Isolation In The Virgin Suicides
Isolation
Isolation is prevalent in all three texts. In The Virgin Suicides, Mrs. Lisbon believes she is protecting her daughters from the dangers of the world by isolating them from the dangers of civilisation. However, the real dangers are in the home as the Lisbon girls seem to become mentally unstable with the lack of normality and human interaction outside of their own family. Keith Whilite states that “Cecilia’s suicide may be the first indicator that something is unstable in the Lisbon house” (6). This instability is clearly portrayed through the character of Lux, who “A few weeks after Mrs. Lisbon shut the house in maximum-security isolation, the sightings of Lux making love on the roof began” (Eugenides 136). As it has been discussed, …show more content…
However, she is trapped and isolated in the town of East Village. According to Steffler, “the novel’s narrative records the desertion of the adolescent by the family and community. Nomi ends up being shunned by what is essentially an absence—the political and religious people, forces, and institutions that have already vanished from her life. She is doubly isolated, first by the town’s gradual withdrawal and then by the church’s abrupt shunning, which is redundant in the case of her relationship with East Village but does have repercussions for her father, Ray, and thus for her” (126). It is clear that even after she graduates high school, Nomi is expected to work in the chicken factory and get married to a local boy, further tying her to the town. Her enclosure to East Village is further emphasised as she dreams of moving to East Village, New York to hang out with the musician Lou Reed (Toews 179). However, in this part of her life story, which is demonstrated through the novel being a school assignment, she is tied to East Village and the Mennonite religion. This is solidified by her father, Ray as he leaves town and gives her the family home. However, there is a positive outlook to Nomi’s enclosure as it gives her fresh start in East Village to try and make the town that she wanted to escape from a proper
Isolation is prevalent in all three texts. In The Virgin Suicides, Mrs. Lisbon believes she is protecting her daughters from the dangers of the world by isolating them from the dangers of civilisation. However, the real dangers are in the home as the Lisbon girls seem to become mentally unstable with the lack of normality and human interaction outside of their own family. Keith Whilite states that “Cecilia’s suicide may be the first indicator that something is unstable in the Lisbon house” (6). This instability is clearly portrayed through the character of Lux, who “A few weeks after Mrs. Lisbon shut the house in maximum-security isolation, the sightings of Lux making love on the roof began” (Eugenides 136). As it has been discussed, …show more content…
However, she is trapped and isolated in the town of East Village. According to Steffler, “the novel’s narrative records the desertion of the adolescent by the family and community. Nomi ends up being shunned by what is essentially an absence—the political and religious people, forces, and institutions that have already vanished from her life. She is doubly isolated, first by the town’s gradual withdrawal and then by the church’s abrupt shunning, which is redundant in the case of her relationship with East Village but does have repercussions for her father, Ray, and thus for her” (126). It is clear that even after she graduates high school, Nomi is expected to work in the chicken factory and get married to a local boy, further tying her to the town. Her enclosure to East Village is further emphasised as she dreams of moving to East Village, New York to hang out with the musician Lou Reed (Toews 179). However, in this part of her life story, which is demonstrated through the novel being a school assignment, she is tied to East Village and the Mennonite religion. This is solidified by her father, Ray as he leaves town and gives her the family home. However, there is a positive outlook to Nomi’s enclosure as it gives her fresh start in East Village to try and make the town that she wanted to escape from a proper