The Virgin Suicides

by

Jeffrey Eugenides

Cecilia Lisbon Character Analysis

Cecilia is the youngest Lisbon sister. At 13, she’s considered odd by her sisters and neighbors alike, largely because of her unique fashion sense. No matter where she goes, she wears a vintage wedding dress that she cut off at the knees—a strange style choice that underscores her status as something of an outsider. However, the neighborhood boys seem just as interested in Cecilia as they do in her older sisters, and the fact that she’s the hardest sister to understand only adds a sense of mystery and drama to her eventual suicide. Paul Baldino is the person who finds Cecilia after her first suicide attempt, since he sneaks into the Lisbon house via an underground passageway in the hopes of spying on one of the sisters in the shower. What he finds, though, is Cecilia lying in bloody bathwater after having cut her wrists. When the paramedics arrive, they find a laminated Virgin Mary card clutched in her hands—something that surprises Mr. Lisbon, though he (like everyone else) is unable to make sense of the card’s significance. Cecilia ultimately survives this suicide attempt, but she doesn’t live long. During a party that her parents throw (because the hospital psychiatrist advised them to let her have a more active social life), Cecilia goes upstairs and jumps to her death from the second floor, impaling herself on a fence post below.

Cecilia Lisbon Quotes in The Virgin Suicides

The The Virgin Suicides quotes below are all either spoken by Cecilia Lisbon or refer to Cecilia Lisbon. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Obsession, Gossip, and Scandal Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

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.”

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon (speaker)
Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:

The paneled walls gleamed, and for the first few seconds the Lisbon girls were only a patch of glare like a congregation of angels. Then, however, our eyes got used to the light and informed us of something we had never realized: the Lisbon girls were all different people. Instead of five replicas with the same blond hair and puffy cheeks we saw that they were distinct beings, their personalities beginning to transform their faces and reroute their expressions.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon, Lux Lisbon, Bonnie Lisbon, Mary Lisbon, Therese Lisbon
Page Number: 23
Explanation and Analysis:

Mr. Lisbon kept trying to lift her off, gently, but even in our ignorance we knew it was hopeless and that despite Cecilia’s open eyes and the way her mouth kept contracting like that of a fish on a stringer it was just nerves and she had succeeded, on the second try, in hurling herself out of the world.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon, Mr. Lisbon
Page Number: 28
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

No one else on our street was aware of what had happened. The identical lawns down the block were empty. Someone was barbecuing somewhere. Behind Joe Larson’s house we could hear a birdie being batted back and forth, endlessly, by the two greatest badminton players in the world.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon
Page Number: 30
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

[…] they said nothing, and our parents said nothing, so that we sensed how ancient they were, how accustomed to trauma, depressions, and wars. We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the world they really believed in, and that for all their caretaking and bitching about crabgrass they didn’t give a damn about lawns.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon (speaker)
Page Number: 52
Explanation and Analysis:

We waited to see what would happen with the leaves. For two weeks they had been falling, covering lawns, because in those days we still had trees. Now, in autumn, only a few leaves make swan dives from the tops of remaining elms, and most leaves drop four feet from saplings held up by stakes, runt replacements the city has planted to console us with the vision of what our street will look like in a hundred years. No one is sure what kind of trees these new trees are. The man from the Parks Department said only that they had been selected for their “hardiness against the Dutch elm beetle.”

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon (speaker)
Related Symbols: Elm Trees and the Lisbon House
Page Number: 87
Explanation and Analysis:

Meanwhile, a local television show focused on the subject of teenage suicide, inviting two girls and one boy to explain their reasons for attempting it. We listened to them, but it was clear they’d received too much therapy to know the truth. Their answers sounded rehearsed, relying on concepts of self-esteem and other words clumsy on their tongues.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon (speaker)
Page Number: 93
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

As it circulated in the next few months, this theory convinced many people because it simplified things. Already Cecilia’s suicide had assumed in retrospect the stature of a long-prophesied event. Nobody thought it shocking anymore, and accepting it as First Cause removed any need for further explanation. […] Her suicide, from this perspective, was seen as a kind of disease infecting those close at hand.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon, Lux Lisbon, Dr. Hornicker
Page Number: 153
Explanation and Analysis:

