The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides and Towelhead by Alicia Erian - Essay Example

The Development of Sexuality within Teenage Girls as Related to The Virgin Suicides and Towelhead The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides and Towelhead by Alicia Erian are stories that are told from the perspective of the first person, Eugenides' book from the point of view of memory with Erian's book through a sense of the present day, although set in the recent past. The issue of the development of female sexuality within the teenage years is discussed from the point of view of the adolescent mind on the subject. Although told as a memory, the narrators within The Virgin Suicides relate the story as they remember it, from the perspective of their own adolescent experiences of watching the Lisbon girls. Jasira simply tells her story without deeper reflection, the events in her life-changing her without a deep awareness on her part of those changes. Both The Virgin Suicides and Towelhead are novels that explore the development of sexuality within teenage girls. The way in which language is used in the two novels differs in regard to the level of innocence in which they are written. While Towelhead seems to have an innate innocence, the first person narrative seemingly unaware of the sexuality of the prose, The Virgin Suicides describes much of the narrative in terms that are sexual in nature. Eugenides writes "By that time, the rain had found total release and we couldn't see across the street" (14). The suggestive language, although not directly referring to a sexual moment within the story, keeps the reader engaged in the overall sexual tone of the work. Towelhead, on the other hand, is written with the innocence and confusion that comes with being thirteen. While Jasira has a lack of understanding about what is happening to her, she is acutely aware that it is happening. She doesn't seem to understand where the boundaries exist between what is appropriate and what is exploitive. The book opens simply, with a sanitized version of the whole story of why she was sent to live with her father. She says "My mother's boyfriend got a crush on me, so she sent me to live with Daddy (Brian 1) However, she fails to mention at this point that there was inappropriate behavior. When she speaks of her mother's boyfriend shaving her, she discusses the incident without a sense of shame. She discusses that she dreams of him coming to save her, but never approaches the way she feels about him. Despite the narrative being directly from her point of view, the feelings of those around her are more clearly written than are her own feelings. This would seem typical of being thirteen and living within the boundaries of sexual changes that are experienced but are not understood. Jasira lives in a world that is giving her confused messages about her appearance, her physical feelings of sexuality, and the power that she is beginning to wield over men through the changes in her body. As an example, she discusses her changing bra size with Barry, her mother’s boyfriend, and she seems to both know and not know that it will have an effect on him. From her own point of view, she simply tells him and then waits for the fallout, never explaining why she told him or examining her own motivations. The narrative in The Virgin Suicides is done in first person plural without a clear sense of who is speaking. The story is told from the point of view of adult men who are relating the details of a strong memory from their childhood. While the clarity of who the narrator is does not exist, that it is the boys who were obsessed with the family in which all the girls committed suicide is clear. What they remember and how they collected their evidence is central to the development of the story. The voice of narration states "We've tried to arrange the photographs chronologically, though the passage of so many years has made it difficult" (Eugenides 3). There is no clear indication of who is telling the story, only that it is clear from one point of view at a time. Both stories discuss the mystery and realities associated with the events of girls getting their period for the first time. In Towelhead, Jasira relates the experiences of having to deal with her father and his own misunderstandings of how the event affects her. She discusses how embarrassing it is to have her father try to direct the experience through choosing what he thinks are the appropriate products and what medicine she can use to help her symptoms. The distance between her experience and his understanding of the experience is part of the void that exists between them. Her father never appears to ask or find out what she needs, but only comments on her mother’s experiences and how they affected him. The male perspective and its misunderstandings of the mysteries of the female changes during puberty is underscored within The Virgin Suicides. Once again the relationship of a father to his daughters' experiences is described, creating an understanding that the father has no point of reference from which to manage the care of his daughters during their periods. He buys their products and dispenses the aspirin to them and seems to be quite lost in the flood of female hormones that have taken over his household. An interesting note might be to notice that in Towelhead the use of aspirin is discussed for not being effective, while in The Virgin Suicides it is given as an appropriate painkiller for the cramps associated with menstruation. The narrator says "Those five days of each month were the worst for Mr. Lisbon, who had to dispense aspirin as though feeding the ducks and comfort crying jags that arose because a dog was killed on TV" (Eugenides 21). This may be indicative of the difference between a female writer on the subject and a male writer. Both books discuss a sense of drama that is associated with the experience of women during menstruation. This drama is discussed in reference to the point of view of both fathers. The male understanding of the experience of having a period when accompanied with the discomfort of having to face the development of their own daughters is expressed in a way that suggests that neither father can begin to empathize with the experience. Neither Jasira's father nor the father of the Lisbon girls show any signs of relating to their daughters for their needs but are focused more on how it affects them. Jasira's father is burdened with having to spend money for her comfort where Mr. Lisbon must cater to the needs of his daughters. The books do represent the distinction of the male point of view on female puberty in comparison to the female point of view on her own puberty. The Virgin Suicides is voyeuristic, the obsessive behaviors of the narrators emphasized by their reverence for strange symbols of the girls, blowing up imaginary worship for parts of their life that seem to be almost magical to them. In Towelhead, it is not the experiences of the narrator that seems mysterious and wondrous, but the reactions of those around her to her experiences. Her mother feels the need to tell her "No one wants to hear about your breasts, Jasira" (Iran 40), indicating that she has no sense of appropriateness yet about her body. She does not speak about her own beauty, but she speaks about the ways in which others notice her and the level of comfort that her awareness allows. As Jasira experiences her sexual release through looking at Playboy magazines, the event is told without any wonder or climactic build up that would suggest that something special has happened. Once again, while the story is told from her point of view, there seems to be no sense of inner reflection on the events of her life, but rather she seems to be floating through the experiences as if they are going on around her, but not directly happening to her. She has an emotional disconnection to the events as they happen, her own discoveries revealed through subtle changes in her exterior world as a result of the events. Jasira in Towelhead tells her story as it happens to her, the events confusing and without deeper explanation through her own relation of the events, but revealing deeper context from the participation of the reader with the narrative. The experiences of the reader enrich the story from the perspective of how the reader will interpret what has happened to her. A woman reading the story will understand the exploitation of the men around Jasira having experienced similar reactions and grown to more fully understand their implications. The male reader will recognize his own conflicting attractions to young girls and the effect that they have on them. A deep discussion of appropriateness and the hypocrisy with which society creates a public face in balance with private realities is discussed at length in both novels. Jasira's primary conflict is the reality of her experiences and the interpretation of the adults in her life of how she responds and acts according to those experiences. The Lisbon girls are oppressed within a world that is the creation of their mother. Their needs are not relevant to the propriety with which their behavior is burdened. This conflict presents itself in a desperation that ends with their deaths as they cannot reconcile what they are feeling with the sense of appropriateness that has been imposed upon them. In both novels, this sense that society has shielded itself from the realities of life and burdened young women with the concept of appropriate behavior that runs contrary to what they are experiencing becomes central to the conflicts within the stories. Female sexuality is a complicated process that leaves males without an understanding of the mystery, while females are left with the confusion of the intensity of female hormonal development. The results of this confusion can leave both the men and women feeling at a loss in reference to their own responses to the growth and maturation of young women. The inappropriate actions of the males around Jasira in Towelhead reveal the confusion that males often feel towards the growth of young women, their bodies reflecting a maturity that their minds have not yet captured. The relationship of the fathers to the daughters is symbolic of the tension between males and females in regard to female sexuality. Men simply cannot understand what women go through within the processes of sexual development. Because of the barrier that exists between fathers and daughters, this dynamic creates the most fertile ground for exploring these misunderstandings. Both The Virgin Suicides and Towelhead use this type of relationship to explore the sexual growth of young girls, discussing the conflicts that arise because of it. The novels are similar in how they address puberty and the ways in which young adolescents have yet to find a true grip on the realities of the world. Works Cited Iran, Alica. Towelhead. New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc, 2008. Print. Eugenides, Jeffrey. The Virgin Suicides. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1993. Print. Read More