the virgin suicides

There is no discussion of how they feel or what they want out of life; there is only the descending order - grandmother, mother, daughters - with the back yard outside under rain, and the dead vegetable garden.

Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

I cannot say with any sort of certainty that I have interpreted this quote as the author intended, but I have at the very least tailored it to my own experiences and to my own outlook as a woman in this family. Yes, we are all individual women, but at some point the melancholy of our family history swallows me as it did the other women, and I cannot see each of us as a separate entity, but instead a sort of collective heartbreak, a longing and loss, a history and future of failed relationships, of betrayal and mistrust and hesitance. It is something that, like folklore, has been just as generational and has achieved the supernatural qualities of destiny.

-Monique