Plural First-Person Narration in Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides

Jeffrey Eugenides's use of the plural first-person narrator in The Virgin Suicides offers distance from emotion in what could have been a very sentimental story. As apparent in the title, this work deals with the heavily emotional topic of suicide, specifically those of the five Lisbon sisters. However, to separate the dark and possibly overly dramatic feelings from the situation, Eugenides places the reader amongst a group of horny teenage boys obsessed with the sisters instead of within the troubled sisters themselves. By doing this, neither the narrators nor the reader understand the reasons behind the tragedies.

Distance in this novel is furthered by the boys' tendencies to morph the Lisbon sisters into one entity, and a mysterious one at that. In fact, the reader is only given specific physical details about each girl when the boys are invited into the Lisbons' house for a party. However, this individuality is brief as this encounter is early in the novel, and the boys go back to talking about the girls as one again. It is not until their deaths that the sisters are distinguished from each other. Each girl has her own way of suicide: Cecilia jumps; Bonnie hangs herself; Mary sticks her head in the over; Therese overdoses, and Lux breathes in carbon monoxide. Only at the beginning and end of the novel is the reader reminded that there are five individuals, five deaths.

Eugenides further avoids sentimentality by juxtaposing reality with assumption. All the information given about the girls is either assumed by the boys or patched together from a variety of sources. The reader is never certain whether what is being told is fact, and this doubt prevents the reader from fully connecting with the girls. For example, after a dramatic dialogue between the girls and the Parks Department as they try to save a tree in their backyard, the reader is told that the conversation may not have even occurred.

A distance from emotion is furthered by the scientific method the boys take to understand the Lisbon girls. They collect artifacts, such as family photos and Cecilia's diary, as if they were building a museum collection. The boys are transformed into curators of the Lisbon sister exhibit. The reader can almost feel the glass separating him/her from the girls' possessions. The plural narrator tells the reader how to interpret the artifacts, therefore not allowing the reader to experience them. By using the plural first-person narration, Eugenides invokes a scientific and emotionless approach to understanding the Lisbon girls and their tragic ends.

While the plural narrator keeps the novel from being dramatic, the distance makes it hard to connect with anyone in the novel. The girls are such a mysterious group that it makes it hard for the reader to even care about their deaths. The boys also are not described enough to allow the reader feel their excitement or grief. In the end, Eugenides's distance from emotion may leave a gap too wide for the reader to cross, leaving him/her on the opposite side, wondering what the point is.