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Chapter 3
Themes
and Colors
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
After homecoming, the Lisbon house begins to function like a prison. Mrs. Lisbon keeps a close watch on her daughters, whom she and her husband take out of school. Years later, the neighborhood boys interview Mrs. Lisbon herself, who says she made the decision to take the girls out of school because she thought it was best for them—the only people paying attention to them were boys, and not for the right reasons. What they needed, Mrs. Lisbon thought, was to be out of the public eye. She admits that she has no idea why all of her daughters decided to die by suicide. She resents the fact that Dr. Hornicker seemed to think she and Mr. Lisbon were the problem, and she doesn’t say much beyond this, abruptly leaving the boys—men, now—in the bus station café where she agreed to meet them.
The Virgin Suicides presents readers with a number of difficult situations, but it doesn’t necessarily resolve these situations or offer up answers for why, exactly, they happened. There’s no direct indication that Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon are the reason that the Lisbon sisters all died by suicide, and though characters set forth a number of different theories throughout the novel, there’s no single explanation for why the girls decided to die. Nonetheless, it’s clear that Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon are quite strict, and though it wouldn’t be fair to say that this is the sole reason their daughters died by suicide, it’s not unreasonable to consider the possibility that their draconian rules might have in some way exacerbated whatever the girls were dealing with in the aftermath of Cecilia’s death.
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During this period, Mrs. Lisbon also forces Lux to burn all of her rock and roll records. Lux is devastated, but Mrs. Lisbon shows no mercy. Meanwhile, the house looks increasingly shabby and dilapidated, to the point that the neighborhood boys’ parents start making disapproving comments about its outward appearance. Most surprisingly of all, though, the boys discover that Lux has been sneaking unknown boys and men through her house and onto the roof, where they have sex. Astounded, the neighborhood boys watch Lux having sex atop her own house, taking in the scene from one of the boys’ attics.
Mrs. Lisbon’s decision to burn Lux’s rock and roll records implies that she associates the trouble and tension sweeping through her family with the changing cultural landscape. Like many parents in the 1970s, she sees rock and roll as an antagonistic force capable of corrupting her daughters, so she makes a point of purging her household of such music. On another note, the neighbors start to judge the Lisbons a bit more harshly in this section, as if the family’s grief has lasted too long and is now impacting everyone around them—a feeling mostly brought on by the fact that the Lisbons don’t aesthetically maintain their house and yard, which is, in the world of this upper-middle-class suburban neighborhood, a cardinal sin.
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The partners Lux brings onto the roof are mysterious—nobody knows how she meets them, since she never leaves the house. Even more alarmingly, some of them are full-grown adults and thus risk statutory rape charges by sneaking through the Lisbon household to have sex with teenaged Lux. From afar, the neighborhood boys watch carefully, learning various positions and techniques that have stayed with them for their entire lives. Years later, they often find themselves thinking about Lux out there on the roof, imagining they’re having sex with her as they make love to their own partners.
Around the time Lux starts having sex on the roof, the boys notice how frail she has started to look. She’s extremely thin and looks sickly. Then, one day, the paramedics pull up to the Lisbon house for the first time since Cecilia’s death. This time, though, it’s because there’s something wrong with Lux’s health—the boys are surprised to see her come out on a stretcher looking “very much alive” but in some sort of abdominal pain. Half an hour later, the boys hear a rumor that Lux’s appendix burst.
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Not much later, though, the boys hear the real story about why Lux went to the hospital. Once she gets out of the waiting room, she mostly stops acting as if she’s in pain. She pretended something was wrong, she eventually explains to the doctor, because she hasn’t had her period in 42 days and is worried she might be pregnant. The doctor is unsurprised—he could tell from the anxious way she kept touching her stomach that she was worried about pregnancy. But this, she says, was the only way she could get out of the house without coming clean to her parents. She convinces the doctor to give her a pregnancy test without telling Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon.
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The doctor ends up telling Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon that Lux just had really bad indigestion. Privately, he relieves Lux by informing her that she’s not pregnant. However, she does have HPV (human papilloma virus). The neighborhood boys obtain a copy of Lux’s gynecological exam results, which they—to this day—consider one of their “most prized possessions.” Included in the results is a close-up picture of Lux’s cervix, which “stares” out at the boys “like an inflamed eye, fixing [them] with its silent accusation.”
