gender conventions. In the final scene, Cal (formerly Callie) Stephanides, newly male-identified intersex subject and the novel's narrator, returns to his family for his father's funeral, having literally and figuratively run away from Middlesex (the suburb of Detroit, Michigan in which Callie came to see herself as sexually indeterminate) the year before. Cal's return to Middlesex appears to symbolize acceptance of his transgender status, since he claims that he is happy to be home (529). Moreover, he declares himself a new type of human (529), one whose face resembles both that of his grandfather and ... the American girl (529) he used to be. Thus, the novel appears to end with an affirmation of intersexuality, the possibility of being both/and rather than either/or, countering the definition of hermaphrodite in Webster's Dictionary that had prompted Cal to flee Middlesex: 1. One having the sex organs and many of the secondary sex characteristics of both male and female. 2. Anything comprised of combination of diverse or contradictory elements. See synonyms at MONSTER. (430) I contend, however, that Middlesex's apparent endorsement of indeterminacy in sex and gender is by Cal's final act. He performs traditional Greek ritual during his father's funeral, one reserved for men: rather than attend the service with his family, he remains at to prevent his father's spirit from entering the house, explaining that [i]t was always man who did this, and now I qualified (529). Indeed, Cal's manhood is apparently affirmed by the fact that his father's spirit does not revisit the family while he blocks the doorway: implicitly, Cal's transition from female to male is complete and the possibility of inbetweenness--middlesex--left behind. In this article I argue that, like Cal, who rejects intersexuality in favour of distinct gender identity, the novel itself continually expresses anxiety about sexual ambiguity by associating such hybridity with monstrosity and freakery. I propose that the novel's use of Greek mythology and the tropes of the traditional American freak show destabilize its otherwise affirmative representation of the central character by suggesting that intersexuality is, in fact, synonym for monster. It might be argued that, by using the language of myth and freakery, Middlesex represents the reality of transgender experience in order to critique prejudices against those deemed Other in terms of sexuality or gender. In her defence of novels from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which present gay, lesbian and transgender figures in ways often deemed unpalatable by readers and critics today, Heather Love writes: Texts that insist on social negativity underline the gap between aspiration and the actual. At odds with the wishful thinking that characterizes political criticism, they are held accountable for the realities that they represent and often end up being branded as internally homophobic, retrograde, or too depressing to be of use. These do have lot to tell us, though: they describe what it is like to beat disqualified identity, which at times can simply mean living with injury--not fixing it. (4) Such dark, ambivalent texts (Love 4) present experiences that include loss, alienation, and self-loathing and, as result, critics and readers have been inclined to reject them as antithetical to the progressive work of queer activists and scholars. …
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