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The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides is a coming of age story which demonstrates the memories that some adolescents remember at a later point in their lives, and the effect
that these memories have on them. In this case, some boys come in contact with the Lisbon
sisters, as adolescents. These girls intrigue the boys, and their story is tragic, which makes it all the more memorable for the boys as well as the reader. Another theme in the novel is the fact that sometimes, the more some people see of life, the less they would rather be living.
This is true in the case of the girls.
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The point of view is in first person plural ("we"). The story is told when the narrators are grown men, which makes some of their memories faded, and some not in order. These men loved the Lisbon sisters and were deeply affected by their suicides. They, at many times in the novel, attempt to make sense of their deaths.
The Virgin Suicides is written in past tense. It occurs around the 160's or 170's, in a middle-class suburb in Wayne County, on the outskirts of a deteriorating city. The memories that the boys have span over a thirteen month period, from June to the following August.
The novel begins with Mary Lisbon's death. The EMS truck drives up as it usually does, as if it were a common occurrence. The boys across the street observe, and recall the first suicide attempt, by Cecilia, over a year ago. After this attempt, her parents sent her to get
psychiatric help from Dr. Hornicker. He did not understand why she would try to commit suicide, and concluded that she only did it as a "cry for help" (pg 1). He suggested that
Cecilia would benefit from more socializing, and Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon decided to throw the only party of the girls' lives. Cecilia sat in a chair most of the party, until finally asking to be excused. After a few minutes, "We heard the wet sound of her body falling onto the fence that
ran alongside the house." (pg 0) Everyone ran upstairs and saw Mr. Lisbon, carefully trying to lift her off of the fence.
In chapter , The paramedics return to the Lisbon house. They cut the fence stake below Cecilias body, and take her away on a stretcher, with the fence post holding up the blanket. Cecilia's death comes during the sixth week of the cemetery workers strike. After an awkward tour of possible burying grounds, Mr. Lisbon decides on a public nondenominational cemetery, where Cecilia will be given her last rights before being taken to the mortuary freezer
to await burial. Cecilia's sisters file by the body, dazed, and silent. The neighbors later claim that the sisters lack of grief was a sure sign that they were planning to join Cecilia. Her death only makes the boys more curious about the girls. They get her diary from the plumber's
assistant, who found it in the bathroom. The boys become fascinated by the fact that Cecilia describes her sisters and herself as one entity.
In Chapter , the community attempts to reach out to the Lisbon household. Some of the men remove the fence that Cecilia fell on. Afterwards, they help in cleaning up the Lisbon residence. Mr. Lisbon comes out to thank them. Returning inside, as he will tell the boys years later, Mr. Lisbon finds Cecilias window still open, attended by her ghost. Rushing to close the window, he realizes that the ghost is only his daughter, Bonnie, who says, "Don't
worry, they took the fence out."
When school starts, the remaining four Lisbon sisters act as if nothing had happened, and keep to themselves. One day, Trip Fontaine, the school stud, runs into Lux Lisbon. One look, and Trip falls in love. He later went to the Lisbon residence to watch TV, and the whole
family watched his every move during his visit. Afterwards, he sat in his car, somewhat depressed. Suddenly, Lux appeared in her pajamas and started to desperately kiss Trip, and after a few minutes, flees back into her house.
Trip convinces Mrs. Lisbon to allow him to take Lux to Prom. He also finds dates for the other girls. It was allowed; the rules being that they all return home by 11 P.M. and Mr. Lisbon, as chaperone, would ensure that the couples only went to the dance. The girls act perfectly normal during the dance. Mary tells one boy that she is having the best time of her life. That one statement alone foreshadows the fact that they have such short lives.
After the dance, Trip and Lux disappear. Years later, Trip explains that he persuaded Lux to go out onto the football field, where they made love on the goal line. Then Trip abandoned her to walk home. He claimed that at that particular moment he "just got sick of her." At 10 A.M. on that same night, the other boys decided to drive past the Lisbon house. They saw a single light in the bedroom window which suddenly went out. Deep down, they
realize that something went very wrong.
In Chapter 4, Mrs. Lisbon takes the girls out of school and confines them to the house. The boys are shocked by the severity of punishment for Lux breaking curfew. Mrs. Lisbon later explained to the boys that she believed the girls needed time by themselves to recover from Cecilias death. Later, Mrs. Lisbon forces Lux to destroy her rock records.
