• Airin Dominic Joseph
• Krishnapriya E.N

Middlesex is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, published in 2002. Primarily a coming-of-age story and family saga, the 21st century gender novel chronicles the effect of a mutated gene on three generations of a Greek family, causing momentous changes in the protagonist Cal's life. The novel holds the themes of nature versus nurture, rebirth and the differing experiences of what society constructs as polar opposites, such as those found between men and women. It discusses the pursuit of the American Dream and explores gender identity. The novel traverses through the strenuous process of identifying one's true self. Cal, born and brought up as a girl, later identifies herself more of a man. Cal belongs to the intersex community, reluctant to undergo any surgery, s/he decides to live as s/he is heterosexually identified masculine intersexual. The study explores the identity crisis experienced by the narrator Cal in the novel Middlesex. How a person like Cal, labeled as "impossible" finds the constraints of gender hard to live in is analyzed.

Jeffrey Kent Eugenides, Middlesex, Gender, Identity

"Gender and Identity in Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.11, Issue 11, page no.e883-e886, November-2024, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2411498.pdf

"Gender and Identity in Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.11, Issue 11, page no. ppe883-e886, November-2024, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2411498.pdf