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Book 3: The Wolverette
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
In Berlin, Cal has returned to his solitary way of life. Back in 1973, Sophie Sassoon pulls Callie aside after church and tells her that she is getting a mustache. She tells her to get Tessie to bring her in to have it waxed. Callie is horrified, but not surprised. She is from the “Hair Belt,” the part of the world where it is common for women to get facial hair. All her female relatives have experienced hair growing in unwanted places. Callie asks Tessie to book her an appointment at Sophie’s salon, the Golden Fleece. Sophie is popular because she gives each patron “individual attention.” Everyone knows that Sophie herself takes an hour and 45 minutes to get ready every morning.
Again, the line between normal and abnormal becomes hard to differentiate. This passage’s mention of the “Hair Belt” provides a further reminder that gender does not exist in a vacuum, but rather varies across ethnic and racial difference. While mustaches are broadly considered to be male traits, in reality this is due to the imposition of Northern European beauty norms on the rest of the world. In reality, plenty of women have facial hair.
Themes
Sophie greets Tessie and Callie. There is a curtain that runs through the salon; in front of it, women get their hair cut, and behind it, they get it removed. On seeing women getting their bikini lines waxed, Callie announces that she is “only getting [her] face done.” While a Hungarian woman rips off Callie’s mustache, Tessie says that Chapter Eleven will be coming home for Christmas and bringing his new girlfriend, Meg. Ever since Chapter Eleven left for college, Callie has had the bathroom to herself, and it is filled with feminine products. At the back of the products, the sanitary pads Tessie bought for her sit unused.
While Chapter Eleven is undergoing a happier rite of passage—returning home from college with his first girlfriend—Callie is forced to endure the far more traumatic rite of passage of hair removal. Meanwhile, she remains haunted by the ways in which she has failed to develop, such as by not getting her period.
Themes
When Chapter Eleven came home for the last Christmas vacation, he was a “different person.” His hair was long, he had started playing guitar, and he drove a motorcycle and meditated. For the first time in his life, he beat Milton at ping pong. Later, he told Callie that he was on acid. Milton was horrified to hear that Chapter Eleven is considering dropping out of his engineering major. After returning to college, Chapter Eleven does not come back for Thanksgiving the following year, 1973. When Christmas comes, he informs his family that he has switched his major to anthropology, and that he will be conducting fieldwork on them during the vacation.
On some level, Chapter Eleven’s transformation from ordinary suburban science nerd to countercultural hippie is less dramatic than a gender transition. On the other hand, there are actually ways in which it is more dramatic. Chapter Eleven’s entire self has changed—his appearance, habits, and value systems—such that it is difficult to trace any continuity with his former self at all.
Themes
For the first time in their lives, Chapter Eleven pays attention to Callie, asking her questions about her life. At one point, he observes that she no longer looks like his “little sister,” although he doesn’t explain what this means. Meg arrives. She tells the Stephanides family that she is majoring in political science and that she is a vegetarian and a Marxist. She and Milton have an argument about the exploitation of workers. She explains that she and Chapter Eleven met when he was sitting on top of an elevator, which is now one of his habits. Meg gives Callie a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves, and Chapter Eleven, who is “swept up in the sexual revolution,” asks Callie if she masturbates. Callie is horrified.
This passage again combines familiar realism (so familiar that it is actually full of stereotypes and clichés) with the surreal element of Chapter Eleven sitting on top of an elevator. It is very difficult—although, crucially, not quite impossible—to imagine someone developing this hobby. The fact that it is just about believable perpetuates the novel’s elastic sense of realism.
Themes
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Chapter Eleven no longer wears deodorant, and Callie complains about his smell. During New Year’s, Meg and Chapter Eleven secretly sneak outside to smoke a joint. Milton announces that he has been considering going back to the “old country” but Chapter Eleven refuses to come, claiming that “Tourism is just another form of colonialism.” A huge argument ensues. Cal wonders if part of the reason why Chapter Eleven underwent such a drastic transformation is because he was shaken by his experience of almost being drafted—an experience that highlighted the randomness of fate.
While many of the points Chapter Eleven makes are not necessarily inaccurate or wrong, the way in which he expresses them leave them looking rather comic. Indeed, it seems clear that the motivation behind his self-reinvention is at least as much to rebel against his parents (and authority more broadly) as it is because he actually believes in what he’s doing.
Themes