Dr. Hornicker, who briefly had the chance to talk to Lux while she waited for the results of her gynecological exam, sets forth a new theory: the Lisbon girls, he thinks, suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He writes a report outlining why he thinks this is the case, noting that adolescents who lose a sibling to suicide are more likely than the average adolescent to embrace “suicidal behavior” themselves. Everyone in the community quickly takes to this theory, partially because—as the neighborhood boys put it—it “simplifie[s]” the entire matter, making it seem as if Cecilia’s suicide has doomed her sisters to unhappiness. This, it seems, gives rise to the general feeling of Cecilia’s suicide as a sort of infectious, “airborne virus” that the other sisters have contracted.
The Lisbon house reaches new depths of dilapidation, one of the slate tiles of the roof slipping off and leading to a leak in the living room. Other leaks appear over the next few days, the household filling with pails to catch the water. The exterior looks worn down, too, with the gutters drooping under the weight of wet leaves and uncleared gunk. When the mailman comes, he uses the spine of a magazine to open the mailbox instead of touching it with his hand. Mr. Lisbon is the only one to leave the house, driving to school looking dejected and blank. In the halls, he makes jocular displays of good cheer by jokingly hip-checking boys as they walk by, though they pick up on an uncomfortable sense of desperation as he pins them to the wall.
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Before long, Mr. Lisbon resigns. The boys hear about it afterward. Though the exact reasons surrounding his departure are never made clear, the prevailing sentiment is that he was encouraged to resign because of a growing feeling among local parents that somebody who can’t “run his own family” shouldn’t be given the power to teach other people’s children. Now that he doesn’t go to work, it’s as if the Lisbon house is void of life—sometimes, the boys notice, the lights never even come on at night.
That winter, Therese orders a number of college brochures. She and her sisters also order travel pamphlets—pamphlets that the neighborhood boys also order, liking to peruse them and imagine themselves on vacation alongside the Lisbon sisters. Later, in the spring, the local Parks Department goes around identifying trees that will have to be cut down to prevent the spread of the Dutch elm disease. The elm tree outside the Lisbon house is one of these trees. But when the men show up to cut it down (after having already trimmed some of the dead limbs), the Lisbon sisters rush outside and jump between the tree and the approaching chainsaws. This tree, after all, was Cecilia’s favorite. “Go away,” Mary says. “This is our tree.”
The workers from the Parks Department try to appeal to Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon, but they have no luck—neither Mr. nor Mrs. Lisbon is willing to tell the girls to step away from the tree. Mr. Lisbon tells the workers that he’s a proponent of an alternative “therapy” for the infected trees, and he refuses to listen when the workers insist that this approach doesn’t work. When the men with chainsaws threaten to call the police, Mrs. Lisbon points out that her daughters are just standing on their own property. Eventually, the men leave. Linda Perle, the local reporter, writes a schmaltzy piece about the whole event, talking about how the Lisbon girls banded together to save their dead sister’s favorite tree. Meanwhile, the Parks Department goes on cutting down other infected elms in the neighborhood.
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As baseball season winds up, the neighborhood boys feel out of touch with the Lisbon sisters. The girls used to come to baseball games with their father, but now they never do anything outside the house. Just when it feels as if the boys might lose contact with the sisters completely, the Lisbon girls reach out to them—or this, at least, is what the boys say. All over the neighborhood, laminated Virgin Mary cards start showing up in mysterious places: under a windshield wiper, in a neighbor’s rose bushes, in a neighborhood boy’s bicycle spokes, and wedged into Tim Winer’s study window. When the boys study the card, they see it’s just like the one Cecilia had in her hand on her first suicide attempt.
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By late spring, the boys start to think the Lisbon girls are communicating with them in other ways, too. At night, a Chinese lantern in Lux’s room blinks on and off in what they think is Morse code, though they’re unable to decipher any sort of message. They also notice the flickering light of candles in Cecilia’s room, realizing that the sisters have made a shrine to their dead sister. As the boys try to figure out what the Lisbon girls are trying to tell them, they receive a letter in one of their mailboxes. It’s from Lux, and the message is short and simple: “Tell Trip I’m over him. He’s a creep.”
