Scopophilia in The Virgin Suicides

When reading The Virgin Suicides I couldn’t help but think of Laura Mulvey’s essay on “Narrative Cinema and Visual Pleasure.” Scopophilia and the male gaze seem pertinent to plot advancement. The neighborhood boys have a strange fascination with the Lisbon girls, which they detail when describing their “tattered stockings” or observing Lux having sex on the rooftop. It’s interesting and a bit odd that Eugenides chose to narrate the lives of the Lisbon sisters via the neighborhood boys.

The narration relies on the detailed mental notes that the boys take of the sisters and a few of their rare interactions. The narrators’ scopophilic tendencies provide a fairly objective viewpoint in regards to the novel. The neighborhood boys closely document the sisters’ lives in order to keep track of their observances.  

Unlike in cinema, where we can openly observe and analyze a character, the neighborhood boys must be discreet while watching the Lisbon sisters. The boys’ male gaze is not a perverted sort of gaze that stems from sexual arousal, but rather one that stems from curiosity and a desire to know more about the Lisbon sisters. They usually watch the sisters using binoculars or out of the corners of their eyes, and when they do accidentally meet one the girls’ eyes they are quick to look away. This sort of embarrassment shows that the boys are not necessarily focused on the Lisbon sisters because they find them attractive, but rather because they find them peculiar.