Her attempt fails, however, and their daughter is eventually born. She avoids sex with Lefty as often as she can, despite his insults and complaints, in the hopes that she will never again conceive another child of his. Though baby Milton comes out perfectly fine, Desdemona refuses to tamper with God's will again. She cannot help but fear that divine retribution will be taken against her children for her and her husband's sins. She fears giving birth to a monster baby covered all in hair or with toad-like skin. Though the two contrive an elaborate story of their whirlwind romance - a story of which they, themselves, are almost convinced - Desdemona cannot shirk from her memory, as Lefty seems to do, the true, incestuous circumstances of their affair. Though Cal's grandfather, Lefty, initially finds himself extremely conflicted over the incestuous desire he feels, the onus of guilt seems to be placed primarily on his sister, Desdemona, who suffers the pangs of a guilty conscience throughout the duration of their marriage. The narrator Cal, formerly known as Calliope, provides a detailed description of how his grandmother and grandfather - simultaneously his great-uncle and aunt - fell in love and married and how the strains of such a frustratingly guilt-ridden relationship eventually pushed them apart.

Now we have, in books one and two of Eugenides' tale, a new taboo: the incestuous love. We saw it first in The Scarlet Letter in the form of adultery and again in Lolita, appearing as pedophilia. In Jeffrey Eugenides' epic novel Middlesex, we have, once again, the theme of the forbidden love.

Calliope middlesex