M-Sex Seven I'll get you yet, masked marauder!
In your opinion, is there a villian in "Middlesex"? Who? Why?
posted by JenniNapa at
8:17 PM
posted by JenniNapa at
8:17 PM
Fed up with a traditional book club where few people were showing up for meetings anymore and even fewer were reading the books, we decided to form an online group. This way, we can have an actual, well thought-out conversation about a novel or book and nobody even has to clean their house.
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Life of Pi by Yann Martel |
| Make suggestions in the comments of any post! |
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Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression by Brooke Shields |
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The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler |
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Devil in the White City by Erik Larson |
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Middlesex: A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides |
4 Comments:
hmmm..... I don't really think there's a villain in the true sense of the word, but I do feel that if it wasn't for their old doctor friend, Cal and his family would not have endured so much. I guess since I haven't heard much about things like this occurring, where a baby can appear to be one sex when it is actually another, I'm still finding it hard to believe that it would not have been noticed if the doctor had done a thorough examination. I'm a visual person - I need to see it to believe it.
By
PCOSMama, at 3:58 PM
Ohh, pcosmama, the doctor as the villian is good! Though I think that it might have been way back when they were young that made him the villian, and he didn't even know he was being villianous!
He made a big deal about how dangerous incestious relationships could be for the children of such unions. Unwittingly, he scared Desdemona badly and damaged her relationship with Lefty. If there was a vilian in Middlesex, it was the doctor because of the additional guilt he inflicted without even realizing it on Desdemona.
Good question, Jenni! I can't wait to see what others have to say about this.
By
MamaChristy, at 1:08 PM
Oh, those are good comments! I couldn't think of a single thing to say when I read the question. :) I hope somebody else has interesting ideas too, cuz I don't.
By
mamashine, at 1:05 PM
I think it was interesting how graphically Cal describes the destruction of the doctor's family. Having been through such horrors, you can kind of forgive him for being an old, decrepit man who had seen too much (literally) and wasn't able or willing to see more beyond the most obvious. Parents want girl, see what looks pretty much like a girl, it's a girl. Period. Yes, his sight was bad, but I think Cal needed to think that he had an additional reason to not blame the doctor for not catching his condition at the very beginning.
At the same time, who's to say that if the doctor had told his parents, they wouldn't have done the surgery then when Callie was an infant and unable to decide to live as a man, with his genitalia intact, such as it was. I think in some ways, the doctor spared him from an entire lifetime of confusion. I think there was something about Cal's "normal" childhood that did help him weather the storm he endured as a teenager. Even though he probably knew something was a little off about him, how could he have known what it was. But Callie knew his parents and the rest of his family loved him. I think that contributed a lot to the short time he spent in CA. Without that, perhaps he might have ended up like the stories he alluded to.
By
Kate, at 9:00 PM
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