We climbed up to the tree house the way we always had, stepping in the knothole, then on the nailed board, then on two bent nails, before grasping the frayed rope and pulling ourselves through the trapdoor. We were so much bigger now we could barely squeeze through, and once we were inside, the plywood floor sagged under our weight. The oblong window we’d cut with a handsaw years ago still looked onto the front of the Lisbon house. Next to it were rusty tacks. We didn’t remember putting them up, but there they were, dim from time and weather so that all we could make out were the phosphorescent outlines of the girls’ bodies, each a different glowing letter of an unknown alphabet.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon, Lux Lisbon, Bonnie Lisbon, Mary Lisbon, Therese Lisbon
Related Symbols: Elm Trees and the Lisbon House
Page Number: 196-197
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Virgin Suicides LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Virgin Suicides PDF

Cecilia Lisbon Quotes in The Virgin Suicides

The The Virgin Suicides quotes below are all either spoken by Cecilia Lisbon or refer to Cecilia Lisbon. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Obsession, Gossip, and Scandal Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

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.”

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon (speaker)
Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:

The paneled walls gleamed, and for the first few seconds the Lisbon girls were only a patch of glare like a congregation of angels. Then, however, our eyes got used to the light and informed us of something we had never realized: the Lisbon girls were all different people. Instead of five replicas with the same blond hair and puffy cheeks we saw that they were distinct beings, their personalities beginning to transform their faces and reroute their expressions.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon, Lux Lisbon, Bonnie Lisbon, Mary Lisbon, Therese Lisbon
Page Number: 23
Explanation and Analysis:

Mr. Lisbon kept trying to lift her off, gently, but even in our ignorance we knew it was hopeless and that despite Cecilia’s open eyes and the way her mouth kept contracting like that of a fish on a stringer it was just nerves and she had succeeded, on the second try, in hurling herself out of the world.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon, Mr. Lisbon
Page Number: 28
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

No one else on our street was aware of what had happened. The identical lawns down the block were empty. Someone was barbecuing somewhere. Behind Joe Larson’s house we could hear a birdie being batted back and forth, endlessly, by the two greatest badminton players in the world.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon
Page Number: 30
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

[…] they said nothing, and our parents said nothing, so that we sensed how ancient they were, how accustomed to trauma, depressions, and wars. We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the world they really believed in, and that for all their caretaking and bitching about crabgrass they didn’t give a damn about lawns.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon (speaker)
Page Number: 52
Explanation and Analysis:

We waited to see what would happen with the leaves. For two weeks they had been falling, covering lawns, because in those days we still had trees. Now, in autumn, only a few leaves make swan dives from the tops of remaining elms, and most leaves drop four feet from saplings held up by stakes, runt replacements the city has planted to console us with the vision of what our street will look like in a hundred years. No one is sure what kind of trees these new trees are. The man from the Parks Department said only that they had been selected for their “hardiness against the Dutch elm beetle.”

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon (speaker)
Related Symbols: Elm Trees and the Lisbon House
Page Number: 87
Explanation and Analysis:

Meanwhile, a local television show focused on the subject of teenage suicide, inviting two girls and one boy to explain their reasons for attempting it. We listened to them, but it was clear they’d received too much therapy to know the truth. Their answers sounded rehearsed, relying on concepts of self-esteem and other words clumsy on their tongues.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon (speaker)
Page Number: 93
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

As it circulated in the next few months, this theory convinced many people because it simplified things. Already Cecilia’s suicide had assumed in retrospect the stature of a long-prophesied event. Nobody thought it shocking anymore, and accepting it as First Cause removed any need for further explanation. […] Her suicide, from this perspective, was seen as a kind of disease infecting those close at hand.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon, Lux Lisbon, Dr. Hornicker
Page Number: 153
Explanation and Analysis:

We climbed up to the tree house the way we always had, stepping in the knothole, then on the nailed board, then on two bent nails, before grasping the frayed rope and pulling ourselves through the trapdoor. We were so much bigger now we could barely squeeze through, and once we were inside, the plywood floor sagged under our weight. The oblong window we’d cut with a handsaw years ago still looked onto the front of the Lisbon house. Next to it were rusty tacks. We didn’t remember putting them up, but there they were, dim from time and weather so that all we could make out were the phosphorescent outlines of the girls’ bodies, each a different glowing letter of an unknown alphabet.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Cecilia Lisbon, Lux Lisbon, Bonnie Lisbon, Mary Lisbon, Therese Lisbon
Related Symbols: Elm Trees and the Lisbon House
Page Number: 196-197
Explanation and Analysis: