Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Virgin Suicides, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Obsession, Gossip, and Scandal
Coming of Age and Nostalgia
Suburban Life, Class, and Decline
Loss, Mourning, and Uncertainty
Summary
Analysis
A Greek chorus of neighborhood boys rehashes the details of Mary Lisbon’s suicide. She was, the boys clarify, the last Lisbon sister to take her own life, dying from an overdose of sleeping pills just like her sister, Therese. When the paramedics arrived to put Mary on a stretcher, the boys were already used to seeing them pull up in the ambulance and saunter inside—they knew the two men wouldn’t move as quickly or with as much drama as paramedics do in movies. And the paramedics themselves knew exactly where to go in the Lisbon house because they’d been there several times before, as all of the Lisbon sisters had died by suicide within the last 13 months.
The first thing that strikes readers about The Virgin Suicides is that it’s narrated not by a single character but by an entire group of boys. The function of this narrative device isn’t immediately clear, but it still establishes a sense of voyeurism that will run throughout the rest of the novel. As the neighborhood boys begin to tell the Lisbon sisters’ tragic story, readers feel as if they themselves have been swept up in the drama. Right from the beginning of the novel, then, the narrative invites readers to participate in the neighborhood’s morbid fascination with the Lisbon family and its misfortune.
Themes
The boys narrate the Lisbon sisters’ tale, explaining that Cecilia—the youngest—is the first daughter to die by suicide. Of all the Lisbon sisters, she stands out the most, since she always wears a vintage wedding dress cut short above the knees. When she slits her wrists in the bathtub in June, the paramedics are so stunned by her troubling, nearly lifeless serenity that they hesitate before lifting her out and putting her on a stretcher. When they finally move her, they find a laminated card depicting the Virgin Mary clutched firmly in Cecilia’s hands.
Cecilia is the first Lisbon sister to attempt suicide, but the novel has already made it clear that she won’t be the last. In fact, it has already been established that all of the Lisbon sisters will take their own lives. But readers don’t yet know why this is the case. To that end, knowing that all of the sisters eventually die by suicide only makes readers more curious about what will happen to the girls throughout the rest of the novel. In a way, readers are in the same position as the neighborhood boys—that is, confused and eager to understand what drives the sisters to suicide.
Themes
The Greek chorus of neighborhood boys interrupts itself to explain that they’ve tried to put all of the photographs related to the suicides in chronological order. As they peruse the various pictures, they often quote people from the neighborhood, whom they’ve interviewed about the Lisbon girls in the intervening years—they’ve even talked to Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon about their daughters. They then pick up their story again, talking about watching Mrs. Lisbon get into the back of the ambulance with Cecilia while Mr. Lisbon follows in the family station wagon, obeying the speed limit all the way to the hospital.
The detail about Mr. Lisbon following the ambulance at a reasonable, law-abiding speed underscores the novel’s interest in the idea of convention and normalcy in the face of hardship and crisis. Even though his daughter might die, Mr. Lisbon appears unwilling to break traffic rules, ultimately demonstrating his strict adherence to rules and expectations. To be fair, though, it’s possible that these rules and regulations are the only things keeping him grounded in the midst of chaos.
Themes
Therese and Bonnie Lisbon are both away when Cecilia cuts her wrists in the bathtub, but Mary and Lux are in the neighborhood. They come running home and enter the bathroom to see their sister’s blood curling in the bathwater. They then go outside and hug in the yard while Cecilia is taken away. All the while, the boys watch the two sisters while men from the local Parks Department work nearby on one of the neighborhood’s dying elm trees, spraying insecticide on the infected limbs. A picture of this elm tree is visible in a picture of the Lisbon house, which is “Exhibit #1.” Because of the ruthless fungus brought on by Dutch elm beetles, the tree has long since been cut down.
It’s no coincidence that this mention of the neighborhood’s diseased elm trees appears alongside details of Cecilia’s suicide attempt. Throughout the novel, the boys clearly associate the dying elm trees with the Lisbon sisters and their fading vitality. They also associate the trees with a broader sense of decline that seems to be overtaking their community—a sense of decline tied to Detroit’s diminishing automotive industry and the wider cultural shifts taking place across the country during the 1970s (it’s worth noting that the novel seems to be set in a wealthy suburb outside of Detroit at some point in the 1970s). The fact that the elm tree outside the Lisbon house is still alive when Cecilia attempts suicide imbues the tree itself with a rather nostalgic feeling, as if the mere existence of elm trees in the neighborhood is a reminder of better days.
Themes
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At the hospital, the doctors save Cecilia. The doctor who sews up her wounds playfully suggests that she isn’t even old enough to know true hardship. “Obviously, Doctor,” she replies, “you’ve never been a thirteen-year-old girl.”
