The Virgin Suicides

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1993

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapter 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 3, Pages 45-84 Summary

In the days after Cecilia’s death, flowers came from neighbors who felt awkward and unsure of how to approach the Lisbon family. Mrs. Lisbon gave up on housekeeping and spent her days in her bedroom, while Mr. Lisbon mindlessly watched football to distract himself. The local priest, Father Moody, visited the family and found that the house was a mess, the girls seemed unbathed, and Mr. Lisbon was unable to discuss his grief. The neighborhood developed a strange fixation with the fence, blaming its placement and dangerous spikes for Cecilia’s death, which led to its removal. The swarms of fish flies died off and the air cleared, and all of this brought a sense of relief to the town but not to the Lisbons, who became increasingly lost in their grief. Mr. Lisbon realized that he didn’t know his own children and wandered through his house at night, unsure how to talk to them or help them. One night, he thought he saw Cecilia’s ghost and ran into her room to close the open window, but then realized that Bonnie was standing there. In the fall, Mr. Lisbon taught “with his usual enthusiasm” (61) but ate alone and was often seen talking to the school’s plant life. He drove to school by himself, while his daughters took the bus, as though they were no longer part of the same family.

At school, the boys tried to approach the girls and start conversations, but the girls seemed to think the attention was just pity and rebuffed them—except for Lux, who readily accepted attention from boys who approached her and dated several over the coming weeks. She did so in secrecy, and Mrs. Lisbon remained unaware. One boy, Trip Fontaine, was particularly attractive and popular, and the text comments on how knowing him was a rude awakening for the other boys that attractiveness matters to girls. Trip never spoke about his experiences with girls until years later, instead maintaining a sense of discretion about his affairs. Out of the more than 400 women with whom Trip has been involved, he tells the boys during his later interviews, “I’ve never gotten over that girl, man. Never” (71), in reference to Lux.

He recalls how he used to smoke cannabis three times a day, and on one of these days felt paranoid and snuck into a classroom to avoid being seen by the principal. He describes the room as being filled with an “orange glow” because of the autumn leaves, and how when Lux looked at him, a second became eternity (a memory that haunts him even now). As a teen, Trip tried to gain Lux’s attention but failed and then one day insisted on coming over to ask her parents formally if he could take her out. The night was initially uneventful: He sat on the couch beside Mrs. Lisbon and wasn’t even able to speak to Lux; however, when he got in his car to leave at the end of the night, Lux ran after him and began kissing him. He nervously touched her all over, “as though he had never touched a girl before” (82), and the moment was a “lightning attack” that was over as quickly as it began. Trip looks back on it as the most intense and elevating sexual experience of his life. After that, Trip was forbidden from seeing Lux.

Chapter 3, Pages 85-110 Summary

“Signs of creeping desolation” (85) arose in the neighborhood and around the Lisbon home as time passed: The roof deteriorated, the lawn was left untended, and the Lisbon girls stopped going anywhere but school and church. Before the elm trees were removed, the boys watched the leaves fall and the sky slowly emerge above them. The suburb would rake leaves together, and each father would burn their family’s piles at the end of it. That year, Mr. Lisbon didn’t rake his leaves, and the lawn grew increasingly wild. Neighbors became irritated about the eyesore, and one woman wrote a letter to the newspaper about Cecilia’s death, teen anxiety, and how something should be done to address it. In reality, her only concern was the state of the Lisbon house. Shortly thereafter, a reporter appeared at the Lisbon home and interviewed two of the girls; the paper then ran a story on Cecilia’s death, describing it in detail. It noted increasing anxiety among teens, whose “extended childhoods” left them feeling lost between adulthood and childhood.

Death by suicide became a hot topic for television and other media, almost a source of entertainment. Pamphlets were handed out at school containing all sorts of statistics about the prevalence of death by suicide. The suburb took its attention off what the text describes as suspiciously targeted attempts to keep Black people out of the neighborhood, refocusing it on a wellness campaign. Amid all the focus on death by suicide, the girls slowly slipped into the background of the suburb’s social world. The headmaster’s wife suggested hosting a “Day of Grieving” (100) for Cecilia but never mentioned her name, and the day instead became generalized to a grieving of all terrible things. Teachers organized activities designed to help the students heal, but ironically none of the Lisbon girls participated. Mr. Lisbon participated in the events but was hardly aware of them.

A school counsellor (later revealed to be a fraud) was brought into the school, and the Lisbon girls frequently went to talk to her. This seemed to brighten their moods and release some of the stigma surrounding their lives. Week by week, people mentioned Cecilia and her death less and less often. Trip took advantage of this period of low tension to ask Mr. Lisbon if he could take Lux to the Homecoming dance. Mr. Lisbon listed several reasons why it wasn’t possible, but when Trip suggested taking all the girls as a group with some other boys, Mr. Lisbon conceded and managed to convince his wife.

