The body was found at sunrise. Or was it sunset? Maybe sometime between the two. It was her lover who found her. Her mother. The milkman. The boy down the street. A tourist. She had washed up on the shore of the river. Bled out in the bathtub. Hung from the basement rafter. Gone into a pill-induced slumber. No one could have predicted this.
Everyone saw it coming. Whoever she was, she had an entire life ahead of her. A marriage. She was The town reels, the family mourns. Black is the color of the hour, unless it was white. As the news spreads, everyone asks the same question. There are dead girls running through my dreams. They have been there for as long as I can remember, perhaps my whole life. Their names and faces are always shifting, growing as I find more of them. Some fade with time, forgotten by even my subconscious, the last thing binding them to me.
In the mass of white fabric and silky hair, there are six constants. The Lisbons of The Virgin Suicides and Ophelia from Hamlet are the peak of a cultural obsession with suicidal young women.
They belong to a trope, the tired storyline of a girl who goes mad and dies, often over a man. We turn our cheeks at these stories, dismissing them as morbid, while also consuming them with a vigor. Female insanity and death were reimagined as something sensual, potent, easy to project onto, and, crucially, aesthetically appealing. Knowing that these girls will not grow older, they became relics of youth, as if they were dolls preserved in resin. This makes them no less compelling, no less enticing.
Part of their charm is due to the utter lack of characterization. The Lisbons and Ophelia have little definitive character, existing only as vessels for the audience to pour their hopes and fears into.
