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==Setting==
==Setting==
The beginning of the novel is set in 1922 during the [[Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922)|war between Greece and Turkey]] in Bithynios, a small village on [[Mount Nif|Mount Olympus]].<ref name="Connelly">{{cite news |title=A Tale of Two, Er... Jeffrey Eugenides' 'Middlesex' features a novel heroine/hero |author=Connelly, Sherryl |newspaper=[[New York Daily News]] |date=2002-09-15 |url=http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/entertainment/2002/09/15/2002-09-15_a_tale_of_two__er______jeffr.html |accessdate=2010-05-20 |archiveurl=http://www.webcitation.org/61c3AbBzU |archivedate=2011-09-11 }}</ref> For hundreds of years, the people of Bithynios have engaged in incestuous marriages.<ref name="Gelman265">{{Harvnb|Gelman|2004|p=265}}</ref> It is common for third cousins to marry; their offspring—siblings—also become cousins.<ref name="Bartkowski38">{{Harvnb|Bartkowski|2008|p=38}}</ref> In 1913, many people moved away from Bithynios because of the [[Balkan Wars]]. Thus, by 1922, approximately one hundred people live in the village with fewer than half being female.<ref name="Eugenides28">{{Harvnb|Eugenides|2002|p=28}}</ref> Due to this decline in Bithynios' population, there are few eligible girls that Lefty can marry.<ref name="Eugenides28"/> Lacking a post office, a bank, and shops, the village has only a church and a tavern.<ref name="Eugenides28–29">{{Harvnb|Eugenides|2002|pp=28–29}}</ref>
The beginning of the novel is set in 1922 during the [[Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922)|war between Greece and Turkey]] in Bithynios, a small village on [[Uludağ|Mount Olympus]].<ref name="Connelly">{{cite news |title=A Tale of Two, Er... Jeffrey Eugenides' 'Middlesex' features a novel heroine/hero |author=Connelly, Sherryl |newspaper=[[New York Daily News]] |date=2002-09-15 |url=http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/entertainment/2002/09/15/2002-09-15_a_tale_of_two__er______jeffr.html |accessdate=2010-05-20 |archiveurl=http://www.webcitation.org/61c3AbBzU |archivedate=2011-09-11 }}</ref> For hundreds of years, the people of Bithynios have engaged in incestuous marriages.<ref name="Gelman265">{{Harvnb|Gelman|2004|p=265}}</ref> It is common for third cousins to marry; their offspring—siblings—also become cousins.<ref name="Bartkowski38">{{Harvnb|Bartkowski|2008|p=38}}</ref> In 1913, many people moved away from Bithynios because of the [[Balkan Wars]]. Thus, by 1922, approximately one hundred people live in the village with fewer than half being female.<ref name="Eugenides28">{{Harvnb|Eugenides|2002|p=28}}</ref> Due to this decline in Bithynios' population, there are few eligible girls that Lefty can marry.<ref name="Eugenides28"/> Lacking a post office, a bank, and shops, the village has only a church and a tavern.<ref name="Eugenides28–29">{{Harvnb|Eugenides|2002|pp=28–29}}</ref>


Lefty and Desdemona move to Detroit, where the 1913 [[Ford Model T]] [[assembly line]] was in effect. Workers revolted by leaving the factories because they could not acclimate themselves to the new speed. By 1922, the new workers are able to match the pace of the assembly line. The work is divided among groups of unskilled workers—allowing the company to employ or dismiss anybody.<ref name="Eugenides95">{{Harvnb|Eugenides|2002|p=95}}</ref> At Detroit, Desdemona finds work as a supervisor of girls who make silk [[chador]]s for the [[Nation of Islam]], a religious organization founded in Detroit, Michigan, by [[Wallace Fard Muhammad|Wallace D. Fard Muhammad]] in the 1930s.<ref name="Griffith">{{cite journal |last1=Griffith |first1=Michael |authorlink=Michael Griffith (novelist) |year=2003 |title='Siblings of the Genus Erroneous': New Fiction in Review. |journal=[[The Southern Review]] |issn=00384534 |volume=39 |issue=1 |page=10 }}</ref>
Lefty and Desdemona move to Detroit, where the 1913 [[Ford Model T]] [[assembly line]] was in effect. Workers revolted by leaving the factories because they could not acclimate themselves to the new speed. By 1922, the new workers are able to match the pace of the assembly line. The work is divided among groups of unskilled workers—allowing the company to employ or dismiss anybody.<ref name="Eugenides95">{{Harvnb|Eugenides|2002|p=95}}</ref> At Detroit, Desdemona finds work as a supervisor of girls who make silk [[chador]]s for the [[Nation of Islam]], a religious organization founded in Detroit, Michigan, by [[Wallace Fard Muhammad|Wallace D. Fard Muhammad]] in the 1930s.<ref name="Griffith">{{cite journal |last1=Griffith |first1=Michael |authorlink=Michael Griffith (novelist) |year=2003 |title='Siblings of the Genus Erroneous': New Fiction in Review. |journal=[[The Southern Review]] |issn=00384534 |volume=39 |issue=1 |page=10 }}</ref>
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Cal resembles the hero Odysseus. Just as [[Poseidon]] and [[Athena]] beset Odysseus, so did the chromosomes hassle Cal.<ref name="Salij">{{cite news |title=Neither here nor there: 'Middlesex' is about a girl who becomes a boy and the division between Detroit and Grosse Pointe. |author=Salij, Marta |newspaper=[[Detroit Free Press]] |date=2002-09-25 |url=http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-7429373_ITM |accessdate=2010-03-21 }} {{subscription required}}</ref> Christina McCarroll of the ''[[Christian Science Monitor]]'' wrote that "Eugenides wrangles with a destiny that mutates and recombines like restless chromosomes, in a novel of extraordinary flexibility, scope, and emotional depth."<ref name="McCarroll">{{cite news |title=A look at the Pulitzer winners: Middlesex |author=McCarroll, Christina |newspaper=[[Christian Science Monitor]] |date=2003-04-10 |url=http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0410/p21s01-bogn.html |accessdate=2010-03-22 |archiveurl=http://www.webcitation.org/5oPbTcPRR |archivedate=2010-03-22 }}</ref> Book reviewer Frances Bartkowski identified Callie to be like a [[Chimera (mythology)|Chimera]]—a monster composed of multiple animal parts—in that in the end, she would transform into her own sibling of the other sex.<ref name="Bartkowski40">{{Harvnb|Bartkowski|2008|p=40}}</ref> When Callie is in New York, she goes to the [[New York Public Library]] and searches for the meaning of the word "[[hermaphrodite]]".<ref name="Bartkowski41">{{Harvnb|Bartkowski|2008|p=41}}</ref> She becomes shocked when the dictionary entry concludes with "See synonyms at MONSTER."<ref name="Bartkowski41"/><ref name="Eugenides430">{{Harvnb|Eugenides|2002|p=430}}</ref> Callie is not a [[Frankenstein]]; she is more like [[Bigfoot]] or the [[Loch Ness Monster]]. Scholar Frances Bartkowski states that Eugenides' message is "we must let our monsters out—they demand and deserve recognition—they are us: our same, self, others."<ref name="Bartkowski41"/> The book discusses [[Sapphic love]]; Callie has sexual relations with the Obscure Object, her closest friend.<ref name="Turrentine"/><ref name="Bartkowski40"/>
