The Secret History: The Price of Fitting In

Richard Papen, Camilla Macauley, and Edmund “Bunny” Corcoran all battle against obstacles to group belonging in Donna Tartt’s The Secret History: Richard’s social difference, Camilla’s gendered objectification, and Bunny’s rejection of the group’s sinister undertones. In their compulsive endeavor to recreate antiquity through the Bacchanal, the classic students participate in a ritual that alienates them instead of elevating them.

Thus, each character creates a false self: Richard creates a privileged and wealthy identity, Camilla turns into a desired object rather than a unique person, and Bunny, who defies expectations, becomes the scapegoat.

In their frenzied attempts to work, they feel misplaced and open. Once necessary to their presence, their fantasies eventually yield to them, revealing belonging as a messy and deadly power.

The want to work becomes devastating in The Secret History. In classical myth, this obsessive necessity to bypass destruction shows the deception directed to reconcile the novel’s rigid class hierarchy. The protagonists in the book modify reality to meet their goals, only to be caught in illusion and fall from grace, much like Pentheus in The Bacchae or Oedipus in Oedipus Rex suffers for attempting to impose order or unearth hidden truths.

The book is set in 1983. Papen enrolls in the prestigious ancient Greek department at Hampden College in Vermont, where he is taught by Professor Julian Morrow. Richard conceals his working-class upbringing to blend in with his five affluent and eccentric classmates: Henry, Bunny, Francis, and the twins Charles and Camilla. He gradually becomes enmeshed in their clandestine society, especially after they admit to unintentionally murdering a farmer during a Dionysian ceremony.

After learning their secret, Bunny starts blackmailing them and becomes more unpredictable. The group plots his murder out of fear of being discovered, forcing him down a cliff. The crime weakens their relationship even if they avoid suspicion. Guilt, self-destruction, and paranoia take hold, Charles develops alcoholism, Francis has anxiety, and Camilla starts seeing Henry. Henry commits suicide as a result of the tension, further dividing the group.

Richard is the only one to graduate, but he is still troubled by his history, loves Camilla, and dreams about Henry. His sad quest for transcendence and belonging will always be a part of him.

Throughout the book, Richard’s struggle with class is linked to his desire to fit in. To be accepted into the exclusive group of classicists, he creates a fantasy of an affluent upbringing. However, his sense of belonging is a mirage, as his lower-class upbringing remains an insurmountable obstacle despite his best attempts.

Almost by chance, he was introduced to classical studies; he enrolled in a Greek class not because he was passionate about it but because it let him take Mondays off. The Bacchanal, which represents the pinnacle of transcendence for the classicists later in the book, contrasts sharply with this commonplace and practical rationale.

Based on the Roman celebration of Dionysus, the Bacchanal symbolizes the group’s intention to transcend social norms and lose themselves in a mythological past. However, financial stability still drives Richard more than intellectual or spiritual fulfillment. Thinking that “doctors make much money,” he first enrolls in Greek to complete a humanities requirement while pursuing a medical degree.

In contrast to the other classicists who aspire to write, study, and withdraw to Francis’s rural house, Richard’s goals are influenced by financial necessity. Bunny is the only other character who could have to work, but even his professional route is presented as a familial duty rather than a necessity for financial gain. The fact that Richard is unable to escape the realities of class and survival emphasizes his essential uniqueness from the others.

However, Richard’s wish to fit in does not ensure that he will blend in with the classicists. His lower-class upbringing stays an unmovable wall, and Julian’s cold snobbery broadens the aperture. When Julian abruptly leaves Hampden College, Richard is compelled to face the prospect that he might be spending for a degree he will never finish. His rich classmates, covered by their “trust funds, allowances, and dividend checks,” are indifferent.

Richard is oblivious to the repercussions of his decisions because of his fixation with the classical world. He creates a fantasy that only falls tragically when he discovers it was never his to claim, much like tragic figures in Greek mythology who strive for an impossible ideal. His story is equal to that of Phaethon, Helios’s son, who attempts to use his father’s chariot but falls and tumbles. Richard finishes up with frivolity but disillusionment, indicating his search for approval is costly and senseless.

Another character set by the image is Camilla. In contrast to the other classicists, Camilla is not an intellectual equal determined by the men in her life rather than by her own free will. Those who are attracted to her act destructively: Richard becomes her voyeur, Charles her abuser, and Henry her defender.

She still depends on Henry for financial support because he covers the cost of her stay at the Albemarle, which she could never manage alone. However, Camilla never aggressively challenges this dependence, and when Francis and Richard bring it up, they entirely blame Henry and exonerate her.

