The Virgin Suicides

Dynamic characters, Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon have personas that shift not to opposing traits but to more extreme versions of themselves as they fall further and further into grief. Mr. Lisbon is described as boyish and surprised about his own gray hair. He’s always chipper and a bit too friendly, which only increases after Cecilia’s death. Mrs. Lisbon is extremely strict and adheres to fundamental religious beliefs that lead her to exact complete control over her daughters’ lives. Even before Cecilia’s death, the Lisbon parents are described by the boys as being “leeched of color, like photographic negatives” (6).

Because the boys never gain much information about the Lisbon parents’ relationship or its dynamics, readers are left to speculate about its nature and why Mr. Lisbon allowed his wife to lock up their daughters. Mrs. Lisbon scarcely reminds the boys of her daughters, except after they’ve all died and she looks back at the street as if to announce the depth of her grief:

Still, we do have the image of Mrs. Lisbon turning toward the street and showing her face as never before […] she turned, she sent her blue gaze out in every direction, the same color gaze the girls had had, icy and spectral and unknowable, and then she turned back and followed her husband into the house (234-35).

After Cecilia’s death, Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon each grieve in their own way, but both fail to process their loss and move on with life, foregrounding one of the novel’s primary themes: The Effects of Loss. They also fail to love and care for their other four daughters, instead leaving them to their own devices and fall deeper into despair. Mr. Lisbon becomes preoccupied with baseball and unable to discuss much else, and he isolates himself from the other staff at school, leading a “shadowy existence” (108). This eventually leads to his losing his job and the final connection of the Lisbons to the outside world. The pain that the Lisbon girls carry in many ways passed down from their mother, who was walled up from the world and from her family but whose pain was written all over her face: “An ancient pain arising from Mrs. Lisbon, the sum of her people’s griefs” (116) passed to her children and became their burden more than hers.

The youngest Lisbon girl, Cecilia, is the first to die by suicide at age 13. Her death is symbolic and is the catalyst for the subsequent Lisbon deaths on the anniversary of her own. After her initial attempt, paramedics save Cecilia and take her to the hospital, where she recovers. She seems dejected, as if she has already decided to reject the world that was given to her, and when she speaks, she sounds “old and tired” (26), as though she has lived much longer than 13 years.

After her first attempt, Cecilia is found in a white dress, with a photograph of the Virgin Mary on her chest, both symbolizing her purity and desire to die in a pure state. When Cecilia “succeed[s] in hurling herself out of the world” (28), she sets in motion a chain of events both unfortunate and predictable. Her pain and her reasoning are never fully understood, though extensive investigations and speculation probe into why she ended her own life. The boys refer to Cecilia as “the weird sister” (37) because she was unlike not only her sisters but the world itself. Her death becomes a symbol of the degradation of nature and of American society, as is evident in her passion for the elm trees and disillusionment with suburban life.

The second youngest Lisbon girl, Lux, is 14 years old at the time the novel takes place and is defined almost exclusively by what the boys consider sexual allure. The bra they find on the crucifix in the novel’s introduction symbolizes Lux as the archetype of a temptress. Sexual undertones pervade almost all descriptions of Lux, such as those of her escapades on the roof. Lux seems to seek sexual attention to quell her grief and the numbness that accompanies it. The boys who have encounters with her describe her as being more than willing but not at all enthusiastic about their interactions, as though she’s simply going through the motions.

More than her sisters, Lux relies on social interaction and attention, and she becomes increasingly frail and ill the longer she’s isolated. At one point, she fakes an illness just to leave home for a while, and the doctor observes that she’s extremely anxious. Lux’s mistake in staying out too late with Trip leads to further isolation because her mother punishes her and her siblings as a unit. When the boys come to find the girls on their last night, Lux greets them and then distracts them with the temptation of sex before making an excuse and disappearing to die by suicide along with her sisters.

The three eldest Lisbon girls, in descending order of age, are Therese, Mary, and Bonnie. The story focuses less on their lives and personas, and thus, less is known about them or their motivations for dying by suicide. Therese, the eldest, applies for college during the weeks before her death, and Mary always gives the impression of being proper and almost quaint. Bonnie is timid and rarely speaks, but a small part of her true self comes through when she lets loose and drinks with her sister Lux at the Homecoming dance. The boys have a photograph of the girls from that night that they treasure as one of their most precious possessions:

“Here you have them as we knew them, as we’re still coming to know them: skittish Bonnie, shrinking from the flash; Therese, with her braincase squeezing shut the suspicious slits of her eyes; Mary, proper and posed; and Lux, looking not at the camera but up in the air” (114).

It’s a surreal description of an image of people captured in time and lost to time, people whose subtle mannerisms tell more than words ever might. At the dance, Therese asks her date, “Do we seem as crazy as everyone thinks?” (128), which she follows with an assertion that she and her sisters are normal people who “just want to live” (128) but aren’t being allowed to do so. Bonnie mentions her belief in God while staring up at the night sky before going inside with her sisters. She later becomes the mechanism through which the boys discover their own part in failing to prevent the girls’ deaths by suicide. In the novel’s climax, Therese and Mary die together on the same night as their sister Lux, but Mary survives her attempt. During the next few weeks until she dies, others treat her as if she’s already dead, leaving her with a sleeping bag and never speaking to or about her.