The Importance of Community
and Voyeurism
in The Virgin Suicides
By Iain Welsh and Ashleigh Symington
The community plays an important role
within the novel “The Virgin Suicides”, this
presentation will aim to outline how the
community influences the events within
the novel.
The novel is set in a very close, privileged, suburban
community which is a place where the serious issues are
shied away from and everyone is supposed to pretend they
are happy and everyone is perfect.
However the Lisbon’s life is not perfect and after the suicide
of Cecilia the Lisbon’s are judged by the community and
isolated. If this had not been the case and had been given
support perhaps the family would have been better able to
deal with their grief and it would not have led to the later
suicides of the rest of the Lisbon girls. The disrepair of the
house also makes the Lisbon’s seem even more separate
from the community as everyone else seems so organised.
The community tries to make an effort at the beginning of
the tragedies, they make a communal effort to clean up
their house after the fish fly season (this sort of team work
seems ordinary for the community). The Lisbon family stops
taking part in these activities which further isolates them.
As the community that the Lisbon’s live in is so superficial they
always feel the need to pretend to everyone that they are happy
despite their problems. By the Lisbon parents pretending to
everybody that they are happy on the outside perhaps they
didn't address their daughters problems and this ultimately
ended up in the premature death of all their daughters. The
denial of the parents is particularly evident throughout the
novel, this is shown by the disrepair of their house (which had
not been changed since the death of Cecilia) and the way in
which Mrs Lisbon refers to Cecilia’s initial suicide attempt as “her
little accident”, it shows she is more worried about what other
people will think of her than trying to support her clearly fragile
daughter. Mrs Lisbon also makes all of her daughters face the
house when Cecilia died to make sure they didn’t see anything
and this is perhaps why they were in denial about the whole
issue of the loss of Cecilia in the first place. If they were allowed
to address the issue perhaps it would not have resulted in their
own suicides.
Due to the fact that the Lisbon’s live in such a close
community the narrative style is able to be adopted
in a way that would not be possible otherwise:
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The narrators grew up with the Lisbon girls and therefore know important
details about their Lives.
They are constantly able to watch the Lisbon girls, this highlights the theme of
voyeurism throughout the novel. As the novel is not told from a first hand
perspective they have to be watched for there to be enough evidence about
them, the narrators also gather evidence from people within the community
about events within the girls lives.
The narrators were present at the party where Cecilia killed herself, which was
the event that brought about the family’s demise so they were able to witness
first hand the effect it had on the family and may have made them more
aware of the Lisbon’s grief and alert to the problems within the family.
The narrators felt so close to the Lisbon girls “some had even fallen in love
with them” that it led to them feeling dissatisfied about not knowing the
cause of their suicides, this may be the reason that they feel so obsessed by it
and even treat it like a case, “Exhibit 1” etc..
The girls were watched so often by the narrators that they could even recount
the dates on which the girls wore particular outfits,
The suburban community also enforces the idea of
physical boundaries. The Lisbon girls are refined by the
physical boundaries of their home, leaving them isolated
and with a lack of any form of social life. (The only time
they were really allowed visitors was at a chaperoned
party after Cecilia’s initial attempt at suicide, which the
parents only allowed out of obligation to the doctors
orders.) The girls’ lack of socialising leads to the boys’ lack
of knowledge about the girls and the girls’ lives, and adds
to the boys' fascination and obsession towards them, and
it is from this that the story is told- the neighbourhood
boys act as a collective narrative talking from what they
have seen of the girls by living in such a close knit
community. This is another reason the community is so
important in this novel.
Many of the issues within the community
highlight the inability to address serious topics
and also adds to the theme of death:
• The cemetery workers strike: “was settled after 409 days of arbitration.”
• Dutch elm disease, even the trees are dying, highlights to the theme of
death and adds to the idea of things disappearing without a trace within
the community.
• The fish flies, highlights the idea of life being transient- they have a very
short life span. Something that Cecilia seemed fascinated by.
• People were almost reluctant to send flowers to the Lisbon’s house after
the tragedy of Cecilia’s suicide, they did not know how to act: “Because of
the nature of the death… everybody put of placing their orders, unsure
whether to let the catastrophe pass in silence or to act as though the
death were natural. In the end, however, everybody sent something.”
Any Questions? 