I know this is very quick, but! Maybe some quick thoughts (cough analysis cough) about the parents and how the sisters cope by not going outside, especially how it seems they aren’t given time at all to process Cecilia’s death.
A theory I really like is that Cecilia’s second (successful) attempt could have been an accident, or even a murder. So I would like to hear your thoughts on that, too. >:3
putting this under the cut because it's kinda long lmao. i love tvs soooo sososo much
hcs in pink, analysis in regular font
my key thoughts about the period of time in between cecilia's death and the death of her sisters, especially the months the sisters spend locked inside their own home, can probably best be summarised as ideas of stagnation, escapism, and a slow rot.
there's a lot of emphasis put on the lisbon house itself throughout the book, whether it's portrayed as a prison or some sort of exclusive location only the lucky can enter. i think the house itself is sort of metonymic for the sisters themselves: the boys/narrators can see the polished outside, but not what is truly occuring within. in the end, we as readers and the narrators themselves get very few glimpses into the house, just as we get very few direct glimpses into the inner lives of the lisbon sisters. thus i think the imagery of progressive decay attacking the house is sort of symbolic of the decay of the lisbon sisters themselves as they are kept in a house that is rotting from the inside out.
the house is the sisters and the sisters are the house, if that makes sense. my thoughts about it are very visual and i always have this imagery of flesh literally merging with floorboards, mycelium networks reaching through walls and wriggling under dirty fingernails.
i think cecilia's room would probably be taken by the rot first. the window is constantly open thanks to her candle altar so i imagine bugs and rain would get swept in really easily, causing mold, infestations, etc.
as for the lisbons themselves, i think there would be a variety of different reactions.
i always imagine mrs. lisbon as somewhat stepford wife-ish and really trying to embody the ideal 1950s nuclear family. i feel like any reactions she had to cecilia's death would be sort of muted, pre-emptively shoved down and repressed. despite cecilia being her daughter, i do think that in the end, she values projecting a certain image to her community above all. that said, i do think she would experience maybe even greater levels of distress as she feels the cognitive dissonance between "oh my god my daughter just died" and "my daughter being a suicide is shameful and the tragedy of her death does not line up with my perception of how life should be." i do think she really feels torn, but in the end winds up trying to fix her image in the community as a form of coping, just trying to be normal. (idk if any of that made sense lol) based on that, i think during the confinement she imposes on her family she really tries to make everything appear normal but her mind is still in this sort of shock that she can't really act normal. she probably makes appointments to neighbours' tupperware parties and barbequeue cookouts but she doesn't ever show up. she announces that she's cooking roast chicken and lets it burn then lets the carcass rot in the oven. the neighbours themselves are too caught up themselves in helping her project that image of normalcy, so desperate to pretend that what's happening in the lisbon house isn't actually happening/as bad as it is that they probably just go along with it.
in particular i think this mental and emotional split is indicated in the book when two of the neighbourhood women go to visit mrs lisbon shortly after cecilia's first attempt. when the boys/narrators interview them about the visit years later, they give conflicting narratives: one that mrs lisbon was unwelcoming, hiding away the girls, and one that she seemed “normal.” in my opinion this really hints at how she reacts to the girls’ successive suicides: split between wanting to act like everything is normal, and trying to ‘protect’ her family by isolating. i think it's easy to villainise her as this authoritative, controlling and repressive figure, which she is, but you have to take in the added nuance that she is legitimately doing it because she thinks it's what will help her children.
mr lisbon i think tries similarly to act as normal as possible but is additionally stuck on loop. i feel like he would shut himself in a room everyday from 9 AM to 9 PM claiming he's correcting papers. obviously though he's lying. sometimes he just locks himself in the garage for hours claiming he needs to fix the boiler or the car or whatever he can invent. but he probably just sits there numb. lux sometimes comes down to the garage as well but she can't stand it for long and usually leaves after 30 minutes. (also i think listening to her dad absentmindedly talk about his car and his tools probably gave her the idea to kill herself through carbon monoxide poisoning but that's too angsty so i won't go there) both of the parents i think would try and project this image of normalcy which probably only aggravates the situation further. i don't think the daughters and the parents really talked about cecilia's death because they don't have that relationship of emotional trust built up that would enable them to discuss it in a healthy manner.