Camilla’s lack of agency reflects the way classical heroines are influenced by men’s aspirations rather than their goals. Camilla’s identity is shaped by the viewpoints of those who own or pursue her, much like Helen of Troy, who is contested but rarely given her own voice. She depends on Henry out of necessity rather than love or free will because her abuser fears him, and he is the most secure alternative for her life.

Camilla depends on Henry for everything, including her cigarettes, in the same way the classicists rely on family riches to sustain their idealized lives. Her inaction draws attention to the negative aspects of classical idealization when women are reduced to symbols and ensnared in the myths surrounding them instead of active participants.

In his foremost class with Julian, Richard compares Camilla to Athena, the goddess of war and wisdom from Iliad. Nevertheless, her solo tactic in actual debates is to rely on Henry, which damages any share of academic autonomy. It differentiates her from the classicists, who positively appreciate cleverness. Camilla aligns better with the Gothic model than Athena’s strategic intellect.

Although the damsel role is not unique to Gothic literature, it is often associated with the themes of “eroticized female vulnerability” and the “decay of social order,” leading to the dissolution of the classicist group. Because of her conformity to Gothic tropes, Camilla is an anti-classical figure who exists in stark contrast to her peers’ world; she is not just lacking; she lives in a narrative framework that contradicts the classical ideals the others attempt to uphold; she is an outsider in their manufactured world.

Although Camilla may have some authority because she is the object of desire, her relationships indicate differently. Her relationship with Charles is very instructive. She points at his cheek, but he converts it into a “greedy” kiss. Seeing Charles’s hands gliding over her “chin, neck, and throat” further emphasizes this unnerving relationship.

Given Henry’s intimidating demeanor, it is reasonable to assume that Camilla’s autonomy in this relationship is likewise constrained. Later, Francis and Richard surmise that Camilla is having an affair with Henry. In these partnerships, women is infantilized, reliant, and reduced to her “sex alone,” not an equal partner.

Perhaps the most objectifying of all is Richard’s view of Camilla, focusing on her beauty, especially her face and eyes, and comparing her to Athena not for her wisdom but for her “physical allure.” This intertextual reference is important because, in this way, Camilla functions as a similar warning in the novel, a symbol of “destructive, lust-driven conflict” that is disregarded. Their class discussions discuss the “terror of beauty,” but Richard ignores this, seeing only Camilla’s beauty.

According to Mikaella Clements, Richard views Camilla as an “insubstantial ghost” in the end. She never really fits in with him, even though she is his purported love interest; he does not see past the surface, and she is not his intellectual equal.

Camilla and Richard are outsiders in the group, but Camilla continues to be an oddity while Richard makes a name for himself by imitating the others. His portrayals of her serve to further this division, yet his reaction to her beauty is violent. His desire to “strangle her,” among other sinister urges, reveals a disturbing undercurrent to his obsession.

In a book fixated on “classical intellectualism,” Camilla is a physical character. She is not an outsider; even the one person who professes to love her views her as a “tragic figure,” reducing her to the status of an abused child rather than an equal.

The Secret History is a book about friendship, but behind the surface lies a far harsher reality, an illusion that fades with proximity. Richard is an intruder even though he is a member of the patriarchal order in the book. Because of his lower-class background, his participation in the group is not only unstable but also “poisonous,” a friendship destined to end in suicide. The need for stability prevents him from maintaining the fantasy that the others live with such ease. Richard can only ever see their world from the outside, a fragile fiction based on privilege.

Camilla is also an exception. The reason for her expulsion is “not what she does, but for what she is.” She cannot hide her femininity and conform to the aloof, cerebral ideal that unites the others. Richard views her as a “fantasy, a ghost of beauty rather than a person,” but this idealization just serves to further isolate her and undermine her remaining agency.

She is stripped down by the men around her, but to a “child, a fragile object, something to be possessed but never understood.” Her very existence is an unspoken defiance, a quiet, spectral presence that lingers long after their fragile illusion shatters, and she becomes something else entirely in their world of ancient grandeur and towering intellect: the Gothic victim, the one who does not belong, the shadow at the edges of their golden dream.

References

• Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge.
• Clements, M. (2021). The Terror of Beauty in The Secret History. The Rumpus.
• Euripides. (1996). The Bacchae (J. Davie, Trans.). Penguin Classics. (Original work published ca. 405 BCE)
• Hargreaves, T. (2018). A Deadly Education: Class, Privilege, and Exclusion in The Secret History. Journal of Literary Studies, 34(2), 112-130.
• McHale, B. (2014). The Postmodern Gothic in Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. Gothic Studies, 16(1), 45-60.
• Sophocles. (2004). Oedipus Rex (R. Fagles, Trans.). Penguin Classics. (Original work published ca. 429 BCE)
• Tartt, D. (1992). The Secret History. Alfred A. Knopf.