Cecilia’s comment to the doctor speaks to the idea that many of the characters in the novel ultimately have no idea what the Lisbon sisters might be going through. From the outside, it seems as if they lead easy lives in an affluent community, but Cecilia makes it clear here that there’s a lot more going on beneath the surface—and nobody outside of her experience (including the neighborhood boys) fully grasps what, exactly, she’s dealing with.
Themes
There are five Lisbon sisters: Cecilia is 13, Lux is 14, Bonnie is 15, Mary is 16, and Therese is 17. The boys don’t understand how Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon have made such beautiful daughters. Mr. Lisbon is a math teacher at their school and is, by most accounts, quiet and reserved, though none of the boys know him very well outside of the classroom. Boys, after all, aren’t allowed in the Lisbon house.
The fact that boys aren’t allowed in the Lisbon household is the first sign that the Lisbon sisters live under rather strict parental rules. This, of course, is in keeping with the previous detail about Mr. Lisbon diligently obeying the speed limit during a crisis—a detail that speaks to his orderly way of moving through the world, which perhaps hints at his reserved and rule-oriented parenting style.
Themes
The only neighborhood boy who manages to infiltrate the household is Peter Sissen. Because he helped Mr. Lisbon install a scale model of the solar system in his classroom, Mr. Lisbon invites him over for dinner. Throughout the meal, the Lisbon girls—except for Bonnie—kick Peter under the table and shoot him looks. At one point, he excuses himself and goes to use the bathroom upstairs, glancing into the girls’ rooms and bringing back stories of seeing their underwear on the floor, their old stuffed animals, and even a bra hanging on a crucifix. He also finds Mary’s makeup, which she has hidden in a sock beneath the bathroom sink. Along with lipstick and concealer, there’s some wax in the sock, which signals to the neighborhood boys that Mary waxes her upper lip.
Peter Sissen is the first one of the neighborhood boys to be introduced into the novel as an individual. And yet, he largely functions as just one part of a larger whole—namely, one part of the Greek chorus of neighborhood boys. To that end, he essentially treats his time in the Lisbon house as a reconnaissance mission aimed at collecting as much information about the Lisbon sisters as possible, clearly intending to tell the rest of the boys about what he finds. It’s evident, then, that the boys’ interest in the Lisbon girls is rather invasive, and their fascination with the sisters comes to seem a bit obsessive, even if it comes from a fairly typical kind of adolescent interest in peers they find attractive or enticing.
Themes
While in the bathroom, Peter Sissen finds a used Tampax in the trashcan. He wants to fish it out and bring it to the other boys, thinking it’s actually quite beautiful. But then Lux knocks on the door, and he guesses by her eagerness to get into the bathroom that she’s the one on her period—the Tampax, he reasons, belongs to her. He comes back to his friends with these tales from the Lisbon household.
The invasive quality of the boys’ interest in the Lisbon sisters is overwhelmingly apparent in this scene, as Peter Sissen demonstrates his willingness to completely violate Lux’s privacy. The fact that Peter views Lux’s used Tampax with such reverence indicates just how fascinated he is with the Lisbon sisters’ private lives. Seeing the Tampax is, for Peter, a glimpse into one of the most private aspects of Lux’s life, and instead of giving him pause, this thrills him.
Themes
Hearing Peter Sissen’s stories about the Lisbon house, Paul Baldino announces he’s going to get into the house himself and see things even more extraordinary than Peter did. Everyone knows Paul’s father, Sammy “the Shark” Baldino, is a mob boss. The family lives in a mansion, and Paul is used to seeing tough Italian American men visit his father at all hours. Paul himself is tough and confident, and though the other boys are friends with him, they’re also intimidated by his presence.
The Virgin Suicides is, of course, about the death of the Lisbon sisters, but it’s not solely about their suicides—it’s also about the many small details that make up life in an affluent Detroit suburb. In this moment, the boys describe Paul Baldino and his mobster father, and the details they provide form a picture of the kind of scandalous, larger-than-life gossip that often overtakes teenage boys living in suburbia. This is not to say that Paul Baldino’s father isn’t a mob boss—it’s just to say that the interest the boys show in Paul’s family somewhat mirrors the fascination they have with the Lisbon girls; in both cases, they’re attracted to juicy stories and entertaining anecdotes.
Themes
Rumor has it that Paul’s father built an underground network of tunnels beneath their house, making it easier for him to escape the police at a moment’s notice. The tree in the Baldino family’s front yard was cut down and replaced with a cement stump painted to look real. There’s a metal grate in the middle of the stump, and though Paul tells his friends it’s nothing more than a barbecue pit, they know it must have something to do with Sammy “the Shark” Baldino’s escape tunnel.
