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witticasterThis wasn't one of my better papers for leslit, imo, but for completion's sake, et cetera. (I didn't write a paper on Zami, and I'm not sure I should post my Fun Home paper when it was collaborative, so this is the last of them, at least for now.) I found it overwhelming as hell to try and write one page, single-spaced, on a five hundred page book, so I narrowed my subject down hardxcore; thus, this is about the ways Cal(lie) and Desdemona's hair suggests their identities and marks major turning-points in their lives. I still like the subject, but I don't think I wrote it well, lolsigh.
Jeffrey Eugenide's Middlesex is a sprawling family epic tied together with hair. Within the novel, hair serves as a point of identity, connecting Cal and his grandmother, Desdemona, while linking them to their Greek heritage. In ancient Greece, as in many other cultures, shearing one's hair was an outward symbol of mourning; in Middlesex, the two major haircuts of the book mark deaths of selves. For Cal and Desdemona, hair length is a way to control the uncontrollable in their lives, and in doing so, their hair becomes an outward symbol of the bond the two share, built on the secrets that created their family.
Desdemona's identity is irrevocably changed when she arrives in the United States; she has traded the persona of a good Greek girl, the sister of Lefty Stephanides, for that of his wife. The shame she carries over this decision lasts throughout her long life, and her reaction to having her long hair cut off at Ellis Island suggests a desire to return to the role she occupied in Greece: “That's the last time anyone cuts my hair. [...] I don't want to look, like an Amerikanidha” (82). Cal notes that she keeps “her two braids, still tied with the ribbons of mourning” (82) in her silkworm box for the remainder of her life, the ribbons transformed into a show of grief for the person she regretted leaving behind. It is also mentioned that she does not cut her hair again until after Lefty's death; in a way, she attempts to recreate the person she was before coming to America.
For Cal, hair was always about control. Growing less traditionally feminine each day, thirteen year old Callie's “response to all this growing was to grow my hair. Unlike the rest of me, which seemed bent on doing whatever it wanted, my hair remained under my control” (305). Her dense mass of hair serves as a societal indicator of femininity when her flat chest will not do, and it allows Callie to hide her face, and thereby, the thoughts and feelings she does not want to share with those around her, like her love for the Obscure Object. Callie's last appearance is in a barber's chair, “like a captive spirit, peeking out” (442); after a barber snips off Cal's hair, “the recent changes in my face were far more evident. [...] It was undeniably a male face” (445). The last vestiges of the little girl Cal was raised to be died when his hair was cut.
Grandmother and grandchild both marked ends in their lives with sharp pairs of scissors, and it is because of their shared experiences that they are so inextricably linked. At the close of the novel, Cal and Desdemona alone know the truth of how their family came to be as it did, and only the Tiresian Cal will ever understand the story fully. Desdemona trusts no one else to bear her secrets, and Cal finds on his homecoming that only Desdemona looks at him and sees who he always was.
Jeffrey Eugenide's Middlesex is a sprawling family epic tied together with hair. Within the novel, hair serves as a point of identity, connecting Cal and his grandmother, Desdemona, while linking them to their Greek heritage. In ancient Greece, as in many other cultures, shearing one's hair was an outward symbol of mourning; in Middlesex, the two major haircuts of the book mark deaths of selves. For Cal and Desdemona, hair length is a way to control the uncontrollable in their lives, and in doing so, their hair becomes an outward symbol of the bond the two share, built on the secrets that created their family.
Desdemona's identity is irrevocably changed when she arrives in the United States; she has traded the persona of a good Greek girl, the sister of Lefty Stephanides, for that of his wife. The shame she carries over this decision lasts throughout her long life, and her reaction to having her long hair cut off at Ellis Island suggests a desire to return to the role she occupied in Greece: “That's the last time anyone cuts my hair. [...] I don't want to look, like an Amerikanidha” (82). Cal notes that she keeps “her two braids, still tied with the ribbons of mourning” (82) in her silkworm box for the remainder of her life, the ribbons transformed into a show of grief for the person she regretted leaving behind. It is also mentioned that she does not cut her hair again until after Lefty's death; in a way, she attempts to recreate the person she was before coming to America.
For Cal, hair was always about control. Growing less traditionally feminine each day, thirteen year old Callie's “response to all this growing was to grow my hair. Unlike the rest of me, which seemed bent on doing whatever it wanted, my hair remained under my control” (305). Her dense mass of hair serves as a societal indicator of femininity when her flat chest will not do, and it allows Callie to hide her face, and thereby, the thoughts and feelings she does not want to share with those around her, like her love for the Obscure Object. Callie's last appearance is in a barber's chair, “like a captive spirit, peeking out” (442); after a barber snips off Cal's hair, “the recent changes in my face were far more evident. [...] It was undeniably a male face” (445). The last vestiges of the little girl Cal was raised to be died when his hair was cut.
Grandmother and grandchild both marked ends in their lives with sharp pairs of scissors, and it is because of their shared experiences that they are so inextricably linked. At the close of the novel, Cal and Desdemona alone know the truth of how their family came to be as it did, and only the Tiresian Cal will ever understand the story fully. Desdemona trusts no one else to bear her secrets, and Cal finds on his homecoming that only Desdemona looks at him and sees who he always was.
