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Book 1: An Immodest Proposal
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Middlesex, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Rebirth vs. Continuity
Ancestry, Inheritance, and Fate
False Binaries
Migration, Ethnicity, and the American Dream
Secrets
Summary
Analysis
According to Chinese legend, silk was discovered when a silkworm cocoon fell into the teacup of a princess and began to unravel. Cal compares this story to himself unravelling his own story. Desdemona, Lefty, and Dr. Philobosian get to Athens, where they receive papers and inoculations in preparation for the trip to America. During this time, there is a ritual in which those leaving for America hold a ball of yarn and their loved ones standing on the pier hold the string, and as the ship pulls away the string unspools until finally the yarn is released to the wind.
The ritual of holding a ball of yarn highlights the fact that immigration to the U.S. was a bittersweet endeavor. However excited and optimistic migrants might have been about their new life, they still had to face the unbearable pain and uncertainty of being separated from their loved ones, possibly forever.
Themes
In Athens, Desdemona gets an emergency Greek passport under her mother’s maiden name, which will allow her to marry Lefty. They board the ship separately and do not speak for the whole first day of the journey. Dr. Philobosian remains suicidal. After three days at sea, Lefty introduces himself to Desdemona as if they have never met before. They pretend it is a “coincidence” that they are both traveling to Detroit. Meanwhile, other passengers on the ship discuss the “budding romance,” and speculate over whether the two are a good match. When Lefty and Desdemona are seen to be walking arm-in-arm, one passenger boasts that he introduced them, while another exclaims that their supposed class difference means they won’t work as a couple.
Lefty and Desdemona’s pretend meeting is a much needed distraction and a kind of rebirth for them after the trauma of Smyrna (as well as the anxiety of engaging in an illicit relationship as brother and sister). Yet it also provides a welcome opportunity for distraction and healing for the other passengers on the ship. Traumatized by everything they are leaving behind in Europe, the passengers focus on Lefty and Desdemona’s romance in order to keep their minds on newness, rebirth, and the future.
Themes
Desdemona and Lefty are thrilled that they are successfully managing to trick everyone. Over time, they begin to believe their own performance. Cal comments that this was actually the whole point: they could have just boarded the ship pretending to be engaged already, but pretended not to know each other in order to “fool […] themselves.” Like everyone else on the ship, Lefty and Desdemona are using the journey to America as a chance for self-reinvention and to imagine a different future. On the eighth day of the journey, Lefty proposes; Desdemona fakes shock, then accepts.
Throughout the novel, tragedy and comedy coexist in close proximity. This is perhaps never more true than at this moment, when Lefty and Desdemona escape unimaginable brutalities only to engage in a surreal fake courtship. Of course, this is a decidedly black comedy, not only because of the broader context of war and destruction, but also because of the uneasy fact that Lefty and Desdemona are committing incest.
Themes
The wedding takes place onboard the ship, with improvised outfits. On the night of the wedding, the newlyweds lie in a lifeboat, and Desdemona undresses to reveal the corset. She feels “conflicted,” as the corset makes her think of Euphrosyne, which reminds her of the incestuous nature of her marriage. Lefty feels conflicted too, but before long they lose themselves in sex. The ship’s captain watches the lifeboat swaying and feels nostalgic about his own youth. Cal notes that although they didn’t know it, Lefty and Desdemona were “smuggling” a recessive genetic mutation that had probably first appeared in their family in 1750. The gene causes the intersex condition that would occasionally appear in the people of Bithynios.
It is significant that two of the most important symbols of the novel—the recessive gene and the silkworm box—are “smuggled” by Desdemona and Lefty from Bithynios to the U.S. (Of course, only the box is intentionally and knowingly transported there.) This indicates that the most important entities in life are often those that survive migration and are passed down from one generation to another, bridging different cultures as well as the present and the past.
Themes
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Every night over the next week Lefty and Desdemona have sex in the lifeboat. They try to become strangers to one another, continuing to make up invented stories about their families and pasts. Cal admits that he is obsessed with genealogy, but that it is ultimately a meaningless pastime, because you can think you know everything about your family and yet, in the case of his mother Tessie, not even know the truth of your own husband’s identity or that your parents are brother and sister. Lefty and Desdemona have routine, repetitive sex, but it remain exciting because of the corset, which each night “ma[kes] Desdemona new again.” After having sex, they speculate about the life they will lead in America.
Sex is a very important part of the novel, but is usually presented in a rather comic way. This is certainly true of Lefty and Desdemona consummating their marriage inside a swinging lifeboat. Throughout the novel, Eugenides emphasizes that the humorous and silly aspects of sex make it no less significant and powerful.
Themes
Meanwhile, those aboard the ship practice what to say on Ellis Island so they will not be perceived as “undesirable” and turned away. People who commit incest are among those banned from immigrating to the country. It helps that Lefty and Desdemona have a sponsor in the form of their cousin Sourmelina. Lefty notes that she won’t come to meet them in New York; instead, they’ll get the train to see her in Detroit. Desdemona worries about what Sourmelina will say about the two of them being married, but Lefty points out that they can trust her because she has secrets of her own. When the New York skyline appears in the distance, Desdemona comments that she’s happy to see the Statue of Liberty is a woman. She hopes this means “here people won’t be killing each other every day.”
Despite being traditional and subscribing to rather conservative gender roles, Desdemona also seems to think that women are somewhat superior to men (and even implies that the world would be better if it was run by women). This suggests that traditional social values are often not straightforward, nor necessarily entirely sexist. The reality is much more nuanced and complicated.
Themes
