The Virgin Suicides

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.

However, fiction is essential to the culture that it is portrayed in. It can show and educate the reader the daily life or hardships of one culture, allowing them to understand in a greater sense. Fiction also gives us the opportunity to experience the possibility of other choices without making those choices, especially as readers we are immersed in the political protests that the girls go through and partake. Alvarez did not write the book merely to entertain her readers, but to help readers learn about themselves and educate them about the Trujillo regime and keep the spirit of the Mirabal sisters alive. Without a novel like this, the world may never know how important the sisters were. They died as true heroes, and Alvarez believes that their story needs to be spread. The true spirit of the Mirabal sisters is their legacy. They are portrayed in a positive light because they did help change the future that we live in today, and if we share important history and stories, such as the Mirabal sisters, we are able to live vicariously through them and honor their selfless

For this primary source paper, I decided to write a comparison on the source Women’s Place in Renaissance Italy: Alessandra, Letters from a Widow and Matriarch of a Great Family and The Virgin Suicides written by Jeffrey Eugenides. Immediately reading the first paragraph of Women’s Place in Renaissance Italy, it strongly resonated with The Virgin Suicides in a way. I thought these two would make an interesting comparison due to the way they both address men, death, complexity of being a female, and family.

In the movie, The Virgin Suicides (Coppola, Costanzo, Halstead, Hanley & Coppola, 1999), the Lisbon sisters live in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan during the 1970’s with their parents, Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon. All 5 of the sisters, Cecilia, Lux, Bonnie, Mary, and Therese, seem to suffer from depression and this causes great distress and impairment in their lives and inevitably leads to their suicides. According to the DSM-V (2013) the criteria for Major Depressive Disorder includes significant functional impairment accompanying 5 or more out of 9 specific symptoms that are present nearly every day. The sisters seen to exhibit at least 6 of these symptoms, therefore their behavior meets criteria for Major Depressive Disorder. First, the sisters all express a depressed/irritable mood most of the day, every day. We can directly observe this after the death of their sister Cecilia. They seem to be isolated and appear to be deeply sad. Second, the girls display little to no interest or pleasure in their everyday life. They seem to mope around and are constantly seen laying on the floor/ bed in their rooms not doing anything at all. Third, the sisters seem to have no appetite, this also

Firstly, the secondary characters develop the theme by supporting one constant notion in which women are inferior and submissive. The temporal setting is in the late 1940s, after World War I; a time period in which sexism was widely accepted. This prejudice is introduced to the narrator, a young girl, very early on when a businessman commends her for her physical labor, saying “I thought it was only a girl” (4). When

As a senior revising and expanding this essay, I realized how much I have grown as a writer and a student of literature. When I began revising, I realized that the focus of the paper needed to be narrowed and focused more on the play Arcadia, in which Thomasina is the exception to the types of women characters stereotypically

This reenforces the idea that the boys' sight is the main determining factor for much of the information they recount, as at they are unable to differentiate the Lisbons until the party, after having known the girls for much of their lives, and also lusting after them for almost as long as they have, they are isolated from the girls to such a degree that they are unable to see any difference in them until they are in the same room. Most of the community also associates all the girls with one another and rarely sees any distinguishable differences amongst them. In the section when Trip Fontaine and the other neighborhood boys take the Lisbon girls tot he homecoming dance, they boys realize they can't tell the girls apart. "Trip Fontaine, of course, had dibs on Lux, but the other three girls were up for grabs. Fortunately, their dresses and hairdos homogenized them. Once again, the boys weren't even sure which girl was which. Instead of asking, they did the only thing they could think of doing: they presented the corsages" (117). The boys' superficiality is highlighted; the only time in the novel in which the girls are allowed out of the house, they boys are still unable to determine one girl from another. Furthermore, the only way they determine who their dates are by simply lining up in front of them with flowers ready. When the remaining Lisbon girls commit suicide at the end of the novel, Mary is the only daughter to survive, and

The subjects of the two novels, Edna Pontellier and the Narrator, undergo a similar change; at the onset of the novel they meet all societies expectations and standards for women of their time- Mrs. Pontellier is described as shy and reserved and neither protagonist ever disobey their husbands- but with each coming page, the women convert into someone unrecognizable to their antierior selves. Though their metamorphose are both ignited by a new environment, they had internally harbored yet suppressed their need for independence and freedom. Like these two, every woman holds creativity and free will; however during this time they were unable to practice them, as doing so was almost unheard of and rarely tolerated. The Narrator and Edna themselves serve to represent the healthy creative urges within women that have been suppressed.

