Jeffrey Eugenides 's The Virgin Suicides

Each year suicide is becoming more common in the United States among adolescents, according to the Suicide and Mental Health Association International. The main reason why adolescents commit suicide is because they are depressed. In the article "Nightmare in the Mirror" by Scott Long, he explains that adolescence has changed throughout the years. An assertion he makes is that teens have "Angst and bouts of suicidal despair distinguish this gloomy figure…" (Long 156). Long explains that throughout the years, adolescents have become sadder and depressed. Adolescents, who suffer from depression and are suicidal, don't usually inform others. Those adolescents fall into the third quadrant of the Johari Window.

“Virgins,” a short story by Danielle Evans is a coming of age tale that details the arduous journey of upcoming womanhood taken by a young girl and her friend. This young girl is named Erica and her friend is named Jasmine they are both black teenaged girls living in a lower income neighborhood. As one reads, the question emerges of how Evans presents a commentary on the issues that girls on the verge of womanhood must overcome, appears. What aspects must be portrayed to fully paint a picture into this world? Danielle Evans uses teenage ideals of self worth, themes of maturity, and a common disregard of morals to present a commentary on the issues girls on the verge of womanhood must overcome to fully prosper.

     The meaning of the first stanza is do the things you need to get done because tomorrow the opportunity may not exist. It states this by saying gather rosebuds while you can because that beautiful flower “tomorrow will be dying” (Herrick 385). The next stanza talks about the Sun’s life from dawn to dusk. By describing it’s race against time it is telling a person that there is not much sunlight so make the most of it To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time and Carpe Diem

Middlesex is an outline of the life of Calliope Stephanides who grew to the age of fourteen believing that she was a girl with unnatural thoughts for the same sex. As puberty takes hold of her friends and classmates, both Calliope and her family begin to worry about the growing gap between her and the average teenage girl; this marks the beginning of a new life for Calliope who finds she is really a he. Under the new name, Cal, this individual struggles with identity management as he traces his transformation from female to male and the genetic condition, beginning with his paternal grandparents that caused it. “I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smog less Detroit day in January of

The author agrees with the idea of women as victims through the characterisation of women in the short story. The women are portrayed as helpless to the torment inflicted upon them by the boy in the story. This positions readers to feel sympathy for the women but also think of the world outside the text in which women are also seen as inferior to men. “Each season provided him new ways of frightening the little girls who sat in front of him or behind him”. This statement shows that the boy’s primary target were the girls who sat next to him. This supports the tradition idea of women as the victims and compels readers to see that the women in the text are treated more or less the same as the women in the outside world. Characterisation has been used by the author to reinforce the traditional idea of women as the helpless victims.

Does deviating from one’s gender norms inevitably doom one down a spiral of moral corruption? Tim O'Brien, author of “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” and Ernest Hemingway, author of “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”, certainly seem to hold this view, as evident by the fates of the major female characters in their respective works. The deviance of the major female characters in both works appears to corrupt not only themselves, but also pollute their partners, causing them to suffer injury or harm as a result. The degree of injury ranges from negligible, like Fossie’s demotion and broken heart, to fatal, like the bullet that rips through Macomber’s skull. It begs the question, are these stories meant to serve as cautionary tales for their female readers, or possibly for their husbands, so they may recognize gender deviance and stop it in its tracks before their wives transform into Margot Macomber or Mary Anne Bell? This essay will analyze what such characters say about pervading views of women, both in society and in literature.

“When you died, part of me died too,Now i'm finishing off the rest, so we can be together...I’m coming.” Is a direct quote from Junes suicide note to Delia wishing her a sincere see you soon. A book of a sad suicide turns into a brutal murder but for what? A beautiful lie or did little girls really die? Lynn Weingarten wrote a New York bestseller, suicide notes from beautiful girls, it was a hit in New York but due to all the disregard for the law, lack of respect for authority, and all the talk of sinful lives this won't make the Top Salem Seller.

The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides, is a novel that deals with the complexities of being a teenager, dealing with related themes such as growing up, loss of innocence, adolescent sexuality, loneliness, unrequited love. These seemingly innocent themes however, develop a darker side, as they lead to the suicides of the main characters- Lux, Bonnie, Celia, Mary and Therese: the 5 Lisbon sisters. The themes of objectification and The Male Gaze also become relevant through the nature of the detached male narrative; The story is told retrospectively through the the viewpoint of an unknown number of anonymous boys, now middle-aged men, who grew up in the same middle class suburban neighbourhood in middle America as the girls. This first person plural narrative, as well as various stylistic devices such as diction, imagery, metaphors and tone all affect the way the Lisbon sisters are represented to the reader.

Middlesex by Jeffry Eugenides is a book about Calliope “Cal” Stephanides. In the beginning of the book, Cal, as he likes to be referred to as, tells us about his condition. Cal has a 5-Alpha-Reductase pseudohermaphrodite which is, simply put, a condition that affects the sexual development of males before the birth of the child and also during puberty. In Middlesex, incestuous marriages were secretly accepted among the villagers which resulted in Cal being conceived by cousins. Before Cal’s birth, the tradition of his family was gender prediction by his grandmother, Desdemona Stephanides. It seemed to be a traditional thing for the family from the Greek roots. When it was time to predict Tessie’s, Cal’s mother, baby, Desdemona declared that the child would be a boy. Milton, Cal’s father, disagreed because there was no way the baby could be a boy scientifically. This could also be based on the fact that Tessie and Milton wanted a baby girl. Until the age of sixteen, Cal was raised as a girl even though he had a male brain biologically.

Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides, story on events from the past affect the future. Incestuous love between a brother and sister produced a mutated gene that would affect the eventual grand-daughter morphing to a grand-son. Jeffrey Eugenides suggests that society always believes to be missing something in their life; attempting to fill the missing piece producess in mixed outcomes of good and bad.

Sexuality has an inherent connection to human nature. Yet, even in regards to something so natural, societies throughout times have imposed expectations and gender roles upon it. Ultimately, these come to oppress women, and confine them within the limits that the world has set for them. However, society is constantly evolving, and within the past 200 years, the role of women has changed. These changes in society can be seen within the intricacies of literature in each era. Specifically, through analyzing The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, one can observe the dynamics of society in regards to the role of women through the lens of the theme of sexuality. In both novels, the confinement and oppression of women can be visibly seen as a result of these gender roles. Yet, from the time The Scarlet Letter was published to the time The Bell Jar was written, the place of women in society ultimately changed as well. Hence when evaluating the gender roles that are derived from sexuality, the difference between the portrayals of women’s oppression in each novel becomes apparent, and shows how the subjugation of women has evolved. The guiding question of this investigation is to what extent does the theme of sexuality reflect the expectations for women in society at the time each novel was written. The essay will explore how the literary elements that form each novel demonstrate each author’s independent vision which questions the

In Jeffrey Eugenides’s book Middlesex, Calliope Stephanide tells the story of not only her transformation, but also the world’s transformation into a completely different entity. Brother and sister become husband and wife, Greeks become Americans, and, most importantly, a young girl becomes a man. Along with being a transformative novel, Middlesex is also considered a modern epic. It is an epic account that retells the history of a recessive chromosome that made its way into the life of the main character. Cal describes this recessive chromosome’s journey as it travels through many imposing events: “Cal needs to tell the story of his past in order to function in the present” (Cohen). This genetic chromosome survives a fire in Smyrna,

Presenting literature to the public that is meant to be a commentary on social or political issues, masked under the guise of entertaining and fictional, is a tool implemented by authors and activists for centuries. While not all satire is as overt as Jonathan Swift’s suggestion that we eat the babies, it does not diminish the eyebrow raising suggestions that are conveyed once the meaning has been discovered. In Aphra Behn’s The History of the Nun and Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina, the established expectations of the female role within society are brought into question then directly rejected. These expectations establish that women should be deferential to men, morally unblemished, and virtuous at all times. Men, however, are not held to these expectations in the same way. The masculine roles assumed by Isabella and Fantomina demonstrate a private rebellion against the established patriarchal society as it warns against the under-estimation of women and proves that women exist independently.

Throughout the world of suburbia, there seems to be a persistence of communities who attempt to create a perfect, enclosed world for the whole of the community to live in. By providing for everything that the inhabitants would ever want, suburbia is able to close itself off from those around it that it deems unworthy of belonging. While this exclusivity helps to foster the sense of community, it can also bring with it isolation from the outside, and also from within, and have disastrous results. Throughout the semester, there have been a number of works that have dealt the issue of isolation, but the greatest representation of a work whose physical qualities in its representation of suburbia help to

In the story of The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter attacks the conventional gender roles of women. The conventional Gothic plot revolves around pursuit. A young heroine’s virtuous virginity, purity and innocence is sexually threatened. Thus, what Carter does in “The Bloody Chamber” is redefine female desire and sexuality which are rendered passive and repressed through traditional Gothic texts. Where the mother exemplifies the heroic woman, the “girl” is the traditional damsel in distress. Maria Makinen’s assessment of Carters feminine characters is both truthful and incorrect. Carter uses traditional female stereotypes as well as her unique women to make a contrast between these perceptions of women.