Power is one of the strongest forces that governs action. To have power over someone is to have the ability to manipulate not only actions, but emotions as well. Used wisely, someone with power can lead a nation. Used manipulatively, power has the ability to change lives. So many things in man’s world are disguised as something else that conceals the underlying addiction to power. For example, a rapist’s desire to force sex on someone is not rooted in sexual pleasure at all, but the pleasure of being able to exert power over another. For some politicians, it is not about the honor of working for one’s country or the ability to make laws to improve a region’s life, but the authority and power one has available to affect so many people through the single stroke of a pen. Some people’s drive is power; other people shirk from the responsibility. However, unless one is aware of the power they hold that power cannot be harnessed into a force that drives another individual to a particular action or emotion. Callie of Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex is such an individual. Unaware of the power she beholds, this power is wasted. There are several instances in the novel where the power of Callie’s unusual body elicits a particular action or emotion from someone; Callie is unaware though of how she is educing this particular response. If made fully aware, it is quite possible Callie would have broached the subject of revealing her uniqueness to her world a different way than she other wise did and thus lived a much better life.

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Throughout the novel, Callie is vaguely aware from early childhood that her body is not what society deems normal. Until she travels with her family to a specialized doctor in New York, Callie only knows that she is not developing like most of the girls in her class at school. Ignorant to the extent of her genetic disposition, Callie makes a point of hiding her unusually developing body from everyone but herself. Skipping the required shower after gym class and stuffing her training bra are normal practice for Callie as she tries to force her body to mature. When Callie is not the only one to notice the lack of female development, she fakes having her period each month so well that she convinces her self that she is going to be normal.

There comes a time, however, when Callie is bared to the world. After this episode, Callie is uncertain as to her place in society. In order to diagnose their daughter, Callie’s parents take her to a doctor in New York. Scared of what the turn of events might bring, Callie makes herself numb to the physical and emotional probing of her body and spirit. In many ways, Callie is treated like a magnificent scientific discovery by her doctor. As reflected in Dr. Luce’s report, one would assume the patient was human, but a lab rat instead. Callie uses numbing as a defense mechanism to the pain and conflict ion she feels as a result of being different. When trying to determine her gender, Dr. Luce asks Callie questions. Rather than answering honestly, Callie tried to guess the “correct” answer to make her problems dissolve. Callie is not aware of how the way she acts and treats herself is a reflection of how an individual or community will respond to her. As Dr. Luce brings other doctors to view and analyze Callie, she perfects her technique of pretending there is no Callie inside of Callie’s body. “They bent over me, studying my parts … behind the curtain, I no longer felt as if I were in the room” (Eugenie’s 421). Because Callie did not demand of the doctors that they treat her like a girl, a young and insecure girl who just wants to be “normal,” they will not treat her as such. Callie has additional power in her rare

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body. People are captivated by the rare, exotic, and unusual. In particular, Callie’s doctors have given her body special reverence and Dr. Luce special reverence for his good medical find. Callie could have manipulated the power of her body. She could have demanded that, in return for allowing her body to be used to learn more about a fairly uncharted condition, not only her body but her person as well be treated with dignity and humane respect. How Callie projects herself at the world is how the world reflects what they see in her. Though this is true for most people, Callie and her body hold especially high power because of its rare value.

When Callie takes another approach to living and dealing with her own body, the world takes a different approach in responding to Callie. After Callie runs away from her family and doctor in New York, she temporarily resides in San Francisco with a group of homeless kids. Still trying to find her identity, Callie knows that nothing has changed in her body to suddenly make her normal. Instead of taking a clinical approach to her own body, Callie tries to stay hidden and removed from the community of kids who have allowed her to reside with them. Callie opened admitted to herself that she “didn’t want to be found out, so remained tight-lipped” (Eugenides 471). Though Callie was referring to actual conversation with the boys, she remained both physically and mentally reserved. This was true of everyone she encountered after meeting with Dr. Luce: she thought she was a “monster” so she hid her body and thus her entire being from everyone. Again, what Callie did not recognize was that by viewing her own body as revolting, everyone was going to take that cue from her. In response, people treated her the way she treated herself. When left alone at the camp, Callie is assaulted by two homeless men who want to ransack the kids’ camp. Though it could be argued that Callie would have been assaulted regardless of her physical “deformation,” it would have been a sexual assault

