The Myth of Eugenides, or Mr. Good Genes
Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
Genes tell the mythology of the contemporary age. Cal Eugenides traces his personal mythology through an unlikely series of events that conspire to create the perfect circumstances to produce Cal exactly as he/she is. This tale is spun like most other myths, with fibers of truth and patterns of exaggeration, but it reflects a very […]
The Myth of Eugenides, or Mr. Good Genes
Tags: Eugenides, Genetics, Middlesex, Mythology, Narrative, Science
Posted in April 30, Eli Bierman | No Comments »
“If you see something, say something”
Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
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 […]
“If you see something, say something”
Tags: incest, Jeffrey Eugenides, love, Middlesex, Shame, surveillance
Posted in April 30, Sophia Curran | No Comments »
What Lies Between
Monday, April 29th, 2013
Throughout Books One and Two of Jeffery Eugenides’ Middlesex, we the reader are placed in the unusual position of casting our hopes with the success of a character, Cal, whose sexual identity—and, correspondently his path through the world—is quite unlike that of the overwhelming majority of his readers. This trick is nothing new (I am not an […]
What Lies Between
Tags: Gaze, hermaphrodite, incest, Middlesex
Posted in April 30, Sam Barnes | No Comments »
Greek Love & Hermaphroditus
Monday, April 29th, 2013
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 […]
Greek Love & Hermaphroditus
Tags: Eros, Greece, Hermaphroditus, Middlesex, Plato
Posted in April 30, Rachel Kisty | 1 Comment »
Family Fun
Sunday, April 28th, 2013
Although predominantly recognized as a tale of a sexual identity crisis, Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex also devotes a large part of its focus to the role of family. This shifting institution includes characters such as Uncle Pete, who prides himself as being a medical expert with the authority to instruct Milton about the proper time to […]
Family Fun
Tags: incest, Middlesex, Sexual Identitty
Posted in April 30, Ariella Michal Medows | No Comments »
Incest: The Universal Taboo
Sunday, April 28th, 2013
Before I started reading the first two books of Middlesex, I automatically assumed I would be writing a blog post about the nature of being born intersex and societal labels and the prejudices that arise because of those labels, etc. But as I started reading the novel, I was shocked to see how little of […]
Incest: The Universal Taboo
Tags: Foucault, incest, Middlesex, taboo
Posted in April 30, Nadia Cook-Loshilov | 1 Comment »