Chapter 3, Pages 111-135 Summary

Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon agreed to let Trip and a few other boys take the girls to the dance as long as they followed strict rules. The dresses the girls wore were “frontierish” and unflattering, expanded to avoid showing any bodily curve. A photograph that the boys keep from that night shows the girls standing, unimpressed, except Lux, who looks hopeful about the evening. One of the boys confessed years later that Mrs. Lisbon seemed to harbor a sadness that went beyond her daughters and into the distant past, before she (or anyone she knew) was born. This sadness, he claimed, passed on to her daughters. When the girls came downstairs in their dresses, they seemed proud, and the boys were excited to see them. The mysticism surrounding the girls dissolved quickly as the boys put on their corsages and everyone got in the car to drive to the school. The girls seemed so much more normal than anyone expected; they had opinions and made observations. The dance went well, and the girls seemed happier than they’d ever been. Lux and Bonnie snuck under the bleachers with their respective dates, drinking some schnapps that Trip had and kissing the boys. Afterward, everyone danced together; even the boys narrating the story had a chance to dance with the Lisbon girls.

When the dance was over, the girls reconvened at the car, but Lux and Trip were missing. They searched everywhere but couldn’t find them and finally gave up to go home. The ride home was tense, as the girls wondered if they’d all be punished for Lux’s actions. Arriving home, the girls thanked the boys for the date and headed inside. When Lux appeared in a cab two hours later, the house door opened, and church music reminiscent of funereal music flooded out as Mrs. Lisbon stood there and Mr. Lisbon took Lux inside. When Mrs. Lisbon realized that Lux had been drinking, she raised her hand to strike her but stopped, knowing that others were watching. In an interview years later, Trip admitted that he and Lux had walked to the football field and made love there but that she’d cried over her mistakes during the moment and he suddenly felt done with her company. Later that night, the boys drove by the Lisbon home one more time, and something in their guts told them that it was the last time the girls would ever be let out.

Chapter 3 Analysis

After the loss of Cecilia, the Lisbon family descends further and further into grief and doesn’t seem to heal. Instead, only the neighbors heal, though they never really felt grief to begin with: “All the healing was done by those of us without wounds” (101). Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon’s reactions to their loss seem, on the surface, to be the opposite but in truth are the same, as Mrs. Lisbon shuts herself off from the world in the literal sense, never leaving home, while Mr. Lisbon shuts out the world emotionally, refusing to talk about anything of substance. He acts like his other daughters don’t exist, foreshadowing that the other Lisbon girls are already destined to die long before they ever decide to because the world has forgotten them. The parents’ unhealthy reactions to grief do nothing but compound their daughters’ feelings, since the girls don’t receive the support they need or any sort of healthy model for responding to tragedy. The Lisbon girls are seen wandering and acting reckless at night, and Mr. Lisbon soon feels like a stranger in his own home.

While the loss of Cecilia affects each family member differently, the overarching theme of The Effects of Loss is symbolized by the “signs of creeping desolation” (85) that start to appear in the home itself. The house becomes filthy both inside and out, and dark clouds always seem to loom overhead. The Lisbons don’t participate in the neighborhood’s yearly leaf-burning ritual: “Only the Lisbon house remained dark, a tunnel, an emptiness, past our smoke and flames” (88). Amid the glow of life, the Lisbon home is a place of deep gloom and persistent darkness, as though all possibility of light has been sucked out of it. The family increasingly withdraws from the community, and as their isolation increases and their grief compounds, the house falls into ruin.

Alongside the increasing isolation is a juxtaposing force of increasing news, media, and local attention. The attention comes months after Cecilia’s death and in many ways far too late, given that the family has already descended into a deep depression. The topic of death by suicide appears regularly in the news and becomes almost a source of entertainment and intrigue rather than a story about a person named Cecilia, who had thoughts, dreams, and unaddressed problems. The school holds a day of mourning for Cecilia, which eventually excludes her name and becomes more like a day of mourning for all of the community’s tragedies of the past and leaves the boys feeling more helpless than ever. Theories continue to abound about Cecilia’s death and the reasons behind it, including a historical trauma passed down from her mother. Mrs. Lisbon’s own extreme behavior, even before Cecilia’s death, adds to the suggestion that the Lisbon girls’ distress has a genetic or ancestral component.

The night of the Homecoming dance is a pivotal moment in the story. The tension escalates, and the event brings out the girls’ more innocent, youthful sides. Trip Fontaine falls for Lux, starting a series of events that result in the girls’ final and complete incarceration. Trip’s popularity holds significant influence at the school, but the only girl he can focus on is Lux. After their first date, he becomes fully immersed in his obsession, emphasizing the theme of The Objectification of Women that is so prominent among the novel’s male characters: “With terror he put his finger in the ravenous mouth of the animal leashed below her waist. It was as though he had never touched a girl before” (82).

Like the other boys, as an adult, Trip continues to reflect on the past when he looks back on his time with Lux, and he compares every woman he has met since to her, supporting the theme of Romanticizing the Past. At the dance, the girls seem to come out of their shells and engage in typical teen activities, but their fun lasts for only one night, as Lux and Trip’s animalistic drives lead Lux to miss her ride and come home late. Just as Cecilia’s diary entries suggested, the girls are treated as one unit and are punished as one, given that all of them are forbidden to leave the house after Lux fails to follow her mother’s rules. If their future wasn’t hopeless already, it becomes so with this decision, suggesting the theme of The Death of the Future.