Middlesex

The house on Middlesex Boulevard represents the apotheosis of all Cal’s experiences: Cal lives in between the new world, as symbolized by the US, and the Old, as symbolized by Greece; immigrant experience is central to Cal’s life. His grandmother’s faith in her silver spoon rests side by side with her son’s faith in the ideologies of modern science. The belief in the village juxtaposes the city factories of Detroit. The realities of Detroit are complicated by history, race, and class. Always in between, Cal exemplifies something central to the American experience: the ability for reinvention. As he states clearly, near the end of the novel, “Here was my home, Middlesex” (519). This refers not only to the actual house but also to his liminal state in the simplistic binaries of gender and sex.

He understands that he was born at a special moment in history: “In that optimistic, postwar America, which I caught the tail end of, everybody was the master of his own destiny” (9-10). This seems improbable given the origins of the Stephanides family. Desdemona and Lefty leave a burning Smyrna behind—a grand city that, tragically, never fully recovers—to pave their unconventional way in the US. When Cal’s grandmother predicts that he’ll be a boy, the old country collides with the new. In fact, he’s born a girl, at least as the doctor interprets it at the time. This initially represents something about the immigrant experience that is about loss: Desdemona’s “American-born son had been proven right and, with this fresh defeat, the old country, in which she still tried to live despite its being four thousand miles and thirty-eight years away, receded one more notch” (17). Eventually, however, that experience proves crucial to Cal’s development and to the value of preserving tradition: Desdemona is right about his chromosomes being typical of a male child, and it’s fitting that the novel ends with his respecting the traditions of the old country: He waits in the doorway, helping his father’s spirit ascend.

Not only was he born in a particular time, but he was born in a particular way: He’s neither one thing nor the other, neither American nor Greek, neither female nor male. He embodies a liminal space that allows him to navigate the complexities of his own existence and of America. His experience of his awakening sexuality and his understanding of his own identity echoes all of this. As he discovers himself, it’s “an education both in what was and what might be” (329). This could easily be applied to the situation in which his grandparents found themselves, unhoused and orphaned, caught in between the forces of history and the possibilities of the future. Cal’s journey toward self-discovery reverberates with his immigrant history. That he’s not one or the other is a liberating experience.

The house itself helps release the family from the confines of its history: Middlesex, with its strange architecture and large windows, frees the family from the memories of the past. They’re able to create their own narrative, with wide-open vistas and hidden cul-de-sacs. Certainly, the family occupies a place of privilege: The Hercules Hot Dogs franchise has allowed them the wealth to move to the suburbs and to improve their circumstances. However, they also symbolize a particular journey. Like Cal’s awareness of his unique place in the world, that he’ll forever be something in between, the place in which the family dwells never accommodates a binary: It’s both a wonderland of American prosperity and a place of reverent difference. Ultimately, Middlesex—the person, the place, the idea, and the book itself—is meant to symbolize the American dream itself, come to fruition, in all its confounding and binary-defying glory.