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Middlesex Summary

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Broken Charm in the Charm Bracelet Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides discusses and combines a crisis in gender identity with the complex and changing American identity. In particular, Eugenides uses Cal’s (as Calliope) experience at Baker & Inglis to illuminate the social tensions of identity and power Americans deal with. After Calliope’s field hockey game, she goes to the girls’ locker room and feels uncomfortable. Feeling like an outsider, Calliope describes the atmosphere of the locker room. As the narrator, Cal states, “My classmates were as unastonished by their extravagant traits as a blowfish is by its quills. They seemed to be a different species” (297). Calliope thoroughly notices that she does not have similar parts as the other …show more content…

Calliope starts with the Charm Bracelets, the popular, elite group of girls at Baker & Inglis. These girls are the epitome of privilege in the United States: white, blue-eyed, wealthy, and Protestant. Calliope views them as the top of the hierarchy with the most power. They do not care about learning or school because they feel they do not need to with the money their families have. Calliope feels totally outcasted by the Charm Bracelets. She does not understand why she is not as American as the Charm Bracelets, and that the Charm Bracelets are not as ethnic as her. Cal mentions, “All of a sudden America wasn’t about hamburgers and hot rods anymore. It was about the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock” (298). Now, Eugenides, through Cal, brings the perspective of that being a true American is being white and multigenerational to Calliope. Like nature and taxonomy, the society of the United States is classified into groups with some groups having the most power based on what people inherit. Calliope then talks about “the most populous phylum in [her] locker room, the Kilt Pins” (298). To Calliope, the Kilt Pins are nothing special, but they are needed. Without the Kilt Pins, teh Charm Bracelets are not special. Eugenides uses the Charm Bracelets and Calliope as irony towards the “American dream” most immigrants believe in when immigrating to

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