The Virgin Suicides

The second chapter focuses on the circumstances surrounding Cecilia’s death—and the reasons behind it, which never become clear. The way that the neighbors react to the news reveals the stigma they attached to death by suicide itself, particularly during a time when most people of parental age still held religious beliefs. Cecilia’s own parents stigmatize her death by refusing to discuss it or even admit their grief to anyone. Mr. Lisbon tries to act cheerful, and Mrs. Lisbon hides herself away from the world. The neighbors leave flowers, but the only one to properly reach out to the family is the local priest, who quickly gives up upon seeing the state of their home.

This section investigates Cecilia’s death from the perspective of a detective sleuthing out clues, as the boys talk to neighbors, recall their own observations from their time at the party, and comb through Cecilia’s diary. The diary proves a significant clue toward the mindset of the Lisbon girls and how they saw themselves as a unit; Cecilia doesn’t refer to herself as an individual, instead recounting what “we” (she and her sisters) did each day. In addition, the boys note how the diary reveals a stark truth about Cecilia’s descent into a purgatory-like state in which she was neither living nor dead:

“As the diary progresses, Cecilia begins to recede from her sisters and, in fact, from personal narrative of any kind. The first person singular ceases almost entirely, the effect akin to a camera’s pulling away from the characters at the end of a movie” (40).

Upon reading Cecilia’s diary, the boys’ delusion related to the mystification of the Lisbon girls only deepens, supporting the theme of The Objectification of Women, as the boys convince themselves that they’re experiencing what Cecilia experienced. They describe their fascination with the Lisbon girls in such a way that they draw the reader into it with them, inspiring a question that’s never answered regarding Cecilia’s inner life: “Little is known of Cecilia’s state of mind on the last day of her life” (41).

Alongside the examination of Cecilia’s death by suicide are descriptions of the suburb, the street, and the Lisbon home. As the boys watch the scene of Cecilia’s death, they can hear “the sounds of the impoverished city [they] never visited” (31). Isolated in their suburb, they’ve never been exposed to tragedy of this level before, and the townspeople’s shock and detachment result partly from not knowing how to approach something so horrible. Still, they’re fascinated by it, and all watch from a distance but never step in to help.

The text mentions how, during this era, the suburb’s innocence was evident in the absence of human death since World War II. These youths, many of whom were the children of men who fought in World War II, felt sheltered and safe in their suburb but simultaneously lacked any greater sense of purpose. Their view of the future as something not worth saving—and Cecilia’s death—allude to the theme of The Death of the Future, and the boys, though now grown, cling to the past, supporting the theme of Romanticizing the Past: They admit that they continue to fantasize about and pine over girls who are no longer living. In many ways, the Lisbon girls still distract them from the meaninglessness of their own lives.