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
Nobody in the neighborhood knows how to express their condolences to the Lisbon family. People send flowers and even make phone calls, but none of their efforts seem to connect with Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon. When some of the other neighborhood fathers try to visit, Mr. Lisbon quickly whisks them inside and installs them in front of a baseball game, distracting them by talking about the game until they forget why they came in the first place. Finally, Father Moody—the local priest—visits, but Mr. Lisbon once again brings him to the television and sits him in front of a baseball game. When Father Moody suggests that they bring Mrs. Lisbon downstairs to talk, Mr. Lisbon claims that his wife isn’t accepting visitors because she’s not feeling well.
The Lisbons—or, at least, Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon—effectively wall themselves off from the community, apparently wanting to keep their mourning strictly private. This is, in many ways, quite normal, since people often have a tendency to hide intense emotion. However, allowing oneself to outwardly grieve and even lean on fellow community members can be deeply cathartic and helpful. But Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon cut themselves off from this kind of support. In doing so, they also deprive their daughters of the same.
Themes
Father Moody goes upstairs anyway. As he does so, he surveys the house, which has fallen into disarray. There’s dust everywhere, and he even finds a half-eaten sandwich at the top of the stairs. Walking through the upstairs hallway, he passes the girls’ bathroom, where their wet underwear is hanging to dry. The smell of jasmine soap wafts out of the steamy bathroom. The neighborhood boys hear all of these details from an altar boy who overhears Father Moody relating them to the choirmaster. They even go to the Jacobsen’s soap counter and ask for a sample of jasmine soap, wanting to experience the smell themselves.
The fact that the boys buy the same soap as the Lisbon sisters highlights the extent of their obsession. It’s not just that they want to know about what’s going on in the Lisbon family—it’s that they want to enter into the sisters’ lives as much as they can, suggesting that their fascination with the girls is much more involved and intense than the average interest teenagers usually have in each other.
Themes
Father Moody keeps walking down the hall in search of Mrs. Lisbon, but he eventually decides to turn around. Right as he’s about to descend the stairs, though, he sees all of the Lisbon girls huddled together in a nearby bedroom. They look just as stunned by their sister’s death as everyone else is. Father Moody goes into the room to talk to them and is struck by the realization that they haven’t bathed in a while. The fact that they seem so grief-stricken leads Father Moody to insist to the neighborhood boys—who interview him years later—that, even though everyone thinks the Lisbon sisters had some sort of suicide pact and that it was all planned from the beginning, he’s certain the remaining sisters had no intention of dying by suicide.
Father Moody’s observation about the Lisbon sisters is an important detail, since the beginning of the novel makes it seem quite plausible that the sisters planned their suicides all along. In this moment, though, Father Moody is confident that the remaining Lisbon sisters are devastated and even shocked by Cecilia’s death—something that would contradict the idea of them planning the entire ordeal.
Themes
The boys keep tabs on the Lisbon girls. Rumors circulate about Lux going off with boys she meets on the boardwalk—whom the neighborhood boys don’t know—and not returning until late in the night. Meanwhile, the local fathers take it upon themselves to remove the fence running alongside the Lisbon house. The fence isn’t even on the Lisbons’ property, standing instead on the neighboring lawn that belongs to the Bates family. Mr. Bates agrees to have it removed, and the fathers set to work, assuming that the Lisbons want it gone.
The Lisbons haven’t reached out to their community for any sort of support or help. To the contrary, Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon seem to actively avoid any sort of conversation with their neighbors about what happened with Cecilia. And yet, the neighboring fathers take it upon themselves to remove the fence that Cecilia fell on, assuming the Lisbons must want it gone. In some ways, this is a kind gesture that shows the local fathers’ eagerness to somehow support the Lisbons. In another sense, though, the entire effort to take down the fence simply underscores how desperate everyone in the neighborhood is to somehow fix the situation—something that obviously can’t be done. The Lisbons haven’t even expressed a desire to take down the fence, but the neighbors still feel compelled to do so, perhaps as a way of feeling useful in a somewhat self-serving way, as if doing something ostensibly helpful will free them of the burden of having to dwell much longer on the tragedy.
Themes
Get the entire The Virgin Suicides LitChart as a printable PDF.
Because the fathers are mostly office workers unaccustomed to hard physical labor, they’re unable to fully uproot the fenceposts. Finally, they hire a tow truck driver to haul it away. When he finishes, he loads the fence onto his truck and then peels out on Mr. Bates’s lawn. The boys are astonished—under any other circumstances, peeling out so extravagantly on somebody’s front lawn would incite outrage. But their parents don’t do anything, and this suggests to the boys that their parents don’t actually believe in the “version of the world” they’ve spent so much effort imparting to their children—“for all their caretaking and bitching about crabgrass they didn’t give a damn about lawns,” the boys say.
The boys learn in this moment that some of the values their parents have presented as vitally important are actually, in the grand scheme of things, fairly trivial. The upkeep of yards and lawns, for instance, has always been something the neighborhood parents frame as important, but this is only because they want to maintain appearances and look like respectable suburbanites. In the face of a tragedy like Cecilia’s suicide, though, none of the parents even care about somebody ruining their lawns, and their lack of a reaction in this scene is like a tacit acknowledgement that such matters are superficial and petty when it really comes down to it. In turn, this acknowledgement stuns the boys because it devalues the suburban ideals they’ve been taught to respect.
Themes
Dr. Hornicker tries to convince Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon to come talk to him, but they don’t go. The boys don’t see the Lisbon sisters as a full group until early September, when they appear for school convocation. Then, in the beginning of the school year, the sisters stick together as much as possible, moving through the halls as a unit. When the boys try to talk to them, they mostly get nothing out of the interaction—Mary Lisbon even tells the boy whose locker is next to hers that he doesn’t have to talk to her, even though he just wanted to introduce himself (she informs him that she knows who he is; “I’ve only been at this school for like my whole life,” she says).
In the aftermath of Cecilia’s suicide, there’s a fair amount of attention on the rest of the Lisbon family. None of them, however, want to be in the spotlight like this, which is why Mary Lisbon tells the boy next to her that he doesn’t have to talk to her—even if she wanted to connect with somebody else, it’s unlikely that she would want to do so simply because her family is in the spotlight. In other words, it’s obvious that Mary feels the surrounding community’s morbid fascination with her family, and she isn’t sure if this boy is genuinely interested in talking to her or if he’s just doing so because everyone in town is interested in the Lisbons.
Themes
Lux starts sneaking around with multiple different boys, though not—it seems—with anyone included in the chorus of neighborhood boys. As such, the neighborhood boys are eager to closely track her activities, finding themselves begrudgingly amazed by the fact that a boy known as “the detention king” is able to make her laugh, even though the other boys have never heard him say anything remotely intelligent or witty. Whenever the neighborhood boys ask the boys who spend time with Lux what they’ve done with her, they receive evasive but gloating answers like, “You want to know what happened? Smell my fingers, man.” Even when the neighborhood boys want to know if Lux talked about Cecilia, they don’t get any answers.
There’s an interesting dynamic at play in this section, as the neighborhood boys feel simultaneously excluded from Lux’s private life and oddly territorial about her. It’s clear that they think the boys Lux spends time with aren’t good enough for her. And yet, they themselves have no real relationship with her, instead simply watching from afar and judging the boys she attracts—boys who, to be fair, do seem fairly crass and insensitive, though it also seems likely that many of the neighborhood boys would brag in the same ways if they were the ones to have intimate relations with Lux.
Themes
There is one boy, however, who gets to know Lux better than anyone else. His name is Trip Fontaine, and though the neighborhood boys have always seen him as an average, unremarkable kid with “baby fat,” he has—in the last year and a half—suddenly become a heartthrob for high school girls and their mothers alike. Trip hardly even has to try when it comes to attracting girls. While on vacation in Acapulco with his father and his father’s boyfriend, he attracted the attention of an older woman, and though he doesn’t reveal this to the neighborhood boys at the time, he later admits that he had sex for the first time with this woman. Years later, he tells the neighborhood boys this detail when they visit him in rehab, where he’s drying out from alcohol and other drugs.
At this point, it becomes clear that the neighborhood boys are—as adults—conducting an exhaustive survey of everyone who knew the Lisbons. That they track down Trip Fontaine in a rehab center is a testament to just how hungry they are for details about the Lisbon girls—so hungry, it seems, that they’re still chasing down leads as adults, ultimately highlighting the true extent of their obsession with the matter.
Themes
When Trip takes an interest in Lux Lisbon, he doesn’t know what to do—girls usually pursue him. But Lux doesn’t pay him any attention. His charms, it seems, mean nothing to her. One day, he’s walking down the hall after smoking pot in his car, and he suddenly sees the headmaster coming toward him. Wanting to avoid an interaction, he ducks into the nearest classroom and sits down in a random seat. Stoned out of his mind, he stares forward and does nothing as the teacher continues to give a history lesson. At one point, though, the girl in front of him turns around. It’s Lux. She’s staring at him. And for some reason, time seems to slow down. A ringing starts in Trip’s left ear. Years later, he tells the boys he still has vivid flashbacks of Lux’s eyes in this moment.
The novel has already presented the Lisbon sisters as somewhat awe-inspiring and untouchable, but this is mostly because the neighborhood boys are so enthralled by them. In this moment, though, Trip’s interest in Lux seems to corroborate the magnetic charm of the Lisbon girls (and, of course, Lux in particular). The boys are no longer the only ones obsessed with the Lisbons, as evidenced by Trip’s seemingly transcendent moment staring at Lux.
Themes
Trip spends the ensuing weeks trying to get Lux’s attention, even consulting his father and his father’s boyfriend. Finally, he decides to wait for her outside a school assembly, following her in and sitting next to her in the dark auditorium. Leaning over at one point, he whispers that he’s going to ask Mr. Lisbon for permission to take her out. “Fat chance,” Lux says. But Trip persists, explaining that first he’s going to come over to watch television with the family. Then he’s going to ask her out. Before he gets up to leave, he says, “You’re a stone fox.”
Trip’s tactics are bold and straightforward, almost as if he takes it for granted that Lux is interested in him. However, he’s also aware that Lux isn’t the only person he needs to woo; he also needs to win over her parents, which will most likely be the biggest obstacle he faces. This dynamic serves as a reminder that Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon are quite strict—a detail that is worth keeping in mind as the novel progresses.
Themes
Trip follows through with his plan. When he arrives at the Lisbon house, it’s clear that Lux has prepared her parents for his arrival. But the evening is uneventful. The entire family watches television, with Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon sitting between Trip and Lux on the couch. After an entire evening of watching television, Mrs. Lisbon looks at her husband, who then tells Trip that it’s time for him to go. Lux escorts him to the door and looks at him with a sad, defeated smile. Trip understands from this that nothing is going to happen between them.
It's obvious that Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon aren’t going to let Lux date Trip, no matter what he does to endear himself to them. It has already been made clear that they were fairly strict before Cecilia’s first suicide attempt, and though they relaxed their rules a little bit when Dr. Hornicker advised them to, it didn’t do any good—Cecilia still ended up dying by suicide. This, in turn, means that Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon have no real incentive to change their strict parenting style, since their daughter died while they were trying to be more lenient.
Themes
Going to his car, Trip sits in disappointment without driving away—until, suddenly, Lux jumps into the car, straddles him, and seems to attack him with her mouth, kissing him with overwhelming passion. He feels as if she is a “creature” with 100 different mouths all sucking out the marrow from his bones. He puts his hand in her pants at one point, but it’s as if he has never touched a woman there before—he feels woefully insufficient beneath Lux and her powerful desire. And then, as quickly as it began, the encounter ends, with Lux lifting off of him and announcing that she has to get back inside before her parents notice she’s gone.
Trip is normally confident with the girls he likes, since he’s the school heartthrob. With Lux, though, it’s different. It’s clear that she’s the one in control, and this is possibly what makes him feel overwhelmed and inadequate beneath her. As for Lux, it’s apparent that she has no problem with rebelling against her parents’ domineering influence.
Themes
The next time Trip tries to make a date with Lux to watch television, she says she’s grounded, though nobody knows why. As the months stretch into deep autumn and toward winter, the Lisbon house starts to look increasingly decrepit. The boys watch the leaves fall, and while everyone else on the street makes sure to rake their yards, the Lisbons let the leaves accumulate, frustrating the neighbors when stray leaves blow onto their spotless yards. “These aren’t my leaves,” one neighbor mutters as he rakes them up and throws them away.
