38 narrator of the story as below:
On the one hand I wanted a first-person voice that could relate Cals own life history from the inside. A first-person voice also allowed me to avoid the
pronomial clutter you had to step over in your question the hisher problem. Much better, more truthful, and more individualistic to say I. QA With
Jeffrey Eugenides In addition, the author also gives explanation about the inspiration and the
reason to create a narrator like Calliope. You could say, then, that Middlesex is a modern myth. Its a modern myth
about adolescence. What Calliope goes through is what we all go through, in the maelstrom of puberty. Her experience of the process, physically and
psychologically, is merely more dramatic than our own. Callies life differs from ours in degree but not in kind. So you saying that Calllies story is one
that most people can relate to is exactly right. Or at least, its precisely what Id hoped for. QA With Jeffrey Eugenides
c. As an Irony in the Main Character’s Gender Transformation
In this story, there is an irony in the character of Calliope. Calliope both in mythology and in the novel is presented as a beautiful woman. However, in the end
of the story the main character has a gender transformation from a beautiful girl into a man.
In Greek mythology, “The Muses are usually presented as ethereal women
with divine beauty, holding laurels and other items depending on their faculty” Katia. Furthermore, not only having a beautiful appearance, Calliope in Greek
mythology also has a beautiful voice. In fact, Calliope in Greek means beautiful voice, beautiful
kale
voice
ops
. Lindemans states that “She has a beautiful voice
which inspires brilliance in debate and makes even the wimpiest poetry resound with
39 epic meaning” CALLIOPE: The Goddess of Eloquence and Poetry. Similar to
Calliope in Greek mythology, the main character is also beautiful. The beauty of Calliope as the main character of the story is presented in the passage below:
The beauty I possessed as a baby only increased as I grew into a girl. It was no surprise why Clementine Stark had wanted to practice kissing with me.
Everyone wanted to. Elderly waitresses bent close to take my order. Red- faced boys appeared at my desk, stammering, “Y-y-you dropped your eraser.”
Even Tessie, angry about something, would look down at me —at my
Cleopatra eyes —and forget what she was mad about. Eugenides 278
Those beauty turns to be an irony because Calliope, who is a beautiful girl, in
this story transforms herself into a man. Calliope in the end decides to change her appearance as a man and even her name. Calliope is her name as a woman or Callie
as her nick name . However, she changes her name into „Cal’ when she decides to be a
man. “My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most
recent driver’s license from the Federal Republic of Germany records my first name simply as Cal
” Eugenides 3. In addition, her transformation is also stated clearly in the first paragraph of the novel as
“I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage
boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974” Eugenides 3.
3. Hermaphroditus
