Greek Love & Hermaphroditus
Middlesex hinges on questions about sexual identity, but the narrator’s cultural background informs this as well as most aspects of the novel. The juxtaposition between Greek and American culture comes with a juxtaposition of sexual histories and sexual views. The events leading up to Cal’s conception are essentially like the two “colliding” (a word Cal uses to describe her parents) –Tessie was still holding onto a more sensual and connected sexual experience, while her husband was fast getting drawn into America’s scientia sexualis.
Milt wants to guarantee a baby girl, so he suggests they use the new science on female ovulation and sperm to do it. All he wants to do is have Tessie track her temperature — of course the other thing to note is this is because of some more scientia sexualis quackish-ness “sperm carrying male chromosomes had been observed to swim faster than those carrying female chromosomes”
(Eugenides 8). But Milt’s plan is in fact almost offensive to her, “…behind her sarcasm was a serious moral reservation. To tamper with something as mysterious and miraculous as the birth of a child was an act of hubris” (Eugenides 9). The word hubris references a power dynamic – it means excessive pride, or confidence in one’s capabilities that stems from being in a position of power. Milt, with the power of scientific knowledge, wants to control and define conception, something that Tess (the one who takes the kids to religious services) probably sees as something that should remain in the hands of the heavens, but also something that should be a spontaneous act of love between two parents, “It was [Tessie’s] belief that an embryo could sense the amount of love with which it had been created”
(Eugenides 8-9). This idea is much more in the ars erotica tradition and in opposition to scientia sexualis. And I think the Greeks have a decent stake in ars erotica:
For example, Plato’s Symposium is a masterwork on the subject of Eros, the concept of intimate love. His characters give speeches in praise of Eros and its different attributes. The first speaker praises military male-to-male relations as bonding experience and an incentive to fight. Foucault mentioned the ars erotica tendencies of Greek culture, “In Greece, truth and sex were linked, in the form of pedagogy, by the transmission of a precious knowledge from one body to another; sex served as a medium for initiation into learning” (Foucault 61). The Greek language has several words for love, but none are interchangeable because each is representative of a particular kind. In a way I view it as analogous to scientia sexualis – except the Greeks were exploring and expounding on the philosophy of love. So Tessie is more of a vessel for this kind of knowledge, and Milt is a follower of the American scientific cohort.
Interesting to note also that the grandmother, Desdemona, a pillar and promoter of old world Greek tradition, was right in her prediction about the sex of the baby. Milt had science on his side and therefore got to have a false sense of being right about Cal’s gender. But in the end Desdemona, whose knowledge of sex is connected to the ancient Greek concept of a truth/sex link, is more right, because she predicted how Cal would identify. It seemed to me that this meant she was on a more connected wavelength, unfettered by the sometimes blindingly empirical knowledge of science, and so the author endowed her with the power to see Cal’s truer being.
Cal might be a scientist’s dream in America, but in a Greek context he isn’t some medical abnormality, his intersex has deep roots into the past. Greek mythology holds some supportive heritage: Aphrodite and Hermes had a beautiful son named Hermaphroditus, who was bathing when a water nymph approached him. Salmacis was taken in by his beauty and begged him to be with her. When he rejected her she pleaded with the gods to keep them together always – so the gods merged their bodies together and the first intersex being was born. I also should say that eros is embodied in the god Eros (aka Cupid). The Greek god of intimate love is also Aphrodite’s son, making him the brother of Hermaphroditus.
Tags: Eros, Greece, Hermaphroditus, Middlesex, Plato
April 29th, 2013 at 3:19 pm
Dear Rachel.
These are lovely connections all around, from the ancient to the contemporary worlds of Greek stories and cultural practices and the way they have “lodged” or not in the American 20th century setting. The Foucault connections really work here–and did you notice the novel’s citation of his work?
Best, Lee