as for the lisbon sisters themselves, i think they all have vastly different methods of coping over their six-ish months of 'virtual house arrest.'
lux obviously exhibits hypersexual tendencies, self-destructively having sex with strangers on the roof of the house. i think initially her sisters were unaware of what was happening, until she fakes appendicitis to see if she's pregnant and that whole debacle. at that point they begin to realise how self-destructive she's gotten and have an intervention with her. only then does she begin to realise that she was groomed by trip and actually starts processing the trauma of cecilia's death + her grooming. what really convinces me of this is the note she sends via the neighbourhood boys, "Dear whoever, Tell Trip I’m over him. He’s a creep." to me this shows her romanticised view of trip is gone and she's realised that he is, indeed, a creep.
i think bonnie gets really quiet. she's always been more interested in stories than reality and i think given the incredibly isolated environment she's forced into she would probably wind up maladaptively daydreaming a lot of the time. she's probably the one who started ordering travel catalogues to the house to fuel her daydreams. her sisters are probably concerned about how quiet she gets but at the same time i think as time goes on they begin to indulge in similar patterns of maladaptive daydreaming. it's crucial to remember that by the time that they die, the sisters have lost all hope; i think avoiding reality through daydreaming really embodies their desire to escape that house, while the sisters' suicides embodies their lack of hope of escaping the house through alternate methods. over the course of the six-ish months the sisters are locked up, i think they would all progress from escapism (in various forms) to depression as they realised their unhealthy coping mechanisms couldn't save them, and finally suicide. while i think this was a broader phenomenon affecting all the sisters, i think bonnie would probably be the most affected. i honestly would not be surprised at all if she began developing psychosis-like symptoms or delusions related to her daydreams. personality wise i imagine her being somewhat similar to cecilia... maybe when she hung herself she didn't think she would actually die. "when she jumped, she probably thought she'd fly" <- do you see my vision
mary is pretty explicitly stated in the book to spend most of her confinement getting really into makeup and fashion, and i figure the confinement period would probably just be her preexisting interest in fashion/beauty accentuated to the maximum. however i think this would also lead to her becoming even more dysmorphic. in the book bonnie and lux are both described as becoming very thin, and i wouldn't be surprised if mary encouraged self-destructive eating disorders to her sisters as a way to meet the beauty standards she imposed on herself. i could equally see her sisters just copying her behaviour without her input. basically i think her confinement and grieving would, similarly to bonnie, lead her to turn inwards, but then like lux, externalise her pain in self-destructive ways (if that makes sense).
therese i think is probably the only one of the sisters that stayed somewhat 'normal.' we can see her making an effort to reach out for help over her ham radio, attempting to discuss her experience with others who have lost others to suicide. (you can tell i'm really normal about this because my url is from one of her intercepted ham radio conversations lol) i think out of all of the sisters, i think she's probably the one most likely to realise that there's something seriously wrong with their situation and try to get help. that said, i don't think she necessarily recognises it as abuse. i think her understanding is probably limited to 'someone in my family died, this is bad' while not necessarily having the ability to be actually angry at the adults around her because she's been raised to see adults as trustworthy. i think that, in her mind, the title of 'parent' absolves mrs lisbon of her behaviour and justifies it. even when lux is abused and grounded by trip (although i doubt she realises what's happening) she sees lux being grounded as the rational thing to do, fair punishment for her actions. what she doesn't expect is the rest of the sisters being punished as well. i think her faith in her parents, the adults around her and by extension society as a whole, gradually crumbles as their isolation continues. her suicide is the sign of her having finally given up on being saved, her illusion of 'trusted adults' vanishing as her parents continue to abuse her as no one cares. i think the boys' rare messages might even reinforce this for her, making her realise that even if she could get out of the house, the only world waiting for her is one that objectifies her and isn't willing to be anything more than superficial, seeing her as a prized possession rather than a traumatised young woman or even just a person.
