Comprehensive Theoretical Analysis in Literature - Case Study Example

? Comprehensive Theoretical Analysis Table of Contents 1. Identifying information 3 12. Family origins 3 12.Presenting Issues 4 1.12. Biological Development 5 1.12. Psychological Development 5 1.12. Social Development 6 2.0 Identity Formation 6 3.0 Environmental Risk and Challenges 9 4.0 Resilience and Empowerment 11 References 14 1.1. Identifying information Cal who is forty-one and living as a man in Germany narrates the story; he is recounting his life story in which he was a girl until a visit to the emergency room when she was a teenage girl resulted in the discovery that she was a boy as well (Fritz, 2002). At the time of narration, he is working as an employee for the state department and he is dating an Asian woman Julie Kichukuchi, it is partly through his explanations that the reader gets to overhear much of the details. The story is narrated in a series of intertwined present events and flashbacks in which the readers read about Cal’s contemporaneous life but he keeps referring to his childhood and even the period before he was born. 1.12. Family origins Cal’s grandparents, Desdemona and Lefty Stephanides are siblings, who lived in turkey working as farmers, when war erupts, they are forced to flee and escape the atrocities as cities are burnt down and hundreds are killed. However, thanks to Lefty’s courage and intelligence, they run away to Greece and from there they board an America bound ship. On board, they both discover they are in love with each other; they play out a courtship and act as if they had just met since they realized no one on the boat knew them. Before the get to America, they formalize their consanguineous relationship in a Greek orthodox ceremony conducted by and unknowing priest. In America, they contact their cousin Lina and reveal their secret, she keeps it because she also has one, and she is a closet lesbian. Lefty gets a job at the Ford Auto company with the help of Jimmy, Lina’s husband and the two couples live in the same house in Detroit. One night after watching a sexually charged performance of the Greek classic the monitor night, both couples have sex and conceive. However, Jimmy suspects that his wife is having an affair with her cousin and when he calls him out to threaten him, he slips on a patch of ice and vanishes assumed dead. The children who were conceived simultaneously, Milton and Tessie are born and grow into young adults, Cal’s parents, the cousins are attracted to each other and despite their families attempt to separate them, they fight for their love and ultimately they are allowed to marry. Milton takes over Lefty’s business, he and his sister/wife Desdemona lives with them in an extended family. Tessie and Milton beget, Chapter Eleven, who is Cal’s elder brother and afterword’s Cal comes along. 1.12. Presenting Issues The couple had been hoping for a girl child so much such that they tried to influence the birth by copulating only at specific when her temperatures are just right for a girl. For the first time, Desdemona’s prediction is proved wrong- she had correctly predicted the sexes of all other previous children using a traditional spoon spinning technique. Cal explains that all of his 23 chromosomes are in perfect working order except for a pair concealed in chromosome number 5, which caused this condition “…Together, they siphon off an enzyme, which stops the production of a certain hormone, which complicates my life” (Eugenides, 2002). Medically speaking, during fetal growth, a deficiency of steroid 5alpha-reductase action can lead to an underproduction in DHT and the result is unfinished masculinization of the external genitalia. The child is pronounced a girl by the family doctor who was too busy eyeing his nurse to notice the small penis concealed inside the vagina, which meant he was inflicted with a condition, called 5-Alpha-Reductase Pseudohermaphrodites. 1.12. Biological Development Callie lived the first years of her life as a girl but the turning point came when she had an accident and she had to be rushed to the hospital, the doctor realized there was something amiss about her genitals after discovering the penis the elderly doctor had failed to spot. Before then she had lived among girls in an all-girls school and although she begun to develop masculine characteristic like growing a beard, they were explained away. Too ashamed of his retrospective failure, her family doctor refers Cal to a specialist in New York who says Callie is more of a boy than a girl but since she had been socialized as a girl from the start, hormonal injections could help repress the development of male sexual characteristics. Rearing was clearly not all that counted when it came to determining gender, Callie apparently was attracted to both girls and boys, she had sex with a boy but she then started having an affair with “the object,” a girl and this turned out to be her first real love experience. 