Cal resembles the hero Odysseus. Just as [[Poseidon]] and [[Athena]] beset Odysseus, so did the chromosomes hassle Cal.<ref name="Salij">{{cite news |title=Neither here nor there: 'Middlesex' is about a girl who becomes a boy and the division between Detroit and Grosse Pointe. |author=Salij, Marta |newspaper=[[Detroit Free Press]] |date=2002-09-25 |url=http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-7429373_ITM |accessdate=2010-03-21 }} {{subscription required}}</ref> Christina McCarroll of the ''[[Christian Science Monitor]]'' wrote that "Eugenides wrangles with a destiny that mutates and recombines like restless chromosomes, in a novel of extraordinary flexibility, scope, and emotional depth."<ref name="McCarroll">{{cite news |title=A look at the Pulitzer winners: Middlesex |author=McCarroll, Christina |newspaper=[[Christian Science Monitor]] |date=2003-04-10 |url=http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0410/p21s01-bogn.html |accessdate=2010-03-22 |archiveurl=http://www.webcitation.org/5oPbTcPRR |archivedate=2010-03-22 }}</ref> Book reviewer Frances Bartkowski identified Callie to be like a [[Chimera (mythology)|Chimera]]—a monster composed of multiple animal parts—in that in the end, she would transform into her own sibling of the other sex.<ref name="Bartkowski40">{{Harvnb|Bartkowski|2008|p=40}}</ref> When Callie is in New York, she goes to the [[New York Public Library]] and searches for the meaning of the word "[[hermaphrodite]]".<ref name="Bartkowski41">{{Harvnb|Bartkowski|2008|p=41}}</ref> She becomes shocked when the dictionary entry concludes with "See synonyms at MONSTER."<ref name="Bartkowski41"/><ref name="Eugenides430">{{Harvnb|Eugenides|2002|p=430}}</ref> Callie is not a [[Frankenstein]]; she is more like [[Bigfoot]] or the [[Loch Ness Monster]]. Scholar Frances Bartkowski states that Eugenides' message is "we must let our monsters out—they demand and deserve recognition—they are us: our same, self, others."<ref name="Bartkowski41"/> The book discusses [[Sapphic love]]; Callie has sexual relations with the Obscure Object, her closest friend.<ref name="Turrentine"/><ref name="Bartkowski40"/>


Daniel Soar of ''[[London Review of Books]]'' opined that [[Mount Nif|Olympus]], a parallel to Bithynios, served well as the setting of a debacle that is the "story's catalyst". Legend denoted that after a cocoon dropped into her teacup, Princess Si Ling-chi, who was resting under a [[mulberry tree]], conceived silk. The princess ordered her maid to walk after grabbing ahold of the thread's loose end. In Mount Olympus during [[Justinian I|Justinian]]'s days, silkworm eggs were contraband transported from China to Byzantium by missionaries. A parallel is drawn when Desdemona, a raiser of silk cocoons, attempts to bring them to Detroit. Because the silkworm eggs are considered parasites by the immigration officials, Desdemona must dispose of them. Soar noted that "for the three generations of Greek Americans who people ''Middlesex'', the mulberry trees of Mount Olympus are an appropriately antique beginning: they are the egg inside which everything began".<ref name="Soar"/>
Daniel Soar of ''[[London Review of Books]]'' opined that [[Uludağ|Olympus]], a parallel to Bithynios, served well as the setting of a debacle that is the "story's catalyst". Legend denoted that after a cocoon dropped into her teacup, Princess Si Ling-chi, who was resting under a [[mulberry tree]], conceived silk. The princess ordered her maid to walk after grabbing ahold of the thread's loose end. In Mount Olympus during [[Justinian I|Justinian]]'s days, silkworm eggs were contraband transported from China to Byzantium by missionaries. A parallel is drawn when Desdemona, a raiser of silk cocoons, attempts to bring them to Detroit. Because the silkworm eggs are considered parasites by the immigration officials, Desdemona must dispose of them. Soar noted that "for the three generations of Greek Americans who people ''Middlesex'', the mulberry trees of Mount Olympus are an appropriately antique beginning: they are the egg inside which everything began".<ref name="Soar"/>


===Genres===
===Genres===
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