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Gender Stereotypes In John Milton's Gender Roles

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With their son Milton, a delineation in these gender roles can be identified. Men of his generation were expected to go to war, while women stayed home as mothers and housewives. Milton, unable to stand the “dullness of military life, the endless repetition of duties, the standing in line to eat”, and the vigorous demand of the Navy during World War II, did not hesitate to take the first opportunity to escape the Navy (Eugenides 188). This shirking of his masculine duties, along with his increasing disconnect with the Greek Orthodox church and declining ability to write in Greek, represents a deviation from traditions of the previous generation, especially gender roles. However, Tessie, Milton’s wife, remains a housewife while Milton is “preoccupied with business worries… began to leave a little more of himself at the diner each day” as an admirable man would be traditionally expected to do (Eugenides 225).
Finally, Cal’s generation is the most progressive in terms of gender roles of the three generations within Middlesex. His intersexism serves as a “reflection of what was happening… in those years, women were becoming more like men and men were becoming more like women” (Eugenides 478). At the same time, conventional gender roles are still present in the form of trivial, everyday mannerisms. Cal is aware that in order to be able to pass as male that he must “[kick] up [his] heel and [look] back over [his] shoulder… rather than [cross his] leg in front of him” when there

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