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rather than a hate crime. She describes that attack as one of outrage because Callie had “contaminated” her attackers with her “freakish” body. Had Callie demonstrated confidence in herself, the outcome would probably still have been a fight, but she would have had a fighting chance to throw her own punch or two. Using her body as a weapon to elicit particular emotional responses, Callie might not have felt so overwhelmed by the attackers. She has this tremendous power over people, and she does not even realize it. In Callie’s circumstance, this power is greater than most people’s because the power to repulse, the power to shock, the power to make people uncomfortable is a very remarkable power. Callie is able to do this, and much more, including positive things, with her unique body, but she is unaware of this capacity. Had she been, she might have viewed her body and the power it gave her in a different light.

In a third example of how Callie’s view of herself is so powerful that it dictates how people respond to her, the reader briefly sees Callie take advantage of this. This makes the point that had Callie known of the power of her unique body all along, she might have lived a different life. After being assaulted in the park by the homeless men, Callie starts a new chapter in her life at a 69ers, a seedy joint where men and women go for sexual pleasures. In a special room upstairs, Callie admits “I made my living by exhibiting the peculiar way I am formed” (Eugenides 483). With her body in a swimming tank of water, Callie’s exhibit of herself is one that the audience reveres. Faces watch filled with not only sexual pleasure, but awe and surprise as well. Dr. Luce looked at Callie with awe, but it was a clinical type that made Callie into a subject rather than a patient. He made her an object. The audience at the club looked at Callie with awe, but it was a different type. The awe they experienced was a direct result of looking at something fully alive that happened to be a variation of their very own bodies. Granted, this awe

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is not something that every person desires and would be proud of. However, Callie deliberately displayed her body to elicit these reactions from people, and the people delivered. This is one of the clearest examples that show the power Callie has.

After being at the club for awhile, Callie does something she had not done up to that point. Rather than trying to forget that numerous pairs of eyes were captivated by her body, Callie opens her own eyes to look at the reaction of the world to her “disfigurement.” What Callie saw on those faces and in those eyes was “amazement, curiosity, disgust, desire” (Eugenides 491). What Callie admits she did not see were “appalled” faces. Callie finally accepted that her body was not rejected by everyone who saw it. There were other emotions, and other reactions. That night, Callie said she “had fun in the tank that night. It was all beneficial in some way. It was therapeutic” (Eugenides 494). It is only after that Callie sees the power that her body holds that she enjoyed something that it can do for her. That does not mean Callie should have to display her body in a seedy sex club to garner a reaction of amazement for someone; it merely means that once Callie realizes the way she treats her own body determines how others respond to her, she will have infinitely more power, especially because of the uniqueness of her figure.

A final example of how Callie treats her body shows a very tender way that an individual will respond. By the end of the novel, Callie has officially become Cal, the male. He believes he has found a woman who might be the one for him. At this point, Cal makes it clear he has matured and accepted his body and has found his place in the world. However, it is not clear that Cal has realized the power his body holds. Cal maturely and intimately tells his soon to be lover, Julie, about the condition of his body. After a brief second to process the information, Julie

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welcomes Cal into her bed while expressing her own hesitations about her own body. Cal compassionately explains about his body without any sign of embarrassment, and Julie unquestionably accepts him for who he is. Had Cal known this power he had to draw particular responses from people he interacts with, he might had a smoother childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.

Every person has the ability to present themselves to the world however they choose. For most people, this presentation dictates what range of response you will receive from the world. In Callie’s case, she has an extra degree of power because her body is different than most people. Inexplicably, people are captivated by that unknown. Although by the end of the novel the reader can see that Cal has accepted and embraced his life, it is not only about the ends; the means one goes through to reach the ends is just as important. In each of these examples, how Callie allows the world to see her is how the responds. This is an extremely important function of Callie’s unusual body. Had Callie seen her own effect on people more clearly, it is very reasonable to argue that she could have had a less traumatic childhood and adolescence. Though she achieves happiness by the end of the novel, a very different book could have been written if Callie opened her eyes to the power of her body.