Middlesex: Allusions 7 key examples

Given Western society's general distaste for anything that defies the male/female gender/sex binary, it is significant that Cal/lie's name be that of a goddess—of someone worshiped and revered by their society for divine creativity. While other regions of the world, pre-colonization, boasted nonbinary gender and sexuality systems (i.e., bakla from the Philippines), Europe was not one of them. Gender-bending nonetheless exists in Western literary canon—especially in ancient Greek mythology. To give a prescient example: Achilles, the famous Greek hero and demigod, is transformed into a woman by his divine mother in order to temporarily prevent him from going to war. The name Calliope not only situates Cal/lie as a Muse or an epic narrator, but as a figure larger than life: as a figure spawn of the ancient, sometimes genderless deities that haunt the home of Cal/lie's ancestors. The power to shift sex and gender is a godly one in ancient Greek mythology. It is a gift Cal/lie has clearly inherited. 

Cal/lie mentions Tiresias by name in this passage, comparing their life experience to his. In The Odyssey, the Greek goddess Hera transforms Tiresias into a woman for seven years. 

In addition to Tiresias' androgyny, Cal/lie also relates to Tiresias' narrative role and genre. Like Tiresias, Cal/lie embarks on a bold odyssey through life, set out on a journey of self-discovery. As a narrator, Cal/lie embodies the epic tradition behind Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, relaying a larger-than-life tale of fate, tragedy, conflict, and personal growth. While sex and gender are an important part of both Cal/lie and Tiresias' stories, neither story is entirely focused on sex or gender. Both The Odyssey and Middlesex center questions of home, family, and diaspora. 

Wilson was known for his development of the "epic of evolution," a mythological narrative structure that combines principles of sociology, evolutionary biology and genetic science, and religion. It could be argued that Middlesex is one such "epic of evolution," chronicling the historical, interpersonal, and scientific events leading up to a singular genetic event: Cal/lie's gene-linked intersexuality. 

The gene Cal/lie ponders in the above passage, however, has a far less concrete role or identity than their recessive gene. In a common misinterpretation of genetic science—or perhaps in an attempt to be literary, not precise—Cal/lie links their grandparents' incestuous feelings to a single gene. In reality, such complex social phenomena are never the result of one gene, but always the result of several, working in tandem with various environmental and social influences. 

Smyrna may be one of the incomprehensibly violent historical events that prompted Eliot's nihilistic writing tendencies—hence, the reference here. T. S. Eliot's poetry was heavily influenced by World War I and its immeasurable human cost, with an entire generation of young men wiped out in just a few years. Eliot's nihilism directly related to the scale of destruction, only made possible by modern means of industrializing warfare. 

Including an excerpt from The Waste Land here helps set the scene of Lefty and Desdemona's escape from Europe. Surrounded by violence on such a large scale, they turn in hope and desperation to the American Dream, looking to flee from the horror that was Europe during the first half of the 20th century. 

Though originally from Samothrace in Greece, Winged Victory resides in the Lourve after being stolen (or, put euphemistically, "acquired") by the French in 1884. Winged Victory actually still possesses her wings; the statue does not, however, have a head.  The statue is a representation of Nike, ancient Greek goddess of victory (usually related to battle, though Nike's powers extended to other contests). 

The above metaphor is in some ways odd and contradictory. On the one hand, it envisions Desdemona as a goddess of victory, powerful and brave. Yet at the same time, she lies captive, ready to be "carted off to a conqueror's museum." This imagery captures Desdemona's simultaneous feelings of freedom and entrapment in her chosen relationship. 

Ironically, Darwin himself rejected eugenics as a valid interpretation of his work, opposing the theorizing of Francis Galton (father of eugenic science). Darwin also contested the work of his contemporary, Lamarck, known for theories of biological progressivism. Lamarck and his fellow progressivists asserted that all evolution moved towards creating a perfect, ideally-adapted organism. This conception followed Biblical logic, often placing humans on top of the evolutionary pyramid with relatively underdeveloped animal species underneath. Darwin did not agree with this philosophy, asserting that nature was not progressing toward anything; no human, therefore, could fall short of being evolutionarily perfect, because nature has no ideal. 

The "island" in this passage is a clear allusion to Sappho, a famous ancient Greek poet even better known in the Western canon for her close emotional and physical relationships with women. Sappho resided on the Greek isle of Lesbos; it is from both her name, and the name of her residence, that English derives the words "sapphic" and "lesbian."

Sourmelina is one more in a long line of Cal/lie's family members to express some form of what early 20th century sexologists would have called sexual deviancy. As an intersex person, Cal/lie would have also been classed as a sexual deviant, along with Lefty and Desdemona due to their incestuous relationship. Incest, lesbian sexuality, and intersexuality are all extremely different expressions of human sex and sexuality; yet, contemporaneous scientists and academics likely would have roped Lefty, Desdemona, Sourmelina, and Cal/lie together, condemning their deviancy and citing a singular, common source: genetic unfitness, or degeneracy.