The display and function of suburban images in Jeffrey Eugenides' "The Virgin Suicides" (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Paderborn (English Language and Literature Studies / American History), 15 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: It seems that America’s economic and technological progress has not succeeded in bringing about the “good society”, the notion of the happy, single-family house neighborhood. A higher standard of living has somehow failed to result in a better quality of life.
Suburban living is an originally American model of planned, mass-produced housing, which appeared after World War II and has increased drastically and globally ever since. Suburbanites, the inhabitants of Suburbia, have been the object of cynical mockery for people from cities, who criticize the predictability and conformity of this form of housing and therefore living.
Most recently the film American Beauty (1999) has created the image of suburban life as a deceiving paradise, where the mental health and happiness of the inhabitants are sacrificed for the outward tidiness and a pretentious normalcy of the environment. In my paper I will focus on this relation and how it is presented in Eugenides´ first novel. The central event in his debut is the suicide of five sisters in an affluent midwestern suburb, which remains an inexplicable mystery to the narrator and the community.