Women are primarily objects of sexual pleasure for the male protagonists. Their characters are always filtered through the men's perspective, with the exception of the maid Bertha, Charlie’s maid, who at times makes fun at either of the brothers. (Perspectives on How Women Internalize the Ideal Beauty Standard, Year Unknown).

All four sisters reject their stereotypical role as women in the society by standing up for their beliefs and the revolution. When Minerva said,” It’s about time we women had a voice in running our country,”(Alvarez ?Chapter 1?) shows how outspoken she is about her country. The way Minerva demands equality shows the influence that men have over women in the Dominican culture. During the 1960s, the men expected women to be housewives, and to just cook and clean. In the book when Jaimito says,” The Mirabal sisters like to run their men, that was the problem. In his house, we was the one to wear the pants.”(Alvarez, 176-177) That shows that men expect women to be below them.

Since the girls were depressed, this later resulted in their suicide. "Suicide attempts are usually made when a person is seriously depressed and feels that there is no way out of their problems" according to D'Arcy Lyness, PhD. Adolescents commit suicide because they feel as if they can not escape emotional pain. The Lisbon girls were simply depressed. The majority of adolescents who commit suicide suffer from depression. From the film The Virgin Suicides, it is obvious that the Lisbon girls are depressed. The Lisbon girl's depression was the cause of their

Therefore, it is evident that literary techniques are utilised to exploit the Beauvoirian idea of women “denying [their] feminine weakness” in order to justify their strength, while the “militant male... she wish[es] to be” however, Marlene accepts femininity and only wears a skirt to work.

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.

Perhaps it would have been a different situation, if they were actually women who are acting and thinking like men. According to travesties, being of the primary gender (biologically male), thinking and behaving like women is unacceptable because it downgrades one’s gender status. On the contrary, being biologically female, behaving and thinking like men is upgrading and heroic. In this sense, being like a girl has been a challenge since childhood for travestis. They always feared that people would find out and shame them in the society. While peculiarly following their unimpressive path in the society, of desiring women and experiencing sex, travesti subjectivity is generated out of their apprehensive relationships with their untrustworthy boyfriends. Within this subjectivity, travestis’ efforts to show themselves within the normal boundaries of the Brazilian society strengthen the gender binary. In their relations with their boyfriends, they act like nothing else other than females. Similarly, in their profession, they play the role of a female or male depending on the demands of the situation by swapping between the binary gender roles. Travesti subjectivity comes into the limelight with normative gender binary

Martirio once had a man interested in her but that opportunity was snatched away from her by Bernarda. On page 191 Poncia says, “Martirio is lovesick, I don't care what you say. Why didn't you let her marry enrique Humanas? Why, on the very day he was coming to her window did you send him a message not to come? And Bernarda responded, “... My blood won’t mingle with the Humanas’ while I live!” This is an example of how different Martirio’s circumstances were from Adela and Angustias. Martirio was repressed from her desire for freedom from her mother and became jealous when her sister’s were not denied in the same way. These two themes lead the characters to believe that escaping one prison will make them free, only to be confined to another. This is the situation the women in the play recognize as a inner conflict. An example of this is on page 169 when Amelia says, “These days a girl doesn't know whether to have a beau or not.” Additionally, On page 208 Adela says, “ I can't stand this horrible house after the taste of his mouth. I’ll be what he wants me to be.” This quote shows how the girls view men as an escape from their sheltered home. Men represent freedom as well as repression. For Example, On page 169 it says “... Her sweetheart doesn't let her go out even to the front doorstep.” This shows us that Bernarda’s daughters realize if they stay at home forever, they will be controlled by their mother,