This detail about the stump in Paul Baldino’s yard is rather absurd, and it’s not entirely clear whether or not readers are supposed to take it seriously. It’s possible that the story about the escape tunnel and the tree stump is a far-fetched tale concocted by the neighborhood boys because they don’t know what to make of Paul’s Italian American family and their possible ties to the mafia. To a certain extent, there’s a classist element at play here, as the boys seem to make wild assumptions about Paul’s father being in the mafia simply because he’s wealthy and Italian American. And yet, it also seems possible that everything the boys think about the Baldinos is true. There is, then, a sense of uncertainty surrounding what, exactly, the boys truly know about their neighbors—an uncertainty that later brings itself to bear on their fascination with the Lisbon girls.
Themes
As rumors circulate about Sammy “the Shark” Baldino building an escape tunnel, Paul Baldino starts appearing in his neighbors’ basements, crawling up next to their boilers and through their cellars. He claims he’s just playing in the storm drains beneath his house, but the neighborhood boys suspect he’s using the escape tunnel. And this, of course, is how he comes to find himself in the Lisbon house. Having bragged that he would see the Lisbon sisters taking showers, he makes his way into their basement. Nobody seems to be home, so he goes upstairs and enters the bathroom, where he finds Cecilia lying in bloody bathwater. Horrified, he runs downstairs and calls the police.
What begins as a humorous, absurd story about Paul navigating storm drains (or, according to rumor, his father’s escape tunnel) quickly turns into something much more serious, as he is the first one to find Cecilia after her suicide attempt. Nobody doubts that Paul is the one to find her, but it’s worth noting that there is some uncertainty surrounding how, exactly, he came to find her: did he use the storm drains to enter the Lisbon house, or did he use his father’s escape tunnel? This uncertainty represents the broader uncertainty that the neighborhood boys eventually encounter as they try to piece together why the Lisbon girls all decide to die by suicide—something they may never understand.
Themes
At the hospital, the doctors give Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon a laminated card of the Virgin Mary that Cecilia was holding in the bathtub. One side of the card shows a painting of Mary; the other explains that the Virgin Mary has been “appearing” throughout the city and “bringing her message of peace to a crumbling world.” The card urges readers to call 555-MARY. Reading this, Mr. Lisbon expresses dismay that his daughter actually “believes this crap,” even though he and his wife baptized her and had her confirmed in the Catholic church.
It's not readily apparent why Cecilia is holding this laminated card depicting the Virgin Mary, nor is it clear what Mr. Lisbon means when he bemoans the fact that his daughter actually “believes this crap.” It’s possible that Mr. Lisbon is revealing in this moment that, even though he went through the motions of baptizing his daughter, he doesn’t actually believe in the Catholic religion—which would suggest that he only baptized Cecilia to keep up appearances. It’s also possible, though, that he does believe in the Catholic religion but views the laminated card as sacrilegious. Overall, the uncertainty surrounding both what the card means to Cecilia and what Mr. Lisbon makes of it only adds to the mystified, curious feeling that the neighborhood boys experience as they try throughout the novel to piece together what’s going on in the Lisbon family.
Themes
Everyone in town is curious about Cecilia’s suicide attempt, but the local news doesn’t mention it—the story is too dark for the newspaper’s taste. The only piece of genuine news in that week’s paper is about the worker strike at the local cemetery, where bodies have begun to build up because the gravediggers refuse to work until their demands are met. Any information about Cecilia’s suicide attempt, then, comes from hearsay, as everyone in town speculates about what happened. Paul Baldino, for his part, insists to his friends that Cecilia must have cut her wrists while sitting on the toilet seat before moving to the bathtub. “She sprayed the place, man,” he says.
The rather crass way Paul talks about Cecilia’s suicide attempt underscores the boys’ voyeuristic interest in the tragedy. They might be concerned, but they’re still just a group of teenaged boys—a group prone to lewd comments and a certain callous overall mentality. In other words, Paul’s insensitive comment is a good reminder of the boys’ adolescent immaturity, as it becomes quite clear that they aren’t accustomed to tactfully discussing such delicate issues.
Themes
The boys are at Joe Larson’s house—across the street from the Lisbon household—when Cecilia comes home from the hospital. It’s raining hard, so they can barely even see the Lisbon station wagon as it pulls up, but even Joe Larson’s mom runs to the window to peer out with the boys. Through the rain, they see that Cecilia is still wearing the vintage wedding dress. Apparently, she demanded to have it brought to her in the hospital, and Dr. Hornicker—the resident psychiatrist—thought she should be allowed to have it.
That even Joe Larson’s mother runs to the window to peer at Cecilia is an illustration of the broader community’s interest in scandal and tragedy. It’s not just the boys who want to know what’s going on in the Lisbon household. In fact, it’s possible that the boys have acquired their taste for gossip and scandal from their parents, ultimately suggesting that this voyeuristic impulse is woven into the very fibers of the community.
Themes
In the coming days and weeks, the boys watch the Lisbon house for signs of Cecilia. She often spends her days outside on the front lawn, always accompanied by one of her sisters (as if to keep watch over her). But she doesn’t do much—she just lies there in her vintage wedding dress. Meanwhile, the neighbors gossip. Some of the mothers insist that Cecilia must have just wanted to escape her parents’ house. “She wanted out of that decorating scheme,” one mother jokes. One day, two neighborhood women bring over cake. Later, their accounts of how Mrs. Lisbon received them differ greatly from each another—one of them says Mrs. Lisbon immediately sent the girls upstairs and put the cake in the fridge, but the other insists that Mrs. Lisbon was friendly and had a piece of cake with them.
Once again, it’s evident that the entire neighborhood is eager to pry into the Lisbon family’s private life. And the novel doesn’t necessarily present this fascination as all that wholesome or benevolent, as made clear by the mean joke one mother makes about how Cecilia attempted suicide just to escape her mother’s “decorating scheme”—a comment that makes light of a serious issue while also insulting Mrs. Lisbon’s eye for interior design. What’s more, the novel illustrates just how unreliable gossip can be, considering that the two neighbors who visit Mrs. Lisbon can’t even agree on what happened when they went over.
Themes
One prominent theory in the neighborhood is that Cecilia’s suicide attempt was tied to her crush on Dominic Palazzolo. Dominic is an immigrant living with relatives, and he’s desperately in love with a girl named Diana Porter. In accented English, Dominic often tilts his sunglasses toward the sky and mutters, “I love her,” speaking with a grave profundity that impresses the other neighborhood boys. But when Diana left for a vacation in Switzerland with her family for the whole summer, Dominic cursed God, climbed onto the roof while everyone was watching, and jumped off.
It's clear that the neighborhood boys are easily impressed by displays of maturity or adulthood, given that they find Dominic’s melodramatic declarations of love so profound. From the outside, it seems obvious that Dominic is playing up his feelings as a way of attracting attention and posturing as a complex, mature figure. But the boys don’t see it this way, instead looking up to him as someone capable of experiencing great emotion. And this, in turn, once again highlights their own immaturity.
Themes
Cecilia—and the neighborhood boys—watched Dominic take his plunge. He survived. In fact, he landed softly in his relatives’ carefully manicured bushes, stood up, and walked away unharmed. Some people insist that his bold act of suicidal love inspired Cecilia to take her own life, especially because Dominic moved to New Mexico shortly before Cecilia’s suicide attempt.
It’s unlikely that Dominic’s fake suicide attempt is what inspired Cecilia to try to take her own life. Nonetheless, the fact that people speculate in this way underlines the pervasive desire throughout the community to hatch theories that might explain Cecilia’s thinking. In turn, the novel seems to imply that people are more comfortable thinking about tragedy if they think they know what caused it.
Themes
According to Dr. Hornicker’s initial diagnosis, Cecilia’s suicide attempt was “an act of aggression inspired by the repression of adolescent libidinal urges.” As such, he urges Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon to let her—and her sisters—have a bit more freedom and independence. From then on, things change at the Lisbon household. The boys find that they can regularly spot Lux sunbathing in the front lawn. Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon even allow the boy who cuts their grass to come inside for a glass of water, though the neighborhood boys never ask him about this because they are intimidated by his “muscles and his poverty.”
Even though the boys are eager to learn whatever they can about the Lisbon family, they don’t ask the boy who cuts the grass what it’s like inside the Lisbon house. This is because they’re afraid of his “muscles and his poverty”—a phrase that clarifies the fact that they live in a sheltered, affluent community and are unaccustomed to interacting with people from other backgrounds. This, in turn, helps make sense of why the Lisbon family’s drama occupies the boys so much. After all, it’s clear that their entire lives are centered around a rather small and insular community, so any kind of scandal seems all the more important.
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Years later, Mr. Lisbon tells the neighborhood boys—who are no longer boys—that Mrs. Lisbon disagreed with Dr. Hornicker’s advice to give the girls more freedom. But, Mr. Lisbon says, his wife gave up and let them do what they wanted—for a while, at least. By this time, Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon have gotten divorced, and he admits that he never really agreed with his wife’s strict rules, though he always went along with them.
