On the back of my copy of The Virgin Suicides is a summary of a novel. Part of one of the sentences from the summary reads, "the men whose lives have been forever changed by their fierce, awkward obsession with five doomed sisters: brainy Therese, fastidious Mary, ascetic Bonnie, libertine Lux, and pale, saintly Cecilia, whose spectacular demise inaugurates the 'year of the suicides.'"
The "doomed" sisters all commit suicide--we know this from the onset. Cecilia is described as having a "spectacular demise"; the implications of the word "spectacular" imply that these suicides are actually spectacles, things that are fascinating to observe. And just like men from whose perspective this book is written from, we as the audience can't help but also be fascinated, or at least interested, in the screwed-up nature of the Lisbon family.
The sisters, who are so vastly different it almost seems too artificial (as if Eugenides was trying to adhere to predefined stock characters and generalities), all possess some sort of mental brokenness. Eugenides romanticizes every element of this mental brokenness, and for some reason it works. Navigating the landscape of mental illness is awkward for us, especially considering that we are reading from the perspective of the men who idealize the sisters. Externally, we can't actually tell what the sisters are thinking, and instead the closest exposure we get to the sisters' actual thoughts is achieved through the boys' voyeuristic adventures and snippets of hard evidence like Cecilia's diary.
The main problematic component of this novel, for me, is how in trying to portray the elusive and mysterious thoughts and actions of the sisters, Eugenides instead presents a superficial and artificial portrayal of mental illness. It's almost as if he marginalizes the problem of mental illness, especially as pertaining to teenage girls. Not to mention, teenage girls are portrayed pretty uniformly throughout media already: boy-crazy, rebellious, and very emotional.
In her "suicide note," Cecilia writes, "Obviously, Doctor, you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl."
Well, Jeffrey Eugenides, have you?
-Carrie
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