1.12. Psychological Development Callie read the medical report and ashamed of being a monster and a problem for her parents, she ran away, she was already struggling with her emerging masculine feel and may not have wanted to loose it. Callie then becomes Cal and she tries to affect a masculine appearance and character in order to convince the people he met along the way that he was actually a man, he hitchhikes across America until he ends up as part of strip joint peep show. He finally returns home in time to bury his dad who dies in a car accident, his grandmother finally tells him the secret of her relationship with her brother. This explains why he was born in his condition and he promises not to say anything about it until after she was dead. 1.12. Social Development As a young girl, Callie had been attracted to girls and although she had sex with Jerome, all the time she was doing it she was fantasizing about making love to the object. She had a secret relationship with the object and after they were discovered and she had a rebirth into a teenage boy, he tried to socialize himself into masculinity by dressing and acting like one. However, throughout most of his later life he avoids relationships in fear that his secret may be discovered. At the time of narration, he is however dating an Asian woman, he manages to gather enough courage to tell her his deepest secret and fortunately, she accepts him. 2.0 Identity Formation Adolescents go through several phrases they try to define and understand themselves in isolation and in relation to the world around them, this is especially difficult for children living in an environment where they naturally stand out owing to cultural racial or physical differences (Gehi & Arkles, 2007). In Cali’s case, this was a serious challenge from when she was a small girl and as she matured into a young woman; she was admitted to an all-girls boarding school pursuant to the de-segregation laws. In school she felt left out because she noticed she was distinct from the other girls, her physical development seemed delayed and as other were sprouting breast she had to contend with flat chest. According to Erickson, in the fifth stage of his conflict theory; identity vs confusion, teens want to explore their sexuality and to develop an autonomous albeit, conforming identity in that they want to be unique by they also want to fit in (Leahy, 2007). In Cal’s case, she was struggling to establish herself as she made her transition from childhood to adulthood, as they make the transition from childhood to adulthood, teens may begin to feel confused or insecure about them and how they fit in to society. Because of Dr Philobians decrepitude in his analysis Cal’s sexuality and Tessie’s’ prudishness, she was vague about matters of her sexuality and the specifics of puberty, therefore she had to learn everything form girls at camp or whatever she could pick from her aunt Zo’s mumbling and insinuations. She is therefore confused because despite the signs on her classmates, puberty turns out to be elusive, at first, she does not make the connection between her physical/genetically configuration and delayed adolescence. She assumed that it was the medditererian diet, which Desdemona had adopted and was experimenting on the family, she ends up arguing with her mother about the food and puberty but ultimately her parents avoid the subject. During this stage of searching for an identity, it is crucial that parents and other adult figures should give encouragement to teens in order to help them emerge from this stage with a strong sense of independence and control over their identity. Callie is afraid to expose her body in the locker room and she is very self-conscious about hair that seems to be sprouting from her pubic and facial areas, her voice deepens she develops subtle sexual feelings towards girls. All these covertly indicate that she is undergoing puberty just like her schoolmates only in her case, it a boys puberty. Instead of her mother helping her deal with her situation, she instead focus on superficial “solutions ” such as taking her to have her moustache removed and generally pretending everything was fine. However, those that remain unsure will emerge confused and unsure of the role they play in their own world and it may result in a state of moratorium. This means they will ascend into adulthood without a clear definition or understanding of themselves, consequently they may be stagnate and remain trapped in their search for identity for much of their adult life. In Cal’s case, the lack of support or knowledge coupled with her psychological differences ensured she fell in the latter stage. Despite the fact that that the terms gender and sex are often used interchangeably, there is a fine variance amongst the underlying meanings of these terms. In a nutshell gender is a primarily social construct based on the societal expectations or roles that are distributed along the basis of primary sexual characteristics (Kimberly, 2010, p.2 ). Sex on the other hand is a purely biological matter that is based on the physical sexual attributes determined by chromosomal constitution where XY is male and XX is female. From a feminist perspective, gender and sex are not necessarily mutually inclusive, the argument being that one is not born a woman but they become one based on societal diktats (Carroll, 2010). Retrospectively, feminist, postmodern, and queer theoretical scholars suggested that gender identity does not have to be linked to biological sex and is created through a series of complex social interactions that are subject to existing power distribution patterns in various communities (Renneflott, 2011). Conversely, in cases such as Callie’s the difference is not clear cut and both the individual and society are at a loss on how to treat or define those bearing the sexual characteristics on which gender designation is carried out. Despite that biologically Cal was more of a man than woman; the decision made by the specialist was based on her socialization as a girl rather than the biological orientation. This is reason she escaped and decide to pursue her dominate male orientation after she read the report in which it was recommended the masculine side should be suppressed (Hsu, 2011). Feminist critics of the book have questioned Eugene on his choice of using the female as the point of departure and crowning with masculinity and accused the writer of propagating the stereotype of default male dominance. Nevertheless, in his response to these allegations he was categorical in saying that he was trying to stick as closely as possible to scientific reality (Goldstein, 2003).The initial dominance of the female gene often causes hermaphrodites to appear typically female until late puberty when the testosterone kicks in and contradicts the presupposed gender (Marschall, 1998). 3.0 Environmental Risk and Challenges Even in today’s society, which is by comparison remarkably more liberal in respect to mixed sexuality there, are considerable social challenges facing the mixed community, not the least of which is stigma and a curiosity often bordering morbidity (Stephen et al., 2010). When Callie begun to explore her sexuality, she had sex with the Object’s brother and all through, she was afraid he would notice something wrong with her; nevertheless, he did not find anything out of place. Of course there was always the possibility that he actually noticed but decided to keep it to himself, nonetheless considering his uncouth mannerism, this is unlikely. Her fear of discovery was not groundless, transsexual individual have been victimized by community in the past and discovery especially in a the process of a sexual act could have had severe psychological ramifications. She gradually develops feelings for the object and gets sexually attracted to her and when they act on these feelings; they do it secretly because they are both confused and ashamed of their unconventional desires. While the object may have though she was following a lesbian inclination, Callie was attracted to her on a largely heterosexual basis. This engenders one of the main challenges that transsexual individuals have to contend with, most of the times they are confused about their sexuality and even when they make sense of it, their partners and the society may be as accommodating. The accident that resulted in Cally’s second birth resulted from an altercation which was occasioned by the object’s brother making fun of their Lesbianism”. Examined through the lens of Erickson’s theory “Intimacy vs Isolation” Cal’s situation is an archetype of what happens when an individual is unable to make a clear identity for themselves in their teenage years. The major question that arises is will I be loved or left alone? This can be a difficult situation for many normal individuals but it is phenomenally more difficult when it comes to transgender types like Callie. Even after he becomes a man, he is not confident in his body and hides himself both on a physical and psychological level by wearing double-breasted suits. He fears that his “monstrosity” will be discovered and by his own admission backs off whenever he feels he is getting too close to someone. Every day of his life is haunted by self-doubt, as he cannot imagine how someone he loves will learn to accept him and constantly wracked by fear that he will be spurned as a monster. The conflict theory can also be used to illuminate the inner struggle and conflict that Cal has to deal both when she was a man trapped in a woman’s body and afterward when she became Cal but had to deal with her present albeit recessive femininity. The central theme in Middlesex, which is primarily intersexim or a duality of identity, is exemplified in Cal’s struggle with his biological intersexim. LGBTQI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) theory provides a succinct lens through which Cal’s unique circumstances can be considered, anyone in this bracket is considered queer and the term connotes rejection and stigma in many societies (Brent & Kristen, 2005). Therefore, those like Cal who find themselves locked therein often try all possible ways to fit in even when it is biologically impossible. The fact that her parents were psychologically prepped to welcome a daughter possibly made them even blinder of the inner boy than attending doctor had been at his delivery. As she grew up, she was developing in a contrary direction to her female counterparts, she was of course aware that he was different owing to the apparent differences he noticed in the lockeroom but could not comprehend them or their reason. Despite the prescribed attraction to men, Cal’s hidden sexuality made her more desirous of the “opposite sex”. She desires the "opposite” sex although she identified herself as a woman until she came across the doctors report with contrary imputations. Although she had not been born with overt masculine characteristics, she was lacking certain elements of a female; however she strived throughout her early life to portray herself as such not only to her mother but to herself. She went to the extent of crossing off a fake mensuration chart and faking pains when she thought her uterus should be in order to create the impression that she was menstruating like a normal girl. This is evidence of the inner struggle that she must have underwent as she tried to come to terms that “normal” girls menstruate but she was incapable of this, the deception was however only postponement of the inevitable since she would have to deal with reality in the due course. 4.0 Resilience and Empowerment Transgender youth are often faced with myriad challenges and without a stable support structure, they are liable to suffer damaging consequences in their quest to cope with societal expectations and cope with their gender singularity (Rutter, 1999). The resilience theory seeks to determine, among other things, why some children, despite the phenomenal and diverse adversity in their lives transcend their problems and grow up to become functional adults while others simply seem to fall apart and self-destruct (Braverman, 2001). When Cal was finally forced to confront his gender plurality after reading the doctor’s report, he was frightened and made several misguided decision in an attempt to hide form his parents, his society and himself. When he ends up in a strip club, he begins to come to terms with the reality of his different self-help from other transgender individuals he interacted with. By the time he was arrested and forced to return