At this point in the novel, public opinion begins to slowly turn against the Lisbons for not keeping up appearances. Everyone was eager to show their support shortly after Cecilia’s suicide, but now there’s a palpable sense that the Lisbon family should have moved on by this point—or, at the very least, that they should still go through the motions of making their yard look presentable. The general idea here is that the other neighbors want the entire street to look prim and proper, which is why they resent having to rake extra leaves because the Lisbons have neglected their own household chores. This callous attitude calls into question the neighbors’ initial outpouring of support, making their concern look more performative than compassionate.
Themes
Although the media failed to report on Cecilia’s suicide when it first happened, a local reporter named Linda Perle starts writing columns about the tragic event and how it relates to the broader trend of adolescent suicide sweeping the country. Other media outlets cover the issue, and a news crew even shows up to film shots of the Lisbon house—shots that don’t air until much later, when all of the sisters are dead. The entire topic of suicide becomes a national sensation, and the boys get used to watching segments in which alarmed adults interview teenagers who have survived suicide attempts. But nothing these teenagers say help the boys understand what Cecilia did, as they all seem to have “received too much therapy” to provide any genuine insight into the matter.
Cecilia’s suicide was, at first, a highly local event, meaning that its consequences didn’t seem to extend beyond the immediate community. Now, though, people begin to consider the tragedy in a broader context, as media attention focuses on increased suicide rates among American teens. In this context, Cecilia’s suicide seems to take on new meaning, as local parents stop seeing it as a rare tragedy and start seeing it as a potential threat to their own children. In other words, a sense of panic overtakes the community.
Themes
With the increased attention on suicide awareness, the Lisbon girls mostly avoid the public eye. When administrators at the school decide to hold a “Day of Grieving” to engage with students about the topic of suicide, the tacit implication is that the event is intended to retrospectively address Cecilia’s death. But nobody actually talks to the Lisbon girls about what happened—in fact, during the meetings held that day throughout the school in separate classrooms (each teacher taking a different approach to the topic), the Lisbon girls sneak out and bring chairs to the bathroom, where they sit and wait out the entire ordeal.
The local community has worked itself into a frenzy over Cecilia’s suicide, but the overall concern seems to have very little to do with Cecilia or the other Lisbon daughters. Instead, the “Day of Grieving” is performative and self-congratulatory. It’s ultimately a way for the school administrators to feel as if they’ve addressed the tragedy and done what they need to do in order to make sure other students don’t try to die by suicide. And yet, the very people who are actually grieving—the Lisbon sisters—are so put off by the “Day of Grieving” that they actively avoid it, underscoring just how useless and even potentially harmful the event is.
Themes
After the Day of Grieving, the Lisbon girls start seeing a school counselor on a regular basis. They seem to connect with her—she even smokes with Lux, breaking school rules. The neighborhood boys notice a marked improvement in the way the sisters move through the world, as if they’re happier than they were at the beginning of the school year. During this time, Trip Fontaine decides to try again with Lux.
The school counselor is able to make progress with the Lisbon girls because she connects with them on their level. She’s not interested in them because they’re at the center of the town’s gossip, nor does she work with them in a performative way meant to make her look sensitive and kind. Instead, she meets them on their own terms, and this actually makes a small difference, perhaps because there’s nobody else in their lives to do this.
Themes
Trip goes straight to Mr. Lisbon’s classroom and announces that he wants to take Lux to the homecoming dance. Mr. Lisbon tells him to sit and then calmly explains that they have family rules against such things. He almost sounds sorry and even insinuates that he would relax the rules if it were up to him. But, he says, it wouldn’t be fair to his other daughters if they suddenly changed the rules for Lux. This is when Trip reveals his plan: he tells Mr. Lisbon that he’ll assemble a good group of guys to take all of the sisters. Considering the offer, Mr. Lisbon finally agrees to talk it over with his wife.
