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Coming of Age: The Virgin Suicides
When girls are growing up, the world tells them the things that they are supposed to be: loving, emotional, beautiful and wanted. However, when they become these things, the world shows them that they are inferior, vain, weak and empty. In general, it teaches them that they exist in disgusting manner. They watch boys cringing backwards when they try to talk about their periods. In a restaurants, trying to give the experience they had when they visited a gynecologist, over their shoulders, they watch boys of their age turning to look at them and wrinkle their noses. That is when the reality begins to dawn on them that it is impolite to talk about their lives. The message the world is trying to pass is that they do not have a right to the spaces they occupy. Any space with men is not theirs, them and their bodies exist as what men want. At 15 years old, girls find boys of their age believing that the women should bend their bodies at their will. They are children (Villani, 2012).
Adolescence has been packaged as an American theme. This stems from the huge pop-culture works since around 1940s, the country seems to be obsessed with the adolescents. America has embraced artists who have captured this theme, from Shirley Temple to Britney Spears. However, the fascination with the adolescent population stretches beyond the pop-culture to include some works of literature which have featured adolescent protagonists. The adolescence stage has been characterized as a lively and a period of new beginnings. This stage in the human life opens various possibilities that later on defines and moulds the fate of people. The adolescence stage is a bright one and in few occasions it becomes associated with mystery, sadness, tragedy and pain. This rare occasion has been explored in the novel “The Virgin Suicides” by Jeffrey Eugenides. In this paper I am going to explore this theme by examining how Jeffrey portrays coming of age or adolescence in girls.
The Virgin Suicides was first published in 1993 and was Jeffrey’s debut novel. It received favorable movies and adapted into an equally celebrated movie by Sofia Coppola. Later, Jeffrey published other novels, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Middlesex in 2002 and The Marriage Plot in 2011. Jeffrey was born to Greek descent father and an Anglo=Irish descent mother in Detroit, Michigan. Throughout his works, Jeffrey is fascinated by gender and out of the three, Middlesex seems to be the only work that contradicts the concept of gender. On the other hand, the other works tend to be questioning gender roles in the society. In an interview by Foer, Jeffrey expresses his opinion of gender as a continuum:
Genes and environment interact during a specific, crucial development period. They coauthor the human being. Biologists understand this, but the culture at large does not, quite. So we have these pat theories about evolutionary causes for our present behaviors. Men cannot communicate because 20,000 year ago they had to be silent on the hunt. Women are verbal because they had to call out to each other while gathering nuts and berries. This is just as silly as the previous nurture explanations … Between the alternatives of nurture and nature, I argue for a middle place. That is one of the meanings of the title Middlesex, obviously. But the Middlesex I am talking about is not only a third gender category. It also represents a certain flexibility in the notion of gender itself. It is a very American concept really. It is a belief in individuality, in freedom. I think we are freer than we realize. Less genetically encumbered.
The Virgin Suicides is about the life of five Lisbon sisters with a focus on their last year and suicides. When they commit suicides, the girls are seventeen (Therese), sixteen (Mary), fifteen (Bonnie), fourteen (Lux), and thirteen (Cecilia). The suicides happens in the 1970s but the story is told two decades later by a group of boys (now middle-aged) who were obsessed by the girls, they are still obsessed by them even if they are dead. The parents of the sisters, Mr and Mrs Lisbon were strict Christians, which can be considered to be fanaticism. They insisted that their daughters must adhere to strict instructions such as modest dressing, watching family-friendly films, must be chaperoned when they go out on few dates and attend services on a regular basis. Cecilia’s death must have triggered her sisters’ suicides.
Throughout the story, so many questions surrounding their deaths are raised through the eyes of the boys who were stilled obsessed with them. Death is painful as Jeffery describes it through the lens of the Lisbon house deteriorating. Biblical themes are used as well such as the descending of flies that cover everything in their wake, this is similar to the plague of locusts in the Bible.
In general, the novel “The Virgin Suicides” attempts to demonstrate the complexity of coming of age or adolescence through its characters, both the Lisbon sisters and neighborhood teenage boys. In the novel the sisters are at the point of transitioning from childhood to adulthood. During this stage, both characters, the Lisbon sisters and teenage boys, experienced the challenges of adolescence. However, this period in their lives was controlled by various factors such as religion family and society.
The novel provides a lot of excerpts that demonstrates how the Lisbon sisters experienced their coming of age. Each had her own situation signifying her coming of age. Therese being the eldest became more open in her studies, she was interested in science. Mary, the second sister became obsessed with her beauty, she begun to spend more time in front of the mirror than other girls. Bonnie, the third born, became quiet and pious which signifies her womanly growing. Lux, the fourth, grew to be adventurous of all. She demonstrates her coming of age by becoming obsessed with earthly materials; sex and cigarettes. ...