Brother/Sister, Husband/Wife
Brother/Sister, Husband/Wife
The story that I’ve found most compelling about the first half of Middlesex is that of the narrator’s grandparents, Lefty and Desdemona. The tale of how their incestuous relationship arose is easily sympathized, their actions rendered justifiable by the circumstances from which they arose. After all, they were two siblings, orphaned while they were both young adults. After growing up together and sleeping in the same thinly separated room, they were living as husband and wife traditionally would, with Lefty going to the market during the day and Desdemona taking care of the house. All alone, with no family near and the uncertainty of their future due to the war, these two siblings were thrust together not only due to the aforementioned factors, but also out of love.
After their decision to get married, Lefty and Desdemona took measures to ensure that their secret would be kept. An elaborate charade of courtship was not only for the benefit of the other passengers on the ship, but for their own peace of mind. Creating new histories for themselves made them feel less like brother and sister because they no longer discussed that shared family history. But even that and ensuring their cousin’s silence could not keep Desdemona free from the guilt and wrongness of marrying her brother. She was plagued by the thought of their “crime” and anxious that it would manifest itself as a mutation in the bodies of their offspring.
Putting this book into the context of Foucault is interesting, particularly in light of his discussions of hereditary sexualities and my previous post that briefly discussed eugenics. Economics made sexuality a “concern of the state” (116), which is significant in light of the Great Depression and the fact that many people could not support their already existing family, much less the addition of more children. Similarly, heredity sexuality was very important because no one wanted sexual perversions to be inherited. The theory of “degenerescence” makes it possible for any and every type of “malady” to produce a pervert to produce other and sometimes unrelated birth defects in future generations (118). Desdemona was terrified that her children would suffer from disease because she had procreated with her brother. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch for her to think that the “wrongness” that had occurred between the two of them could extend to their children. Inevitably, to allay her fears Desdemona unknowingly imposed the eugenics movement upon herself and by extension, her family. After refusing her husband’s advances for quite some time, she eventually underwent voluntary surgery to ensure she would be able to have no more children, effectively ending her chances of passing on a perversion or other birth defects to any other children.
Tags: birth defects, eugenics, hereditary sexualities, incest, perversions