Soon, the boys began to notice Lux on the roof of the Lisbon house having sex with random men. Somehow she managed to meet men and sneak them on the roof at night
without her parents knowing. Some of them talked to the boys, telling them stories of being led through a dark house full of rotting food and empty cans, which was a clear indication that Mrs. Lisbon had stopped cooking and cleaning entirely. The full deterioration of the
house also hints that the end is near for the girls.
Three weeks later, the ambulance appears at the Lisbon house. Lux claimed to be suffering from a burst appendix, when really she needed a pregnancy test. In the end, Lux is not pregnant, and tells her parents that it was a bad case of indigestion. Dr. Hornicker, the psychiatrist, concludes that Lux is in deep denial of Cecilias death. Dr. Hornicker writes a report on the Lisbon girls, diagnosing the remaining sisters with post-traumatic stress
disorder and warning that suicide can repeat itself in a single family. Because of this report, the community begins to think of suicide as a contagious disease and blames Cecilia for infecting her sisters. No one even bothers asking how Cecilia caught the "suicide virus" in the
first place.
Soon, Mr. Lisbon resigns, and the Lisbon house seems completely empty. No one ever leaves, the lights rarely go on, and the grocer stops delivering groceries. Before dawn, Bonnie appears to recite the rosary. Soon the boys begin to smell disgusting things coming from the
house. The boys try to, but cannot judge how bad the Lisbon girls lives may actually be, which later haunts them in their old age.
One day, Old Mrs. Karafilis, grandmother of neighborhood boy, took interest in the Lisbon girls. She was never surprised by their story, and said, "We Greeks are a moody people. Suicide makes sense to us. Putting up Christmas lights after your own daughter does it - that makes no sense. What I could never understand about America was why everyone pretended to be happy all the time." (pg 175)
The newspapers, later described the girls as "creatures so barely alive that their deaths came as little change." (pg 176) They claimed that Lux had liked an album by the band Cruel Crux, who had a song entitled "Virgin Suicide" - in which sexual conquest is referred to as a virgin suicide. The boys, reading this article, were outraged, and believed that describing
them as doomed from the beginning was unfair.
Soon, various notes are found left from the girls, and the boys feel that the girls want to talk. They decide to phone the girls, they play a song in to the phone, leave their phone number, and hang up. The next day, they get a phone call playing a song. This continually happened. Years later, the boys are not able to remember the exact songs played, only that they played love songs while the girls played folk songs. Finally, in a burst of intimacy, the
girls played David Gates Make It With You, and the line went dead.
On June 14, a note appears in the boys mailbox saying Tomorrow. Midnight. Wait for our signal. On the night of June 15, the boys proceed over to the Lisbon house. They meet Lux in the house. She claims the other girls are not done packing yet, and tells them to wait
in the living room for her sisters while she goes to the car.
Soon, the boys begin to wander around. They enter the basement, and come upon Bonnie, hanging dead from a beam. The boys run out of there, completely forgetting that Lux was in the car. After this, they realize that Bonnie died while they waited in the living room, that Therese was dead by sleeping pills before they entered, and that they missed Mary with her head in the oven. Luxs death by carbon monoxide poisoning occurred after they left. The
boys then realized how Lux stalled them, giving herself and her sisters time to die in peace.
In Chapter 5, The paramedics arrive for the fourth time. Lux, Bonnie, and Therese are dead, and only Mary is alive. Dr. Hornicker, realizing that his diagnosis of post-traumatic stress does not explain Cecilias suicide, suggests that the sisters suffered from a chemical
imbalance of serotonin. Many rumours go around the neighbourhood about the deaths, most not true. The boys soon realize that they are alone. Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon move out, and the house gets cleaned out. Any trash thrown onto the street is analyzed by the boys. They keep
some of these artifacts in their tree house.
A chemical spill causes the air to become thick with a rotten stench and because of this, the O'Conner's decide to have an "Asphyxiation" themed party for their daughter. The boys attend the party to try and forget the Lisbon girls. As they return home, they see the
ambulance one final time at the Lisbon house. Mary took sleeping pills and died. Coincidentally, the cemetery workers strike is settled on the day of Marys death. All five sisters can now be buried. Soon, Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon move away. Their house is sold to a couple, who begin to renovate, and remove all evidence of the girls.
The boys grow older, leave, but then come back. They notice that their memories of the Lisbon girls are fading away, much like some of the articles they collected from the Lisbon household have started to rot and decay. Even as grown men, the boys still cannot get the girls out of their heads. They do not understand, and realize that they never did understand the girls.
In the final paragraph of the book, the boys comment on the girls for the final time. "The girls took into their own hands decisions better left to God. They became too powerful to live among us, too self-concerned, visionary, too blind. What lingered after them was not life, which always overcomes natural death, but the most trivial list of mundane facts a clock ticking on a wall, a room dim at noon, and the outrageousness of a human being thinking only of herself. Her brain going dim to all else, but flaming up in precise points of pain, personal injury, lost dreams.... They made us participate in their own madness, because we couldn't help but retrace their steps, rethink their thoughts, and see that none of them led to
us.... It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house, with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they
went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together." (pg 48)
The boys are the narrators of the novel. There was no mention of how many there were. During the novel, they are in high school, live across from the Lisbons, and have always
been fascinated by the Lisbon girls. They look back on the suicides as they are older men. At
this point, they still feel haunted by the girls deaths. They constantly attempt to make sense
of the girls actions, motives, and desires over the course of their final year of life.
Mr. Lisbon and Mrs. Lisbon were the girls' parents. Mr. Lisbon was a high school math
teacher described as thin, retiring man with a high, boyish voice. He loved his daughters with
all of his heart, but upon being interviewed by the boys, he confessed that he found them to
be complete strangers. As the novel becomes more tragic, Mr. Lisbon withdraws further into
his private world , and his hold on reality begins to slip. Mrs. Lisbon is incredibly domineering
and is basically the head of the Lisbon household. She was described as plump with brutally
cut steel-wool hair and librarians glasses. She is incredibly Catholic, and many of her rules
for the girls no makeup, no even slightly revealing clothes, and no rock music, reflect her
strictness. She does not trust the outside world, and believes that girls are happiest at home
under her watchful eye. Her weakness lies within the fact that she was unable to attend to
her daughters suffering, taking to her bed for weeks after Cecilias death. Her housekeeping,
which was normal at the beginning of the novel, slowly deteriorates after the first suicide.
Trip Fontaine was the high school stud. He takes good care of his appearance,
strutting down the school hallways and sunning himself daily in his pool, but could care less
about school. He constantly does and deals drugs. When Trip meets Lux, he has no idea how
to go after her, because he was always used to being the wanted one. As a boy, Trip is one of
the most popular boys in school, but as an adult, he is in rehab, recovering from his past
mistakes.
Cecilia is the youngest of the five girls, at age 1. Cecilia is described as very saintly,
pale, sick, precocious, shy, and known even by her older sisters as the weird one of the
family. Cecilia wears a vintage 10's wedding gown. In her first suicide attempt, she slits her
wrists when she is taking a bath, and is the spark of the Lisbon tragedies. Her second suicide
attempt was successful; she jumped out of her window onto a spiked fence.
Lux is the second youngest of the five girls, at age 14. She is described as very
beautiful, slim, mischievous, and eventually promiscuous. She is a secret smoker since the
age of twelve. Luxs adventures have consequences for her sisters lives - it was Luxs failure
to make curfew that same night that resulted in the sisters being taken from school, and
confined to the house, with disastrous consequences. Lux dies on the night of June fifteenth
from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Bonnie is the middle child and is 15 years old. She is described as ascetic, very quiet,
skittish, and having a sallow complexion. She was a foot taller than any of her sisters, with a
sharp nose and long neck. It seemed that each day she would grow thinner. Bonnie hangs
herself and dies on the night of June fifteenth.
Mary Lisbon is the second oldest of the Lisbon girls, at age 16. She is described as
prim, proper, poised, and spending many hours in front of the mirror. Her hair is the darkest
of the sisters, and she has a slight mustache and a widows peak. As the house decays, she
attempts to keep herself looking good, and wears bright sweaters to collect the mail. After her
unsuccessful suicide attempt by sticking her head in the gas oven, on the night of June
fifteenth, Mary spends a month sleeping and obsessively showering. She dies in July by
taking sleeping pills.
Therese Lisbon is the oldest of the Lisbon girls, at age 17. She is described as intellectual, studious, and very much into science. She reads many textbooks, attends
science conventions, grows seahorses, uses a ham radio, and plans to go to an Ivy League
college. Physically, she is not as appealing as her sisters, and is described as having a heavy
face, the eyes of a cow, and two left feet. Therese dies on the night of June fifteenth from a
combination of sleeping pills and gin.
The Virgin Suicides was brilliantly written, and is one that will stay in the readers' memory for years. Throughout the novel, one is able to feel sympathy for the girls and understand that they could not cope in this world. Although it is mentioned at the beginning
that all the girls die, it still seems a surprise, and you still want to continue reading. The boys fascination was understandable. During adolescence, some do have obsessional love, and do ask many questions. In all, this was found to be a beautiful book, cleverly written - with some irony in the title, and incredibly fascinating.
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