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Over the next few weeks, the boys receive more letters. All in all, they end up with eight letters with short messages like “Remember us?” and “Down with unsavory boys.” In another, the message is: “Watch for our lights.” Finally, they receive the most meaningful one: “In this dark, there will be light. Will you help us?” But then the letters stop coming. Unsure of what to do, the boys wait for another sign from the sisters. But the house is quiet and lifeless—even their trash on the curb shows evidence of a family in hibernation or hiding.
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Finally, the boys think of a simple solution: they call the Lisbon sisters. Mr. Lisbon answers, but the boys don’t say anything. Mr. Lisbon seems to think the boys are someone else—someone who has apparently been calling frequently, judging by the fact that Mr. Lisbon says, “I’m waiting. Today I’ll listen to all your crap.” Then, quite abruptly, Mrs. Lisbon grabs the phone and screams, “Why won’t you leave us alone!” before hanging up. But the line doesn’t go dead. The boys can tell there’s somebody listening. When they say hello, one of the Lisbon girls says “Hi” in a small, weak voice. The boys are astonished by the sound of this voice—it sounds broken and “irreparably altered.”
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That first phone conversation doesn’t last long, nor does anyone say much. But the boys call again the next day around the same time. Instead of talking, they hold the phone up to speakers and play a song on the stereo system. They choose a song they feel communicates their feelings, then they hang up. The following day, the Lisbon girls are the ones to call. Like the boys, they don’t say anything, instead playing a song into the phone. When it’s over, the boys play one of their own selections, and this is how the entire phone call goes, with the boys and the girls responding to each other’s songs as best they can. Many of the boys’ responses are thematic. For example, when the girls play “Alone Again, Naturally,” the boys play “You’ve Got a Friend.”
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The boys mostly play love songs, whereas the Lisbon girls keep their selections “impersonal”—until, that is, they play “Make It with You” by Bread, cutting off the song after the lyrics, “And if you’re wondering what this song is leading to / I want to make it with you.” The girls hang up the phone, leaving the boys feeling as if the Lisbons have just confessed their love for them. They never thought the girls might actually love them back, and now they feel “dizzy” with emotion and surprise. Lying back, the boys go through all of their previous interactions with the Lisbons, deciding that the girls have been trying to reach out to them the entire time. The girls have been waiting, the boys now believe, to be saved.
In the coming days, the boys don’t hear from the Lisbon sisters. The girls don’t answer the phone, nor do they call the boys. Desperate, the boys discuss grand plans to dig a tunnel into the Lisbons’ basement, and then they remember that they could use the storm sewers—but when they try to do this, they discover the sewers have been flooded with water.
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Three nights after the last phone call, the boys use binoculars to watch through the windows as the Lisbon sisters drag a suitcase into Bonnie’s room. They start packing the trunk with their belongings, though some of the items—like an iron doorstop—don’t make much sense. Nonetheless, Paul Baldino declares that the sisters are going to “make a break for it.” They will, he says, be gone by the end of the week. In retrospect, the boys note that Paul was right—the girls are gone by the end of the week, but not in the way Paul thinks. The final letter the boys receive from the Lisbon girls arrives that evening. It reads: “Tomorrow. Midnight. Wait for our signal.”
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The next night, the boys prepare for the signal. But they don’t know what to look for. The Lisbon house shows no signs of anything out of the ordinary—it’s dark and lifeless. Joe Hill Conley climbs a tree to get a better look, but he sees nothing, so the boys make their way to their old treehouse, which is falling into despair but is still usable. When they get inside, they’re surprised to find pictures of the Lisbon girls that they apparently put up long ago—they don’t remember putting them up. Waiting for midnight, the boys lounge and sip beer, at one point peering into the Lisbon house using a telescope. Every once in a while they catch sight of Lux in her bedroom, but the telescope image is too magnified for them to discern what they’re looking at.
