The Obscure Object is a girl who attends Baker & Inglis with Callie and is also in Mr. da Silva’s advanced English class. (Her name is a nickname Callie chose for her in order to preserve her privacy in the narrative.) She is beautiful, slender, and covered in freckles, and comes from a wealthy WASP family. At school, she ignores Callie, but after they are cast in a production of Antigone together they become friends. Their friendship is very intimate, and escalates quickly. Callie ends up coming on vacation with the Obscure Object’s family to Petoskey. During this trip, after both girls hook up with boys, they start having sex with each other. When the Object’s brother, Jerome, catches them having sex and Callie gets hit by a tractor while running away from him, the Object takes Callie to the hospital, holding her in her lap and kissing her. After this incident (which leads to Cal discovering he is intersex, undergoing gender transition, and running away to San Francisco), the two lovers never see each other again.
The Obscure Object Quotes in Middlesex
The Middlesex quotes below are all either spoken by The Obscure Object or refer to The Obscure Object. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Book 4: The Oracular Vulva
Quotes
Some people inherit houses; others paintings or highly insured violin bows. Still others get a Japanese tansu or a famous name. I got a recessive gene on my fifth chromosome and some very rare family jewels indeed.
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The Obscure Object Quotes in Middlesex
The Middlesex quotes below are all either spoken by The Obscure Object or refer to The Obscure Object. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Book 4: The Oracular Vulva
Quotes
Some people inherit houses; others paintings or highly insured violin bows. Still others get a Japanese tansu or a famous name. I got a recessive gene on my fifth chromosome and some very rare family jewels indeed.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
