The Virgin Suicides

by

Jeffrey Eugenides

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Virgin Suicides makes teaching easy.

Mary Lisbon Character Analysis

At 16, Mary is the second-oldest Lisbon sister. She’s also the last one to die by suicide, though this is only because her first attempt fails. On the whole, Mary is attentive and mindful of her appearance. Early in the novel, Peter Sissen sneaks into the Lisbons’ bathroom and finds Mary’s makeup, which she keeps hidden from her parents. Along with some lipstick and concealer, Peter finds wax and concludes that Mary must wax her upper lip—a detail that he shares with the other neighborhood boys. When the four remaining Lisbon sisters all attempt suicide at the same time, Mary puts her head in the oven, but she survives. She spends the summer sleeping for long stretches of time and compulsively showering. When the neighborhood boys walk home from one of the first raucous parties of their lives, they see paramedics loading Mary’s dead body into an ambulance, later learning that Mary purposefully overdosed on pills.

Mary Lisbon Quotes in The Virgin Suicides

The The Virgin Suicides quotes below are all either spoken by Mary Lisbon or refer to Mary Lisbon. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Obsession, Gossip, and Scandal Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide—it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese—the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement form which it was possible to tie a rope. They got out of the EMS truck, as usual moving much too slowly in our opinion, and the fat one said under his breath, “This ain’t TV, folks, this is how fast we go.” He was carrying the heavy respirator and cardiac unit past the bushes that had grown monstrous and over the erupting lawn, tame and immaculate thirteen months earlier when the trouble began.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Mary Lisbon, Therese Lisbon
Related Symbols: Elm Trees and the Lisbon House
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:

The paneled walls gleamed, and for the first few seconds the Lisbon girls were only a patch of glare like a congregation of angels. Then, however, our eyes got used to the light and informed us of something we had never realized: the Lisbon girls were all different people. Instead of five replicas with the same blond hair and puffy cheeks we saw that they were distinct beings, their personalities beginning to transform their faces and reroute their expressions.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon, Lux Lisbon, Bonnie Lisbon, Mary Lisbon, Therese Lisbon
Page Number: 23
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

Thinking back, we decided the girls had been trying to talk to us all along, to elicit our help, but we’d been too infatuated to listen. Our surveillance had been so focused we missed nothing but a simple returned gaze. Who else did they have to turn to? Not their parents. Nor the neighborhood. Inside their house they were prisoners; outside, lepers. And so they hid from the world, waiting for someone—for us—to save them.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Lux Lisbon, Bonnie Lisbon, Mary Lisbon, Therese Lisbon
Page Number: 193
Explanation and Analysis:

We climbed up to the tree house the way we always had, stepping in the knothole, then on the nailed board, then on two bent nails, before grasping the frayed rope and pulling ourselves through the trapdoor. We were so much bigger now we could barely squeeze through, and once we were inside, the plywood floor sagged under our weight. The oblong window we’d cut with a handsaw years ago still looked onto the front of the Lisbon house. Next to it were rusty tacks. We didn’t remember putting them up, but there they were, dim from time and weather so that all we could make out were the phosphorescent outlines of the girls’ bodies, each a different glowing letter of an unknown alphabet.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon, Lux Lisbon, Bonnie Lisbon, Mary Lisbon, Therese Lisbon
Related Symbols: Elm Trees and the Lisbon House
Page Number: 196-197
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

We stayed until daybreak. As we came out into the first alcoholic dawn of our lives (a bleachy fade-in, overused through the years now by the one-note director), our lips were swollen from kissing and our mouths throbbing with the taste of girls. Already we had been married and divorced, in a sense, […]. In the distance, at the Lisbon house, the EMS truck sat, flashing its lights. They hadn’t bothered to use the sirens.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Mary Lisbon
Page Number: 231
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Virgin Suicides LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Virgin Suicides PDF

Mary Lisbon Quotes in The Virgin Suicides

The The Virgin Suicides quotes below are all either spoken by Mary Lisbon or refer to Mary Lisbon. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Obsession, Gossip, and Scandal Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide—it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese—the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement form which it was possible to tie a rope. They got out of the EMS truck, as usual moving much too slowly in our opinion, and the fat one said under his breath, “This ain’t TV, folks, this is how fast we go.” He was carrying the heavy respirator and cardiac unit past the bushes that had grown monstrous and over the erupting lawn, tame and immaculate thirteen months earlier when the trouble began.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Mary Lisbon, Therese Lisbon
Related Symbols: Elm Trees and the Lisbon House
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:

The paneled walls gleamed, and for the first few seconds the Lisbon girls were only a patch of glare like a congregation of angels. Then, however, our eyes got used to the light and informed us of something we had never realized: the Lisbon girls were all different people. Instead of five replicas with the same blond hair and puffy cheeks we saw that they were distinct beings, their personalities beginning to transform their faces and reroute their expressions.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon, Lux Lisbon, Bonnie Lisbon, Mary Lisbon, Therese Lisbon
Page Number: 23
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

Thinking back, we decided the girls had been trying to talk to us all along, to elicit our help, but we’d been too infatuated to listen. Our surveillance had been so focused we missed nothing but a simple returned gaze. Who else did they have to turn to? Not their parents. Nor the neighborhood. Inside their house they were prisoners; outside, lepers. And so they hid from the world, waiting for someone—for us—to save them.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Lux Lisbon, Bonnie Lisbon, Mary Lisbon, Therese Lisbon
Page Number: 193
Explanation and Analysis:

We climbed up to the tree house the way we always had, stepping in the knothole, then on the nailed board, then on two bent nails, before grasping the frayed rope and pulling ourselves through the trapdoor. We were so much bigger now we could barely squeeze through, and once we were inside, the plywood floor sagged under our weight. The oblong window we’d cut with a handsaw years ago still looked onto the front of the Lisbon house. Next to it were rusty tacks. We didn’t remember putting them up, but there they were, dim from time and weather so that all we could make out were the phosphorescent outlines of the girls’ bodies, each a different glowing letter of an unknown alphabet.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon, Lux Lisbon, Bonnie Lisbon, Mary Lisbon, Therese Lisbon
Related Symbols: Elm Trees and the Lisbon House
Page Number: 196-197
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

We stayed until daybreak. As we came out into the first alcoholic dawn of our lives (a bleachy fade-in, overused through the years now by the one-note director), our lips were swollen from kissing and our mouths throbbing with the taste of girls. Already we had been married and divorced, in a sense, […]. In the distance, at the Lisbon house, the EMS truck sat, flashing its lights. They hadn’t bothered to use the sirens.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Mary Lisbon
Page Number: 231
Explanation and Analysis: