How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Chucking her under her chin, he said, "What are you doing here, honey? You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets."
And it was then Cecilia gave orally what was to be her only form of suicide note, and a useless one at that, because she was going to live: "Obviously, Doctor," she said, "you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl." (1.7-8)
The doctor seems to associate suffering with adulthood, as though teenagers and children were immune to it. He approaches Cecilia's difficulties with humor, while Cecilia takes her suffering terribly seriously. Her message about adolescence is that it's synonymous with suffering. Is Cecilia's suffering typical?
Quote #2
"She was in deep denial," Dr. Hornicker told us later. "She was obviously not sleeping—a textbook symptom of depression—and was pretending that her problem, and by association her sister Cecilia's problem, was of no real consequence." (4.51)
Dr. Hornicker wants to explain the Lisbon sisters' actions as a result of mental illness, and associates Lux's insomnia with depression. Lux tries to minimize her problems; obviously she can't possibly feel that Cecilia's suicide was not a big deal, and she's not in such great shape herself. She's been promiscuous, isn't sleeping, is on permanent house arrest. Something is obviously very wrong. Why didn't Dr. Hornicker push a little harder?
Quote #3
At night the cries of cats making love or fighting, their caterwauling in the dark, told us that the world was pure emotion, flung back and forth among its creatures, the agony of the one-eyed Siamese no different from that of the Lisbon girls, and even the trees plunged in feeling. (4.54)
In The Virgin Suicides, the girls' suffering is often described with sexual imagery. The cats' "caterwauling" is a sign of their desire to get it on. The "agony" is the need to find some love, and the Lisbon girls are just like the cats. Except they're not free to find other people to satisfy that need.
Quote #4
Our concern increased when we saw Bonnie visibly wasting away. (4.63)
The girls' suffering is emotional, not physical. They have a place to live (however creepy), food to eat (however non-nutritious), clothes to wear (however baggy and tattered). But Bonnie's wasting away is a visible, physical sign of her emotional distress. People sunk in grief or sadness don't take care of their health—they don't care—and eventually their health deteriorates. The mind/body connection in action.
Quote #5
"Twenty-one. Handsome. Beautiful on violin.
"How?"
"Bridge nearby. Swift current."
"How get over?"
"Never will." (4.72-76)
While we don't get many up-close descriptions of the girls' inner turmoil in the aftermath of Cecilia's death, this exchange between Therese and a stranger in Colombia over the ham radio (think of an early version of a Reddit thread) gives us a hint. Her question, how her radio buddy got over his brother's suicide, reveals that she's suffering, too. What's worse is the answer: he'll never get over it.
Quote #6
Technically, Mary survived for more than a month, though everyone felt otherwise. After that night, people spoke of the Lisbon girls in the past tense, and if they mentioned Mary at all it was with the veiled wish that she would hurry up and get it over with. (5.4)
This passage seems to describe the neighbors' reaction to the unimaginable suffering of the Lisbon family. They don't really want Mary dead, but they can't tolerate the situation any longer. The deaths have had a huge impact on the neighborhood as well as the family, and the narrator suggests that the entire neighborhood fell apart after the Lisbon tragedy.
Quote #7
From our viewpoint, the Lisbons' sadness was beyond comprehension, and when we saw them in those last days, we were amazed at anything they did. How could they actually sit down to eat? Or come out to the back porch in the evening to enjoy the breeze? How could Mrs. Lisbon, as she did one afternoon, stagger outside, and across her uncut lawn, to pick one of Mrs. Bates's snapdragons? (5.19)
After their family tragedy, the Lisbons' neighbors consider them to be the walking dead. The fact they can do the simplest things in the world, like sitting down to dinner or wanting to pick a flower, seems impossible to the narrators. What makes people go on after something like that? Obviously, suicide runs in the family, but Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon somehow keep on living even if they're just going through the motions.
Quote #8
"I was outside, having a smoke. It was about two in the morning. I heard the door open across the street and then they came out. The mother looked bombed. The husband sort of helped her in. And then they drove away. Fast. Got the hell out." (5.33)
Uncle Tucker is the last person on the street to see the Lisbons. They leave under cover of darkness, like criminals. Their humiliation exacerbates the suffering caused by their daughters' deaths. They must feel like total failures, and the silence of their neighbors only increases their pain. Maybe Mrs. Lisbon took to drinking to make it through the nights.
Quote #9
They made us participate in their own madness, because we couldn't help but retrace their steps, rethink their thoughts, and see that none of them led to us. We couldn't imagine the emptiness of a creature who put a razor to her wrists and opened her veins, the emptiness and the calm. And we had to smear our muzzles in their last traces, of mud marks on the floor, trunks kicked out from under them, we had to breathe forever the air of the rooms in which they killed themselves. (5.42)
The narrators' obsession with the Lisbon girls causes them intense suffering; every time they try to make sense of what happened, they have to relive those terrible moments. But they know that they'll never understand the depths of the sisters' pain.