---------------
now onto the next section of this ask: the circumstances of cecilia's death.
i'm prefacing all of this with the fact i haven't seen the film yet. i can't fully buy into the cecilia's suicide was murder theory because in the book everyone is explicitly stated to be in the basement when she jumps. that said, i could potentially see her suicide being an accident.
i actually think there's a fair amount of evidence supporting this in the book. in particular, there is a repetition of the number thirteen: cecilia is thirteen when she dies, mary dies thirteen months after her, etc. the number thirteen is also repeated at other seemingly unrelated points as well but i'm not going to list all of those. thirteen is a classic symbol of bad luck: is it possible that cecilia's death was simply a stroke of bad luck, falling out of a window?
while i could buy that cecilia's final death was an accident, i could certainly see her initial attempt being attempted murder. rather than the more obvious tool of the kitchen knife, why did she choose to use her father's razor? however i do think it's a bit flimsy. if someone else cut her arteries, why would she then climb into the bath with the laminated photo of the virgin mary? besides, her father's razor could have simply been the most accessible tool. mrs lisbon would surely notice a missing knife, and as seen from mary's secret hair wax stash, the girls weren't allowed to shave themselves. since she was known for taking long baths, it's reasonable that cecilia just grabbed what was right in front of her, mr lisbon's razor. that said, i do think murder/accident theories for her death are really interesting and it's possible that this is implied more firmly in the film.
cecilia's death to me is really interesting to me from a storytelling perspective as well. as mentioned by @cassiusbunny in this post (hope you don't mind the tag!), cecilia's alternate suicide attempts mimic ancient greco-roman methods of suicide. her interest in ancient greece and particularly rome is possibly what her friends interpreted as a crush on dominic palazzolo, an italian immigrant.
following her death, her sisters adopt similar behaviour that mimics ancient greco-roman tradition. bonnie could be argued to be taking the role of a vestal virgin, ensuring the sacrificial flames of ceel's candle altar stay lit; the girls altogether appear to form this unified being that is transcends to the heavens in their ritualised collective suicide. the way the sisters are locked up with little food could even be argued to mimic the death of famous mythological figures like antigone.
as a sidenote: i hc cecilia as transmasc in some direction and i find it interesting how her first attempt is more 'feminine,' while her second attempt is more 'masculine,' as mentioned by cassiusbunny.
not to sound like a crazy sjw but parents putting little girls in frilly dresses/lavish clothes and telling them not to run, climb, play in dirt, etc lest they ruin their outfits or somebody look up their skirts is one of the most direct ways we as a society teach girls that they are only ornamental and cut their childhoods short
I know this is very quick, but! Maybe some quick thoughts (cough analysis cough) about the parents and how the sisters cope by not going outside, especially how it seems they aren’t given time at all to process Cecilia’s death.
A theory I really like is that Cecilia’s second (successful) attempt could have been an accident, or even a murder. So I would like to hear your thoughts on that, too. >:3
putting this under the cut because it's kinda long lmao. i love tvs soooo sososo much
hcs in pink, analysis in regular font
my key thoughts about the period of time in between cecilia's death and the death of her sisters, especially the months the sisters spend locked inside their own home, can probably best be summarised as ideas of stagnation, escapism, and a slow rot.
there's a lot of emphasis put on the lisbon house itself throughout the book, whether it's portrayed as a prison or some sort of exclusive location only the lucky can enter. i think the house itself is sort of metonymic for the sisters themselves: the boys/narrators can see the polished outside, but not what is truly occuring within. in the end, we as readers and the narrators themselves get very few glimpses into the house, just as we get very few direct glimpses into the inner lives of the lisbon sisters. thus i think the imagery of progressive decay attacking the house is sort of symbolic of the decay of the lisbon sisters themselves as they are kept in a house that is rotting from the inside out.
the house is the sisters and the sisters are the house, if that makes sense. my thoughts about it are very visual and i always have this imagery of flesh literally merging with floorboards, mycelium networks reaching through walls and wriggling under dirty fingernails.
i think cecilia's room would probably be taken by the rot first. the window is constantly open thanks to her candle altar so i imagine bugs and rain would get swept in really easily, causing mold, infestations, etc.
as for the lisbons themselves, i think there would be a variety of different reactions.
