The concept of male gaze has been present
for a very long time, evident even before Laura Mulvey coined the term in her
famous essay Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema in 1975. It is present in literature, albeit literature
being an entirely different media. In The
Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, this theme seems to be very apparent.
Arguably, along with themes such as voyeurism and objectifications, The Virgin Suicides relies entirely on
the male gaze.
In this research, I study the effect of the
male gaze and how this specific way of viewing affects the girls in a way that
it shifts their function as a character. In order to achieve this, I attempt to
fuse my understanding of Vladimir Propp’s theory of dramatis personae and tries to read The Virgin Suicides as a fairytale—a form of literary work of which
the elements are easy to understand.
The findings attained from literature
reading and library research concludes that the way the neighborhood boys' view
of the Lisbon girls does affect their roles in the story. I argue that the
Lisbon girls were put on a very high pedestal since the very beginning;
therefore positions them as the fairytale princess. However, due to the nature
of the gaze applied in the work, there are possibilities that it may shift to
other characters.
