“If you see something, say something”
While reading Middlesex, a certain quote, the origin of which I cannot place, kept popping into my head: “We accept the love we think we deserve.” Our sense of deserving in life is shaped the by the shame we cannot overcome. The characters in Eugenides’ novel each negotiate the embodiment of this feeling, preoccupied by the idea that they are failing some higher and objective standard, instead just failing each other and themselves.
Desdemona and Lefty both struggle with their love for one another because they sense an aspect of wrongness in it. That they perceive this is understandable, as certain rules are insurmountable in our society, which is made clear to us from the start. Even Desdemona’s own mother acted as a powerful force in her daughter’s forming of a sense of morality. By instilling a fear of shame in her daughter, through her anecdote that silk reveals the silk harvester’s purity, Desdemona forever carried the fear that her shame would announce itself for her. Crossing an ocean, even, proved an unsatisfying escape. Unfortunately, surrendering to one’s shame makes it nearly impossible to love. Desdemona and Lefty attempt to hurdle this block by ignoring it. They enter into an agreement which states, we can beat this if we become other people. But in abandoning their true selves, they abandoned, too, the origin of their true love.
The bond of siblings is incomparable. Growing up with an older brother, my interests were his interests. For a child whose pliable mind is busy as a bee grasping societal values, and simultaneously discovering on his or her own, a vast variety of emotions and sensations, tastes, dangers, standards, etc., learning right from wrong may be an overwhelmingly difficult concept to form. For example, taking your classmate’s lunch and eating it we are told is “bad,” as is cutting someone in line for the bathroom. To further complicate things, we learn of “very bad” and “unforgivingly bad.” We learn to “say something” if we “see something,” but at the same time, not to be a tattletale. Sorting out these values, which come with specific emphases attached, as a child, seems impossible to gauge. How to know right form wrong isn’t as easy as all the grown-ups let on. Especially if “trusting our instincts” is not always a trustworthy approach.
When my brother and I first got caught in sex play as young kids, I thought that my parents were going to send me to jail. I distinctly remember thinking, “Oh no, it’s over for me.” My parents didn’t discipline or threaten us in any such way, but I felt a sense of shame that kept me from playing with my brother for the next few days. The experience of doing something you like, but not wanting others to know, is a powerful force. It feels like the ultimate contradiction. And then, if caught, having to say sorry for doing something you conscientiously enjoyed, but knowing truly, you’re only sorry for having gotten caught. Similarly, the characters in Middlesex are not sure of what they’re sorry for, which makes the sense of shame and regret they drag around more difficult to cope with.
Tags: incest, Jeffrey Eugenides, love, Middlesex, Shame, surveillance