i always imagine mrs. lisbon as somewhat stepford wife-ish and really trying to embody the ideal 1950s nuclear family. i feel like any reactions she had to cecilia's death would be sort of muted, pre-emptively shoved down and repressed. despite cecilia being her daughter, i do think that in the end, she values projecting a certain image to her community above all. that said, i do think she would experience maybe even greater levels of distress as she feels the cognitive dissonance between "oh my god my daughter just died" and "my daughter being a suicide is shameful and the tragedy of her death does not line up with my perception of how life should be." i do think she really feels torn, but in the end winds up trying to fix her image in the community as a form of coping, just trying to be normal. (idk if any of that made sense lol) based on that, i think during the confinement she imposes on her family she really tries to make everything appear normal but her mind is still in this sort of shock that she can't really act normal. she probably makes appointments to neighbours' tupperware parties and barbequeue cookouts but she doesn't ever show up. she announces that she's cooking roast chicken and lets it burn then lets the carcass rot in the oven. the neighbours themselves are too caught up themselves in helping her project that image of normalcy, so desperate to pretend that what's happening in the lisbon house isn't actually happening/as bad as it is that they probably just go along with it.
in particular i think this mental and emotional split is indicated in the book when two of the neighbourhood women go to visit mrs lisbon shortly after cecilia's first attempt. when the boys/narrators interview them about the visit years later, they give conflicting narratives: one that mrs lisbon was unwelcoming, hiding away the girls, and one that she seemed “normal.” in my opinion this really hints at how she reacts to the girls’ successive suicides: split between wanting to act like everything is normal, and trying to ‘protect’ her family by isolating. i think it's easy to villainise her as this authoritative, controlling and repressive figure, which she is, but you have to take in the added nuance that she is legitimately doing it because she thinks it's what will help her children.
mr lisbon i think tries similarly to act as normal as possible but is additionally stuck on loop. i feel like he would shut himself in a room everyday from 9 AM to 9 PM claiming he's correcting papers. obviously though he's lying. sometimes he just locks himself in the garage for hours claiming he needs to fix the boiler or the car or whatever he can invent. but he probably just sits there numb. lux sometimes comes down to the garage as well but she can't stand it for long and usually leaves after 30 minutes. (also i think listening to her dad absentmindedly talk about his car and his tools probably gave her the idea to kill herself through carbon monoxide poisoning but that's too angsty so i won't go there) both of the parents i think would try and project this image of normalcy which probably only aggravates the situation further. i don't think the daughters and the parents really talked about cecilia's death because they don't have that relationship of emotional trust built up that would enable them to discuss it in a healthy manner.
as for the lisbon sisters themselves, i think they all have vastly different methods of coping over their six-ish months of 'virtual house arrest.'
lux obviously exhibits hypersexual tendencies, self-destructively having sex with strangers on the roof of the house. i think initially her sisters were unaware of what was happening, until she fakes appendicitis to see if she's pregnant and that whole debacle. at that point they begin to realise how self-destructive she's gotten and have an intervention with her. only then does she begin to realise that she was groomed by trip and actually starts processing the trauma of cecilia's death + her grooming. what really convinces me of this is the note she sends via the neighbourhood boys, "Dear whoever, Tell Trip I’m over him. He’s a creep." to me this shows her romanticised view of trip is gone and she's realised that he is, indeed, a creep.
i think bonnie gets really quiet. she's always been more interested in stories than reality and i think given the incredibly isolated environment she's forced into she would probably wind up maladaptively daydreaming a lot of the time. she's probably the one who started ordering travel catalogues to the house to fuel her daydreams. her sisters are probably concerned about how quiet she gets but at the same time i think as time goes on they begin to indulge in similar patterns of maladaptive daydreaming. it's crucial to remember that by the time that they die, the sisters have lost all hope; i think avoiding reality through daydreaming really embodies their desire to escape that house, while the sisters' suicides embodies their lack of hope of escaping the house through alternate methods. over the course of the six-ish months the sisters are locked up, i think they would all progress from escapism (in various forms) to depression as they realised their unhealthy coping mechanisms couldn't save them, and finally suicide. while i think this was a broader phenomenon affecting all the sisters, i think bonnie would probably be the most affected. i honestly would not be surprised at all if she began developing psychosis-like symptoms or delusions related to her daydreams. personality wise i imagine her being somewhat similar to cecilia... maybe when she hung herself she didn't think she would actually die. "when she jumped, she probably thought she'd fly" <- do you see my vision
mary is pretty explicitly stated in the book to spend most of her confinement getting really into makeup and fashion, and i figure the confinement period would probably just be her preexisting interest in fashion/beauty accentuated to the maximum. however i think this would also lead to her becoming even more dysmorphic. in the book bonnie and lux are both described as becoming very thin, and i wouldn't be surprised if mary encouraged self-destructive eating disorders to her sisters as a way to meet the beauty standards she imposed on herself. i could equally see her sisters just copying her behaviour without her input. basically i think her confinement and grieving would, similarly to bonnie, lead her to turn inwards, but then like lux, externalise her pain in self-destructive ways (if that makes sense).
