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.