It's worth noting that, earlier in the novel, the narrators revealed that Mr. Lisbon retrospectively expressed a certain regret for going along with Mrs. Lisbon’s strict parental rules. This detail aligns with his overall behavior in this scene, as he seems incapable of agreeing to Trip’s proposal without consulting Mrs. Lisbon, perhaps implying that she’s the one who has made the rules in their house about dating. At the same time, though, it’s also possible that Mr. Lisbon is just being a good partner and doesn’t want to make parental decisions without giving his wife a chance to weigh in.
Themes
Trip wastes no time selecting the other boys for the homecoming dance. He makes his case that day at football practice, with his teammates desperately vying for a spot in the group date. He ends up picking Parkie Denton (who promises to let them use his father’s Cadillac for the date), Kevin Head, and Joe Hill Conley. Fortunately for them, Mrs. Lisbon ends up going along with the idea, as long as the boys bring the Lisbon girls back by 11 and go nowhere else but the dance. Mr. Lisbon, for his part, reminds Trip that he will be chaperoning the dance, making it hard for them to disobey any of these rules.
The outing to the homecoming dance will be the first social event the Lisbon sisters have attended since the party at their house, when Cecilia died by suicide. Regardless of how the evening turns out, then, everyone will surely be keeping a close eye on them; whether it’s Mr. Lisbon or the neighborhood boys, somebody will be keeping tabs on them.
Themes
The neighborhood boys who weren’t picked to accompany the Lisbon girls to the homecoming dance watch from afar as Trip and the others glide up in Parkie Denton’s Cadillac. Later, they hear what happened inside. Mrs. Lisbon strictly questioned them, wanting to know who was driving and how long he’d had his license. But then Mr. Lisbon swept in and promised the boys that the “third degree” was over, at which point the girls came downstairs.
Unlike the boys with whom Lux has been spending time, it seems as if the boys Trip selected are actually part of the Greek chorus of neighborhood boys. If this is the case, the boys will have access to a thorough account of what happens at the dance. And yet, only a few of them are able to actually attend with the Lisbon sisters, inevitably leading to all sorts of jealousy, as the excluded boys watch carefully from afar.
Themes
The girls are dressed in large dresses that Mrs. Lisbon made for them—dresses that cover as much of their bodies as possible. As the girls and their dates roll up to the dance, Lux announces that she wants to have a cigarette before they go in. Her sisters complain that their father will smell the smoke on their clothes, but she ignores them. Once they finally arrive at the dance, all of the neighborhood boys have trouble paying attention to their own dates, instead trying to keep tabs on the Lisbon sisters. At one point, Trip leads Lux beneath the bleachers, and Bonnie—who has been following her sister seemingly out of a nervous lack of anything better to do—goes with them, which means that her date, Joe Hill Conley, disappears beneath the bleachers, too.
It’s unsurprising that the neighborhood boys pay more attention to what the Lisbon sisters are doing than to their own dates—yet another sign of how attuned they are to the Lisbons. Even with boys gawking at them, though, the Lisbon sisters finally get a small taste of freedom and, for that matter, normalcy. They are, in other words, finally living like average teenagers instead of remaining inside their home with their strict parents and the constant reminder of their sister’s death.
Themes
Under the bleachers, Trip pulls out a fifth of peach schnapps. He offers it to Lux, telling her not to swallow—you have to taste it, he says, through a kiss. He takes a swallow of the schnapps himself and then kisses Lux. Giggling, they pass the schnapps back and forth as they kiss. Taking Trip’s lead, Joe Hill Conley suggests that he and Bonnie do the same, and though Bonnie is hesitant at first, she agrees to give it a try when Lux tells her not to be a “goody-goody.” Later, the rest of the neighborhood boys grill Joe about his experience beneath the bleachers, wanting to know if he asked Bonnie or Lux about Cecilia. In response, he says, “There’s a time for talk and a time for silence,” though he also claims to have “tasted mysterious depths” in Bonnie.
The subject matter of The Virgin Suicides is quite heavy, but in moments like this one, the novel focuses on rather ordinary coming-of-age details—like, for instance, Bonnie having what is possibly her first kiss at a school dance. Unsurprisingly, the other neighborhood boys are desperate to know every detail, grilling Joe Hill Conley about his experience (and, absurdly enough, wondering if Joe asked Bonnie and Lux about their dead sister in a moment of levity and fun). However, Joe quickly lapses into a proud, overly adult tone, clearly cashing in on the social capital that kissing Bonnie Lisbon affords him in this friend group—a group that is, of course, obsessed with the Lisbons.
Themes
Meanwhile, Therese and Kevin Head go outside for some air after dancing with each other. While they’re outside, Therese asks if he and the other boys asked out her and her sisters because they feel sorry for them. She doesn’t believe him when he says no, calling him a liar and asking if they seem “as crazy as everyone thinks.” He assures her that nobody thinks this, but she just goes on to say that Cecilia was strange. But that doesn’t mean, Therese continues, that she and her sisters are strange, too. “We just want to live,” she says. “If anyone would let us.”
All of the attention placed on the Lisbon sisters in the wake of Cecilia’s death has apparently made an impression on Therese, who worries that the boys only wanted to take them to the dance out of a sense of pity. Readers know that this isn’t the case, since the neighborhood boys are basically infatuated with the Lisbon sisters and have been since even before Cecilia’s suicide. Still, Therese’s concern—and her suggestion that nobody will “let” them live normal lives—calls attention to just how hard it must be for her and her sisters to go throughout everyday life under so much scrutiny from the surrounding community.
Themes
At the end of the dance, the Lisbon girls try to find Lux and Trip, but they can’t. Parkie Denton suggests that maybe they went home with Mr. Lisbon, but the sisters know this isn’t the case. They worry they’ll get in trouble because of Lux, but Mary insists that Lux is the one who will be in trouble, not the rest of them. They eventually decide to go home. When they get there, Joe Hill Conley kisses Bonnie one last time, and she makes him promise to call her. But the girls tell the boys not to walk them to the door.
That Bonnie kisses Joe Hill Conley again and asks him to call her suggests that she has thoroughly enjoyed her night out with him. Although Dr. Hornicker’s suggestion to give the Lisbon girls more independence might not have made a difference for Cecilia, the others—and especially Bonnie—seem to respond quite well to a little more freedom (though Lux, for her part, has no problem with pushing the boundaries of her parents’ rare leniency).
Themes
Lux doesn’t come back until late that night, rolling up in a taxi. Uncle Tucker—a neighborhood fixture with a drinking problem who stays up every night getting drunk—sees her return, watching as Mr. Lisbon opens the door and refuses to listen to her excuses. Then, Mrs. Lisbon appears in the doorway with a drink in her hand, solemn choir music blasting from inside.
Whatever progress the Lisbon girls might have made with their parents by being allowed to attend the dance, Lux has most likely squandered. Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon were already strict, but now Lux has given them a reason to be strict. Of course, this entire episode seems quite dire, but this is perhaps only because of the backdrop of Cecilia’s suicide—otherwise, Lux’s misbehavior is a fairly common coming-of-age story that, in a different context, might read as light and humorous instead of somehow dark and consequential.
Themes
Years later, in their interview with Trip Fontaine at the rehab center where he’s drying out from alcohol, the neighborhood boys learn what happened that night. Trip explains that he and Lux snuck away at the end of the dance and lay down on the football field, where they had sex. In the middle of it all, Lux started crying, saying, “I always screw things up. I always do.” Trip doesn’t tell the boys much more than this, other than that he didn’t put Lux in the cab that took her home. He says it was odd—he really liked Lux, but in that moment, he didn’t care how she got home. He left her alone on the football field.
Until this point, Trip has been pursuing Lux without much success. When they have sex, though, he seems to suddenly want to get away from her. It’s not necessarily that he loses interest in her, though, as evidenced by the fact that he still thinks about her years later. Rather, it’s as if he’s overwhelmed by her sudden emotional display, perhaps because he catches a glimpse of everything she’s dealing with at home: her sister’s death, her strict parents, what it's like to feel watched by the surrounding community. His decision to abandon her, then, is an unkind act of self-preservation, as he realizes that he has waded into a complex and turbulent emotional world—one he’s ill-equipped to navigate, though this obviously doesn’t justify mistreating Lux in this moment.
Themes