Although readers don’t yet know how the story of the Lisbon sisters will play out, this section suggests that whatever comes to pass will ultimately drive Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon apart. Of course, it has already been made clear that all five of the Lisbon sisters will eventually die by suicide, so it’s not all that surprising that Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon might get divorced—after all, tragedy often creates tension in romantic relationships.
Themes
Not long after Cecilia returns from the hospital, Mr. Lisbon convinces Mrs. Lisbon to let the girls host a party. Together, the sisters write out invitations to all of the neighborhood boys, astonishing them by actually knowing their names. After anticipating the party for several days, the boys make their way to the Lisbon house as a group. Peter Sissen takes the lead, since he has already been inside. As they wait for the door to open, Peter says, “Wait’ll you see this.” But when they get inside, the boys see that Peter’s descriptions of the house were completely wrong—the house isn’t the messy den of “feminine chaos” that Peter described. Instead, it’s neat and ordinary.
Peter is clearly proud to have been the only boy until this point to enter the Lisbon household. He therefore acts like he knows the place like the back of his own hand. In reality, though, he has only been there once, and the rest of the boys see that his descriptions of the house weren’t even accurate—he has clearly exaggerated in an effort to impress his friends. The fact that the Lisbon house seems rather ordinary is a good indication that the boys have built up a wild image of the so-called “feminine chaos” in which the Lisbon sisters live. Almost anything, it seems fair to say, would pale in comparison to what the boys must have pictured.
Themes
The neighborhood boys are shown to the basement rec room, where they find the Lisbon girls waiting for them. The boys are struck by the realization that all of the sisters are unique individuals—they don’t look exactly alike, and each one has her own facial expressions and general demeanor. Cecilia, for her part, is still wearing her vintage wedding dress, and there are still bandages on her arms. She sits on a barstool a little to the side, and she stays quiet the whole time.
The boys spend so much time thinking about the Lisbon girls as a group that they fail to consider each sister’s individuality until they finally find themselves face to face with them in their basement. The sway that the Lisbon sisters seem to have over the boys’ imagination is thus tied to the fact that they’re sisters—if there was only one Lisbon daughter, it would be easier for the boys to truly see her for the person she is. Instead, though, the boys are almost overwhelmed by the idea of five intriguing girls, ultimately coming to view them as somehow larger than life. In this moment, it becomes clear that the boys don’t really know the Lisbons at all, despite all the time they spend thinking about the girls.
Themes
The evening begins awkwardly, with the boys mainly talking to each other and the Lisbon sisters keeping to themselves. Slowly, though, things begin to loosen up, and everyone starts to have a good time—except, that is, for Cecilia, who abruptly gets up in the middle of the party and asks her father if she can go upstairs. Everyone stops to listen. Mr. Lisbon is surprised, pointing out that they threw this party largely for her. But he doesn’t stop her, saying that she can go upstairs if that’s what she wants.
Cecilia seemingly has no interest in cultivating a social life. Rather, this party seems more like a chore that she has to slog her way through, which is why she eventually asks to leave. Although it’s never made clear what, exactly, is bothering Cecilia, it is evident that Dr. Hornicker’s assessment (about Cecilia needing more freedom and an active social life) is woefully off the mark.
Themes
Everybody listens as Cecilia slowly makes her way upstairs. They stay quiet as she walks on the first floor and then goes up another flight of stairs, at which point they lose the sound of her footsteps. But then there comes the loud, “wet sound” of her body falling from her bedroom window and landing on a spike in the fence running alongside the house.
It's worth noting that the neighborhood boys seemed interested in the Lisbon sisters even before Cecilia’s first suicide attempt. Now, though, they effectively witness the last moments of Cecilia’s life, which is a partial explanation for why they fixate on the Lisbon sisters for the rest of the novel—they are, in a way, intertwined with the tragic event.
Themes
Once upstairs, the boys watch as Mr. Lisbon—who made his way out of the house—tries to lift Cecilia off of the fence. Mr. Lisbon doesn’t give up, but it’s clear to the boys that Cecilia has already left the world, even if her eyes are open and her lips are still moving like the mouth of a hooked fish. These things, they know, are just her nerves firing off their last signs of life—Cecilia herself is already gone.
What the boys witness in this moment is quite traumatic. As the novel progresses and the boys obsess more and more over the Lisbon sisters, it’s helpful to keep in mind just how gruesome and unsettling it must have been to witness Cecilia’s death. Beholding something so terrible and scarring is likely why the boys find it so hard to move on from what happens with the Lisbon sisters.
Themes