therese i think is probably the only one of the sisters that stayed somewhat 'normal.' we can see her making an effort to reach out for help over her ham radio, attempting to discuss her experience with others who have lost others to suicide. (you can tell i'm really normal about this because my url is from one of her intercepted ham radio conversations lol) i think out of all of the sisters, i think she's probably the one most likely to realise that there's something seriously wrong with their situation and try to get help. that said, i don't think she necessarily recognises it as abuse. i think her understanding is probably limited to 'someone in my family died, this is bad' while not necessarily having the ability to be actually angry at the adults around her because she's been raised to see adults as trustworthy. i think that, in her mind, the title of 'parent' absolves mrs lisbon of her behaviour and justifies it. even when lux is abused and grounded by trip (although i doubt she realises what's happening) she sees lux being grounded as the rational thing to do, fair punishment for her actions. what she doesn't expect is the rest of the sisters being punished as well. i think her faith in her parents, the adults around her and by extension society as a whole, gradually crumbles as their isolation continues. her suicide is the sign of her having finally given up on being saved, her illusion of 'trusted adults' vanishing as her parents continue to abuse her as no one cares. i think the boys' rare messages might even reinforce this for her, making her realise that even if she could get out of the house, the only world waiting for her is one that objectifies her and isn't willing to be anything more than superficial, seeing her as a prized possession rather than a traumatised young woman or even just a person.
---------------
now onto the next section of this ask: the circumstances of cecilia's death.
i'm prefacing all of this with the fact i haven't seen the film yet. i can't fully buy into the cecilia's suicide was murder theory because in the book everyone is explicitly stated to be in the basement when she jumps. that said, i could potentially see her suicide being an accident.
i actually think there's a fair amount of evidence supporting this in the book. in particular, there is a repetition of the number thirteen: cecilia is thirteen when she dies, mary dies thirteen months after her, etc. the number thirteen is also repeated at other seemingly unrelated points as well but i'm not going to list all of those. thirteen is a classic symbol of bad luck: is it possible that cecilia's death was simply a stroke of bad luck, falling out of a window?
while i could buy that cecilia's final death was an accident, i could certainly see her initial attempt being attempted murder. rather than the more obvious tool of the kitchen knife, why did she choose to use her father's razor? however i do think it's a bit flimsy. if someone else cut her arteries, why would she then climb into the bath with the laminated photo of the virgin mary? besides, her father's razor could have simply been the most accessible tool. mrs lisbon would surely notice a missing knife, and as seen from mary's secret hair wax stash, the girls weren't allowed to shave themselves. since she was known for taking long baths, it's reasonable that cecilia just grabbed what was right in front of her, mr lisbon's razor. that said, i do think murder/accident theories for her death are really interesting and it's possible that this is implied more firmly in the film.
cecilia's death to me is really interesting to me from a storytelling perspective as well. as mentioned by @cassiusbunny in this post (hope you don't mind the tag!), cecilia's alternate suicide attempts mimic ancient greco-roman methods of suicide. her interest in ancient greece and particularly rome is possibly what her friends interpreted as a crush on dominic palazzolo, an italian immigrant.
following her death, her sisters adopt similar behaviour that mimics ancient greco-roman tradition. bonnie could be argued to be taking the role of a vestal virgin, ensuring the sacrificial flames of ceel's candle altar stay lit; the girls altogether appear to form this unified being that is transcends to the heavens in their ritualised collective suicide. the way the sisters are locked up with little food could even be argued to mimic the death of famous mythological figures like antigone.
as a sidenote: i hc cecilia as transmasc in some direction and i find it interesting how her first attempt is more 'feminine,' while her second attempt is more 'masculine,' as mentioned by cassiusbunny.
"How had it happened that he was the one who was all alone? Why had they left him for Jackson to pick over and destroy? Why hadn't they fought harder for him? Why had he ruined it all for himself? Why had they let him? He wanted to devastate them; he wanted them to feel as inhuman as he did."
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