The Virgin Suicides

The novel uses suburban life as a setting and a motif to illuminate the characters’ conflicts and dissatisfaction with the state of the world, as well as to emphasize the theme of Romanticizing the Past. The boys talk about seeing the city in the distance but never visiting because of its degraded state. They’re easily bored and preoccupied with obsessing over the Lisbon girls, failing to have their own personal endeavors. Like their neighbors, the boys have lives steeped in gossip and rumors of what each neighbor witnesses of the Lisbon family.

In addition, suburban life symbolizes naivete and innocence, as before Cecilia, the neighborhood hadn’t seen any death since World War II. It’s a place where, like many suburbs, “everyone pretended to be happy all the time” (169). The Lisbon family, isolated in this world of false personas, chooses to isolate themselves in return. All the while, gossip and theories about the girls’ deaths spread rapidly, despite the fact that no one showed concern or reached out to help them while they were alive. When the elm trees are finally all gone, the boys “got to see how truly unimaginative [their] suburb was” (237), a place where “everything [was] laid out on a grid whose bland uniformity the trees had hidden, and the old ruses of differentiated architectural styles lost their power to make [them] feel unique” (237). Suburban life exemplifies how the US, through its own slow degradation, escaped from itself to a place where the world wasn’t perfect but where it was easy enough to pass off the illusion of perfection.

A prominent symbol of the Lisbon family’s grief, the Lisbon home is also a grounding motif for the theme of The Effects of Loss after Cecilia’s death by suicide and, later, those of the other girls. After Cecilia dies, the family grows increasingly isolated, and their house falls into neglect. Shingles fall off the roof, the grass goes uncut, and debris starts to pile up after being tossed out of the windows by the hands of indifference. The family home, which should be a site of comfort and stability, becomes more of a prison of despair that the girls are forbidden from escaping. The house itself turns into a neighborhood eyesore that provokes many complaints, while also becoming a source of gossip and scandal.

When Mr. Lisbon loses his job and the family loses touch with the outside world completely, the house deteriorates even further: “Now the house truly died. For as long as Mr. Lisbon had gone back and forth to school, he circulated a thin current of life through the house” (157). On the night of the three girls’ deaths by suicide, the boys enter the house and find it exactly as it was when they left a year ago, only rotting and full of the remains of a life lived in isolation. Even the food and decorations from Cecilia’s party remain intact, as if the family stayed frozen in time. After the other girls’ deaths, the house is put up for sale and gutted: “[I]t felt as though the house could keep disgorging debris forever […] and after sifting through it all we would still know nothing” (224). It’s cleaned and sold to a young couple, and all signs of the Lisbon family and their grief vanish from it.

An important motif in the novel is the contrast inherent in appearance versus reality, a contrast that illuminates the issues behind the boys’ obsession over the Lisbon girls, as well as the flaws in their recollections of the girls. The boys see the girls as almost otherworldly and fictional, despite knowing that they’re living, breathing people. They’re shocked to find out after the Homecoming dance that they’re just like other girls. The boys see the Lisbon girls as pure, sacred, and worth obsessing over well into middle age. As a result, the way they appear to the boys differs vastly from how they actually are. The boys see them through the illusion of the male gaze and never really know them. Similarly, the Lisbon parents refrain from showing their grief after Cecilia’s death, leading to Mr. Lisbon’s uncanny and haunting behavior and Mrs. Lisbon’s total isolation.

Another way that the idea of appearance versus reality comes into play within the story is the gossip and speculation surrounding the deaths and the reasons behind them. All sorts of theories arise, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a historical trauma, and a “plot to make everything flat” (41), but none of these theories gives a complete picture behind the girls’ actions. Even after decades of thinking back on the girls, the boys still can’t answer the question of why they chose to die.

Virginity represents purity in the novel and illuminates The Objectification of Women. To the boys, the Lisbon girls are angelic symbols of purity. The novel’s title, The Virgin Suicides, speaks to the significance of virginity and purity as important concepts that influence the girls’ decisions to end their own lives and turn them into more of a legend than the human beings they were. Cecilia, after her first attempt, is found holding a photograph of the Virgin Mary, “bringing her message of peace to a crumbling world” (12), signifying being chosen as pure and thereby having to sacrifice something for the greater good. When Cecilia is wheeled away on the stretcher, the boys watch from afar and describe her as “the drugged virgin rising up on her elbows, with an otherworldly smile on her pale face” (4). Cecilia wears a white dress, further emphasizing purity, and she’s only 13 years old, barely into adolescence.

In contrast with Cecilia is Lux, a girl who rebels against the idea of purity and instead intentionally tries to impurify herself through meaningless sexual encounters that she seems less than enthused about. The girls distribute copies of the same photograph of the Virgin Mary when they plan their own deaths, and the boys somehow fail to realize the signal that the girls are sending. Finally, Mrs. Lisbon, the family’s matriarch, encourages ideas of religious purity by banning makeup, interactions with boys, and rock music. Her restrictions on the girls and emphasis on purity are part of the inspiration for their rebellion.