Girl­hood and sex­u­al repres­sion in The Vir­gin Sui­cides and The Beguiled

Catholic school con­ser­vatism and sav­age grace com­bine in Sofia Coppola’s sixth fea­ture. Set in Vir­ginia dur­ing the Amer­i­can Civ­il War, The Beguiled sees injured union sol­dier John McBur­ney (Col­in Far­rell) lured into the gat­ed con­fines of an iso­lat­ed all-girls school. Run by Nicole Kidman’s stony head­mistress Miss Martha, the film also fea­tures Kirsten Dun­st as teacher Edwina and Elle Fan­ning in the role of Ali­cia, the eldest of the students.

Once behind the school’s impos­ing gate, John’s pres­ence strips away at the veneer of prud­ish con­ser­vatism to reveal a hid­den world of sex­u­al repres­sion. Frills and long white lace gowns make way for fever­ish, bodice-rip­ping melo­dra­ma. Then we catch a glimpse of a torn, blood-stained night dress. Ten­sions height­en with­in the house­hold, a fric­tion that sends its female res­i­dents reel­ing. The Beguiled offers an assertive explo­ration of sex­u­al pow­er. John’s pres­ence sets in motion a for­bid­den game of eroti­cised dom­i­nance, bring­ing to light gen­der pow­er strug­gles and cou­pled with intense rival­ries that bor­der on obses­sion, as the girls com­pete for male attention.

A sim­i­lar kind of obses­sion is explored in Coppola’s debut fea­ture from 1999, The Vir­gin Sui­cides, book­end­ing her fil­mog­ra­phy with inter­twin­ing themes of reli­gion, sex­u­al­i­ty and death. The young women of both films are caught in the fran­tic lim­bo between the inno­cence of child­hood asex­u­al­i­ty, and the female eroti­cism of adult­hood with the many sex­u­al plea­sures it has to offer. It’s this sense of being caught in the pur­ga­to­ry between youth and young wom­an­hood that weighs heav­i­ly on the Lis­bon sis­ters in The Vir­gin Sui­cides, much in the same way it does for the girls in The Beguiled.

Con­fined togeth­er in a house built on con­ser­v­a­tive foun­da­tions, just like the girls of Miss Martha’s board­ing school, the Lis­bon sis­ters are shel­tered from the out­side world. The begin­nings of their tran­si­tion from girl­hood to wom­an­hood arrive in awk­ward bursts of mut­ed pas­sion and feel­ing. Sex­u­al­i­ty hangs at an uneven bal­ance, a mis­un­der­stood enti­ty ready to tip into the realm of com­plete rejec­tion and sup­pres­sion, or lurch out of con­trol. No dat­ing, no make­up, no par­ties; such are the rules that gov­ern the Lis­bon house­hold, restrict­ing any form of exper­i­men­ta­tion, social­i­sa­tion, and above all sex­u­al expression.

Mrs Lis­bon (Kath­leen Turn­er) her­self rep­re­sents the social pres­sure the girls face to retain an image of vir­ginal puri­ty. Mean­while, in a soci­ety that fetishis­es teenage girls, the Lis­bon sis­ters are forced to com­pete with oppos­ing social pres­sures. Through the male gaze of the neigh­bour­hood boys, we wit­ness the objec­ti­fi­ca­tion of the girls. The Lis­bon sis­ters are reduced to the sum of their mys­te­ri­ous pos­ses­sions, analysed through the only last­ing evi­dence of their fem­i­nin­i­ty and female sexuality.

The boys come to sym­bol­ise the soci­etal expec­ta­tions that bom­bard the girls, putting them at the cen­tre of a social con­tra­dic­tion. The youngest sis­ter Cecilia’s (Han­nah Hall) first attempt­ed sui­cide sees her limp and dead-eyed in a tub. Blood swirls in the water. An image of the Vir­gin Mary falls from her lan­guid hands. This reli­gious imagery, used lat­er as the girls’ call­ing cards, presents the ulti­mate con­tra­dic­tion. The Vir­gin Mary is inno­cence and matu­ri­ty com­bined, a metaphor for the para­dox­i­cal expec­ta­tions the girls face.

The anachro­nis­tic sig­nif­i­cance of the wed­ding dress Cecil­ia wears to her death is a para­dox in and of itself, a sym­bol of puri­ty at the begin­ning of a reli­gious and roman­tic union, as well as sex­u­al con­sum­ma­tion and matu­ri­ty. Her death by defen­es­tra­tion is her final act of defi­ance, and proof of her cyn­i­cism at the impos­si­bil­i­ty of ful­fill­ing the expec­ta­tions of her par­ents and her peers.

For Lux (Kirsten Dun­st) the mys­tery of love is con­cealed from her by some­thing deep­er and pri­mal, more self-destruc­tive per­haps. The temp­ta­tion of sex­u­al­i­ty runs ram­pant for the sub­ur­ban teens of Grosse Pointe, Michi­gan. This is espe­cial­ly true for Lux. Her acts of rebel­lion, break­ing cur­few, and engag­ing in casu­al sex with strangers on the roof of her fam­i­ly home could also be seen as a form of female empowerment.

In any case, any per­ceived notions of Lux or her sis­ters’ inno­cence and sex­u­al repres­sion are pre­served in death. Ever-sleep­ing, they are sym­bols of female pas­siv­i­ty on which the boys may for­ev­er project their roman­tic and sex­u­al fan­tasies. That in death as in life the girls become a fetishised enig­ma is arguably their great­est tragedy.