Virgin Suicides Religion Quotes

Lourdes and Fatima are sites of shrines to the Virgin Mary in Europe (France and Portugal, respectively), where she's said to have appeared to faithful followers who happened to be children (Fatima) and a teenage girl (Lourdes). Why Cecilia includes a photo of Mary in her suicide attempt isn't really explained. Is she protesting the rigid Catholicism in her family? Is she fascinated by it? Is it part of her emotional disturbance? Is she praying for salvation after her death? The narrators and the readers are left to wonder. Later, when the girls leave the Virgin cards around the neighborhood, it's a little more understandable as a way of identifying themselves to the boys and an ominous statement of their connection with Cecilia.

We guess Mr. Lisbon wasn't the one directing the girls' religious upbringing; he calls the beliefs "crap." Sounds like he feels responsible for giving her an experience that somehow got associated with the idea of suicide. Mrs. Lisbon, the devout one, reacts by crumpling the card. It's probably horrifying to her that her religious beliefs got wrapped up in Cecilia's problems.

After Cecilia's death, her mother's understandably devastated and withdrawn. She doesn't want to receive any visitors, and her husband plays goalie, defending her from stray do-gooders who might want to cheer her up. The priest knows she's a devout Catholic and figures that she'll make an exception for her priest. He's wrong. She never looks to him as a source of comfort.

At school, the teachers and students attempt to deal with their grief over Cecilia's death, but everyone's a little misguided. The Reverend Pike tries to remind everyone that Christians believe in life after death to give them hope, but seriously—he's comparing his football team's loss to the tragedy that's on everyone's minds? It's an example of the general cluelessness that we see in the community at large when trying to deal with the Lisbon tragedies. Religion isn't much help.

Another example of the juxtaposition of religious and sexual imagery in the novel.

When Lux comes home late after the Homecoming Dance, the church music blaring from the house is a message from her mother that she's in deep trouble. The fact that Mrs. Lisbon ditches these treasured albums when she moves out of town might be a hint that her faith has been irreparably shaken by the deaths of her daughters.

Mrs. Lisbon believes that rock music is sinful and, to protect her daughters from its effects, takes drastic action. It's just another way that she stifles her daughters.

After Cecilia's death the family goes on lockdown. They strip down their activities to the bare necessities. Mr. Lisbon has to go to work because they have to pay the bills, so that's not negotiable. Mrs. Lisbon does pull the girls out of school, but she doesn't cut church. It must be extremely important to her, a requirement for life and maybe at this point a way of coping with Cecilia's death.

So what's with those Virgin Mary cards anyway? They're certainly a reference to Cecilia, who tried to die with one of them in her hands. And they're a surefire way to let the recipients know who was distributing them. Were they an accusation against the neighbors who were ignoring the family? A veiled threat of more suicides? A cry for help? Like with Cecilia's Mary card, the novel never answers the question.

The Church Eugenides refers to here is an actual Catholic church in Grosse Point, Michigan. The grotto is an area filled with candles that devout believers light as part of their prayers. The girls create their own shrine to remember Cecilia, once again taking over their mother's religious custom and making it their own. This is like the Virgin Mary cards; they were knowledgeable about Catholicism but gave it their own meaning. Bonnie was a believer, but it didn't keep her from committing what traditional Catholics like her mother would consider a mortal sin.