Midnight passes unceremoniously. But then a flashlight goes on in one of the girls’ bedrooms. It moves around and turns on and off several times. When it comes back on, the sisters appear in the open window frame. They stare out at the boys. Mary blows a kiss, the window closes, and the flashlight goes off, the girls disappearing in the darkness. The boys automatically jump down from the treehouse, astonished how short the drop feels now that they’ve grown taller. Feeling emboldened by this newfound sense of maturity, they walk across the Lisbon yard and around the back, where they peer in through yet another window.
Once their eyes adjust, the boys realize they’re peering beyond a windowsill of dead houseplants and into the living room, where Lux is absently smoking a cigarette in a beanbag chair. The boys recognize the halter top she’s wearing because it’s rather revealing. “July, two years ago,” Joe Hill Conley says, referring to the last time they saw her wear it. Some of the boys wonder if they should knock, but then they simply enter the house, walk over to Lux, and say, “We’re here.” Lux isn’t startled. “About time,” she says. “We’ve been waiting for you guys.”
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The boys explain that they have the use of Chase Buell’s car (or, rather, his mother’s). They can load the Lisbon girls in and drive away. It’ll be a tight fit, though. But Lux doesn’t mind, simply asking, “Which one of you studs is going to sit up front next to me?” When the boys ask where her sisters are, she says they’re coming. As she says this, the boys hear a heavy sound downstairs. This makes them skittish, so they inch toward the back door, hoping to hurry Lux and her sisters along. But Lux doesn’t do anything, telling them it’ll be another five minutes because her sisters are still packing. They had to wait until their parents were asleep, she explains.
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Lux points out that not everyone will fit in Chase Buell’s car, so they should probably take the Lisbon car. She asks Chase if he can drive a station wagon, and he says he can (as long as it isn’t stick shift). As he says this, Lux walks up to him and starts undoing his belt in front of all the other boys. Nobody says anything. In fact, even though Lux is undoing Chase’s belt, all of the boys feel as if she’s touching their belts. Just as Lux reaches into Chase’s pants, though, another sound comes from downstairs. Lux takes her hand away, saying, “We can’t do this now.” She then declares that she has to get some “fresh air” because the boys have gotten her “all worked up,” so she decides to wait in her parents’ car.
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Lux tells the boys to wait for her sisters, who will need help with their luggage. She also asks where they should all go, and Chase Buell says Florida. Lux approves of his decision and then goes into the garage. Left to themselves, the boys fantasize about driving long hours with the Lisbon sisters, imagining themselves stopping at deserted gas stations and becoming accustomed to the feeling of sitting next to the girls. As they daydream, they keep hearing thuds from various places in the house, but then everything goes silent. After a moment, Peter Sissen notices there’s a light on in the basement, so the boys tentatively descend the stairs—only to find that everything from the party they attended a year ago is still there: melted ice cream, a scummy bowl of punch, partially deflated balloons.
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The boys feel like they’ve returned to the party. One of them even starts dancing, pretending to do the box step with one of the Lisbon sisters. His shoes slosh through the inch of water that has flooded the neglected basement, and this intensifies the smell of sewage, which then alerts the boys to another smell—a smell they will never be able to forget. Looking up, they see Bonnie hanging lifeless from a beam in the ceiling. Suddenly, the boys feel a “shame that has never gone away”—a response that doctors later say is related to shock. But the boys think it’s really something more like guilt. They’ve failed, they think, to save the Lisbon sisters. They realize they never really even knew Bonnie. And this, they think, is why the Lisbon girls lured them inside: to show the boys how little they knew them.
The boys think Bonnie died while they were upstairs fantasizing about life on the road. When Mary heard Bonnie kick over the heavy trunk she was standing on, she put her head in the oven. The boys must have walked right by her on their way to the basement. By then, Therese would already have been dead, having swallowed a handful of sleeping pills and chased it with gin. Lux, the boys put together, died after they left the house running and screaming—they forgot to check on her in the garage. She died of asphyxiation, the car purring and the radio playing in the dark garage. She had unbuckled Chase’s belt just to stall them, waiting to hear the signal of Bonnie’s trunk tipping over in the basement.
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