As an epic family saga depicting multiple generations of a Greek immigrant family to the U.S., Middlesex emphasizes the importance of ancestry and underlines that everyone’s fate is (at least in part) determined by their social and biological inheritance. In many ways, this is presented as a positive thing, and emphasizes the value of family, history, and culture. Yet this determinism also causes trouble for the characters, as not everything they inherit is desirable. Moreover, feeling like their existence is controlled by their inherited fate robs them of their own autonomy. Ultimately, the book suggests that although ancestry and inheritance are important parts of life, they are not the only factor controlling a person’s fate.
One way in which the novel shows how people’s fates are determined by their ancestry is through biological inheritance, yet this depiction of biology is closely tied to social factors. Cal inherits a recessive gene that makes him intersex, which occurred because of the actions of his grandparents, who got married and had a child despite the fact that they were brother and sister. While the book emphasizes that biological inheritance is a significant factor determining a person’s fate, it also indicate that it doesn’t make much sense to consider biology in isolation. Instead, biological inheritance is intimately linked to culture, which can similarly be passed down through generations and influence children’s fates.
The incest that leads to Cal being intersex is a perfect example of how biological and social forms of inheritance interact. Not only does Cal inherit the gene that has been within his family for 250 years, but incest itself is also “passed down” within his family. Incest was a normal practice in the isolated town, Bithynios, where the Stephanides family come from. However, even after they relocate to America it continues when Lefty and Desdemona’s son Milton (himself a product of incest) marries the daughter, Tessie, of his parents’ cousin, Sourmelina. In a sense, it seems as though the Stephanides family are fated to have incestuous relationships. Moreover, incest then creates a biological fate for subsequent generations through the gene that makes Cal intersex. Cal encapsulates this fusing of social and biological heritage when he writes, “Parents are supposed to pass down physical traits to their children, but it’s my belief that all sorts of other things get passed down, too: motifs, scenarios, even fates.”
The theme of ancestry, inheritance, and fate is also explored through the motif of Greek mythology, which also comes to have a kind of clever double significance in this regard. Greek mythology is Cal’s cultural inheritance because he is from a Greek American family. Yet questions of ancestry, inheritance, and fate are also important themes within Greek mythology. Cal describes himself as having an “obsession” with fate that is linked not only to the biological “fate” he was given by being intersex, but also to his cultural heritage. At one point, he jokes, “Sorry if I get a little Homeric at times. That’s genetic, too.” The humor lies within the fact that although Cal is ethnically Greek, getting Homeric (speaking in a way reminiscent of Homer, the ancient Greek writer of the Iliad and Odyssey) is not truly genetic—instead it is a matter of culture. Yet this statement illustrates the notion that Cal’s life has been determined by his ancestral heritage.
The influence of Cal’s heritage on his fate is further emphasized through the meaning of his birth name, Calliope, which is the name of Muse in charge of epic poetry. In Greek mythology, the Muses are goddesses who preside over the science and arts, giving inspiration to people. Reflecting on the meaning of the name Calliope, Cal says, “Hers was the duty to live out a mythical life in the actual world, mine to tell about it now.” (Note that by “her” he means his former self, before he underwent gender transition.) The word “duty” indicates that Cal’s name gave him a particular fate, and that by changing his name (along with his gender identity), he was able to have a different fate while still being connected to the “mythical life” his birth name bestowed on him.
Indeed, the novel ultimately lands on the idea that the fates people inherit, while they can be difficult to escape, can still be changed. Cal states this most explicitly in the following lines: “In the twentieth century, genetics brought the Ancient Greek notion of fate into our very cells. This new century we’ve just begun has found something different […] free will is making a comeback. Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.” This is a crucial quotation because it shows how biological determinism (the idea that people’s fates are predetermined by their genes) is in some ways simply a reimagining of the Ancient Greek idea of fate. Ultimately, the novel rejects this deterministic view, showing that while ancestry and inheritance play a strong part in shaping a person’s fate, they do not wholly determine it.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Ancestry, Inheritance, and Fate ThemeTracker
Ancestry, Inheritance, and Fate Quotes in Middlesex
Sing now, O Muse, of the recessive mutation on my fifth chromosome! Sing how it bloomed two and a half centuries ago on the slopes of Mount Olympus, while the goats bleated and the olives dropped. Sing how it passed down through nine generations, gathering invisibly within the polluted pool of the Stephanides family. And sing how Providence, in the guise of a massacre, sent the gene flying again; how it blew like a seed across the sea to America, where it drifted through our industrial rains until it fell to earth in the fertile soil of my mother’s own midwestern womb.
Sorry if I get a little Homeric at times. That’s genetic, too.
My grandparents had every reason to believe that Sourmelina would keep their secret. She’d come to America with a secret of her own, a secret that would be guarded by our family until Sourmelina died in 1979, whereupon, like everyone’s secrets, it was posthumously declassified, so that people began to speak of “Sourmelina’s girlfriends.” A secret kept, in other words, only by the loosest definition, so that now—as I get ready to leak the information myself—I feel only a sight twinge of filial guilt.
Sourmelina’s secret (as Aunt Zo put it): “Lina was one of those women they named the island after.”
Parents are supposed to pass down physical traits to their children, but it’s my belief that all sorts of other things get passed down, too: motifs, scenarios, even fates.
The truth was that in those days Desdemona was struggling against assimilationist pressures she couldn’t resist. Though she had lived in America as an eternal exile, a visitor for forty years, certain bits of her adopted country had been seeping under the locked doors of her disapproval.
Until we came to Baker & Inglis my friends and I had always felt completely American. But now the Bracelets’ upturned noses suggested that there was another America to which we could never gain admittance. All of a sudden America wasn’t about hamburgers and hot rods anymore. It was about the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock. It was about something that had happened for two minutes four hundred years ago, instead of everything that had happened since. Instead of everything that was happening now!
I suspect that Chapter Eleven’s transformation was caused in no small part by that day on his bed when his life was decided by lottery. Am I projecting? Saddling my brother with my own obsessions with chance and fate? Maybe. But as we planned a trip—a trip that had been promised when Milton was saved from another war—it appeared that Chapter Eleven, taking chemical trips of his own, was trying to escape what he had dimly perceived while wrapped in an afghan: the possibility that not only his draft number was decided by lottery, but that everything was.
In 1974, instead of reclaiming his roots by visiting Bursa, my father renounced them. Forced to choose between his native land and his ancestral one, he didn’t hesitate.
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.
In addition, the subject has been raised in the Greek Orthodox tradition, with its strongly sex-defined roles. In general the parents seem assimilationist and very “all-American” in their outlook, but the presence of this deeper ethnic identity should not be overlooked.
I’d like to work in the embassy in Istanbul. I’ve put in a request to be transferred there. It would bring me full circle.
Until that happens, I do my part this way. I watch the bread baker in the döner restaurant downstairs […] Stephanides, an American, grandchild of Greeks, admires this Turkish immigrant to Germany, this Gastarbeiter, as he bakes bread on Hauptstrasse here in the year 2001. We’re all made up of many parts, other halves. Not just me.
There have been hermaphrodites around forever, Cal. Forever. Plato said that the original human being was a hermaphrodite. Did you know that? The original person was two halves, one male, one female. Then these got separated. That’s why everybody’s always searching for their other half. Except for us. We’ve got both halves already.
