Undoing Gender in Middlesex

Abstract

Exposing the compulsory heterosexuality as a socially constructed category in Jefrey EugenidesTheMiddlesex,this research work exposes the notion of fluidity of sexual identity. Eugenides creates CallieStephanides, the protagonist with ambiguous sexual self who goes through multiple sexual identities throughout the novel. Calliope, who changes her name to Cal when she assumes a male identity, puts him in a borderline that lies in between male and female. She claims that she has a male brain but was assumed to be female at birth. She/he insists that from the beginning of her life she had the ability to communicate between the genders, to see not with the monovision of one sex but in the stereoscope of both. Cal’s sexual identity as such is a matter of his performitivity. It reveals that compulsory heterosexuality as a norm is a means to exclude and dominate other; so the research focuses on dismantling the dichotomies like male/female and heterosexual/homosexual and advocates for a generous space where both poles of the dichotomies can co-exist without silencing and excluding the other.