Gender Performativity In Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex

The American writer Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for literature in the United States.The author skillfully combines the story of Greek American immigrants with the intersex’s growth,and portrays the gender misplacement and performativity of Cal/Calliope,conveying the in-depth concerns on multi-gender identities and sexual minorities.Based on Judith Butler’s gender performativity theory,the thesis analyzes the gender performativity of the intersex Cal/Calliope in Middlesex,from the ritual,language and theatrical dimension.In the ritual dimension,the female and male identities of Cal/Calliope are the citation and repetition of the regulatory gender norms,thus it keeps the gender identities in a relatively stable state and embodying the historicity of gender identity.In the language dimension,the power discourses at the level of family and society promote the generation,transformation and strengthening of the protagonist’s female,male and middlesex identity.In the theatrical dimension,Cal/Calliope gradually forms the relatively stable gendered subjects through the continuous performative acts by following the social gender norms,which emphasizes that gender identity is the "doing" not the "being".This thesis concludes that Cal/Calliope’s gender performativity is a repeated citation to social norms,through which power discourse produces its named effect and constructs its gendered subject with continuous performative acts,presenting the dynamic process of gender identity change.The thesis analyzes the gender complexity of the intersex Cal/Calliope from the ritual,language and theatrical dimension,which promotes the research dimension of this literary work in the field of gender performativity to a certain extent.