to his family he had developed enough fortitude to confront his fears and despite his inner conflict and self-doubt. His grandmother’s admission of her role in his dysfunctional sexuality also helped him stop feeling responsible and guilty for his condition as he finally came to accept reality although not in its entirety. He developed resilience and it helped him rise above his freak perception and cut a niche for himself. From the on start, choose to be a man and kept trying to make himself one in his taste and mannerisms, he secured employment at the state department so that he would not have to stay at one place for long. Some may read this as escapism notwithstanding; the truth is it would have been hard for people to accept him no matter how much he accepted his condition; therefore, his choice of employment can be viewed more in terms of adaptation rather than escapism. Cal empowers himself as a transgender individual by choosing a gender despite his palpable inability to select his sex, by so doing, he embodies the writer endorsement of indeterminacy in sex and gender. There is probably no resilience in the story greater than it must have taken for him to tell Julie, with whom he was in love at the present he was transsexual, she asks what the writer must have realized was on many readers minds based on his choice of her race. Is she, an Asian woman the last stop before he moved to men? This question, examined from a critical race perspective still resonates in the critical reader’s mind notwithstanding the answer supplied. Why did the writer have to choose an Asian woman when he could have used Caucasian one with the same effect on the narrative and caused less ripples on the racial front? Cal says he had always liked women, which to his credit as a character were true, nevertheless, this does not answer the question on the writer’s motives, and it is possible that he realized the significance of using an Asian especially considering the racially charged activism that was in the backdrop of most of the novel. Race matters are a sensitive part of literature and it takes a daring writer to take up a position that could easily be misinterpreted as xenophobic. Viewed from a behaviorist perspective, this question can be seen as the writer’s way for trying to objectify his choice of Julie’s racial background; ultimately, any judgment made on this matter will have to be on individual reader’s desecration. The novel uses Greek mythology to help the character transcend the assumptions in the rational American view that a transsexual person is a freak show and provides an affirmative representation of the main character. His final act qualifies the validity of his decision when he performs the traditional Greek ritual for his father’s burial, which was traditionally reserved for male children. He remains home to prevent his father’s spirit from reentering the family home and he explained… "it was always a man who did this, and now I qualified" (Eugenides,2002). The fact that his father’s sprit does not reenter the house is Eugenide’s way of qualifying Cal’s the completion of Cal’s transformation to manhood. Transsexual people have for centuries, struggled for the freedom to determine their gender either as male female or as a separate third gender. For social order to prevail, it was considered imperative that individual’s should have at least one gender identity, nevertheless, the such opinions are considered outdated and society is more tolerant and willing to accept a third gender (Zucker, 1999). References Braverman, M.T (2001). Applying Resilience Theory to the Prevention of Adolescent Substance Abuse, Retrieved from http://4h.ucanr.edu/files/1232.pdf Brent L. B, Kristen A. R (2005). Analysis of LGBT Identity Development Models and Implications for Practice. Wiley Periodicals. Retrieved from http://lbgtrc.msu.edu/docs/bilodeaurenn.pdf Carroll, R. (2010). Retrospective sex: Rewriting intersexuality in jeffrey eugenides's middlesex. Journal of American Studies, 44(1), 187-201. Eugenides, J. (2007). Middlesex. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Fritz L, H. C. (2002, Dec 15). A good book. Tulsa World. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/399892041?accountid=1331 Gehi, P. S., & Arkles, G. (2007). Unraveling injustice: Race and class impact of medicaid exclusions of transition-related health care for transgender people. Sexuality Research & Social Policy, 4(4), 7-35. Goldstein, B. (2003, Jan 01). A novelist goes far afield but winds up back home again. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/01/books/a-novelist-goes-far-afield-but-winds-up-back-home-again.html Hsu, S. (2011). Ethnicity and the biopolitics of intersex in jeffrey eugenides's middlesex. MELUS, 36(3), 87-110,229. Kimberly A. S (2010). Development, Risk, and Resilience of Transgender Youth. Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, 1-15) Leahy, L. G. (2007). Identity versus role confusion: Who will we be tomorrow? Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, 20(3), 137-8. Marschall, L. A. (1998). Hermaphrodites and the medical invention of sex. Sciences, 38(5), 44-45. Renneflott, L, (2011). Power and Identity in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex . Retrieved from https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/25286/FINAL_MAthesis_lenerennneflott.pdf?sequence=2 Rutter, M. (1999b). Resilience concepts and findings: Implications for family therapy. Journal of Family Therapy, 21, 119-144. Stephen, R. Wester, T, A. McDonough, M. White, D, L. Vogel & Lareena T (2010 ). Using Gender Role Conflict Theory in Counseling Male-to-Female Transgender Individuals. Journal of Counseling& Development : Volume 88, pp.214-218. Zucker, K. J. (1999). Intersexuality and gender identity differentiation. Annual Review of Sex Research, 10:1-69. Read More