The Secret History

Published in 1992, The Secret History is the debut novel of Pulitzer Prize– and Andrew Carnegie Medal–winning author Donna Tartt, whose other notable books include The Little Friend (2002) and The Goldfinch (2013). The novel follows the lives of six classics students at Hampden College in Vermont: Henry Winter; Francis Abernathy; Edmund Corcoran, who is primarily known as “Bunny”;  Camilla and Charles Macaulay, who are twins; and Richard Papen, who acts as the novel’s narrator. All six students study Greek—and a majority of their other subjects—under the charismatic Professor Julian Morrow, a mysterious, wealthy Classics professor who is deeply passionate about his field and who instills a peculiar aesthetic within his students that ultimately leads them on a disastrous path to deception and murder. As the narrator of The Secret History, Richard Papen recounts the series of events that lead to the students’ collective downfall.

This guide refers to the 2004 Vintage Books (Penguin Random House) First Vintage Contemporaries edition.

Content Warning: Both this guide and its source text contain detailed descriptions of and references to violence, incest, murder, suicide, and alcohol addiction.

Plot Summary

As the novel opens, Richard recounts the events that led him to overcome his lower-class upbringing and gain access to the prestigious Hampden College, where he convinces the classics professor, Julian Morrow, to allow him to join his exclusive group of students. Of those other students, Bunny is an affable middle-class student who has pretensions of wealth and struggles academically. Although Bunny’s family was once wealthy, the money is now gone, and his family has failed to adjust to their less-than-illustrious social status. Bunny desperately tries to pretend that his family is still wealthy, but his friends see through his pretense and are annoyed by it. Henry Winter comes from St. Louis, where his family set him up with a trust fund. He is handsome, highly intelligent, and secretive. Another trust-fund student, Francis Abernathy, is gay. He is currently navigating a complex relationship with his mother, whose addictive personality and new husband give him cause for grief—especially as her new husband is so close to his own age. Camilla and Charles Macaulay are a pair of fraternal twins who engage in an incestuous relationship. They are orphans who previously lived with their great aunt in Virginia. Camilla has a caring personality and Charles develops an alcohol addiction. Richard himself is from a working-class family in inland California. He is pursuing Greek studies because he does not feel comfortable with any other subject matter. He comes to Vermont to escape his hometown and attempts to conceal his humble roots from both Julian and his fellow classics students.

All of the students, but especially Henry, get heavily involved in learning about Greek culture and history, including the myths, legends, and language. They are so devoted to their studies that Henry, Camilla, Charles, and Frances decide to perform a bacchanal—a ceremony to connect with Dionysus, the god of wine and debauchery. Traditionally, Greek bacchanals erupted in wild displays of violence as participants attempted to “lose control completely” (42). To identify with the Greeks, the students attempt—on several occasions—to lose control of their bodies and enter an altered mental state. Eventually, they succeed, but in the process, they brutally murder a farmer on his land.

Bunny finds out about the murder and decides to blackmail the others. The friendships that knit the six students together at the beginning of The Secret History begin to unravel and turn into animosities. In a quest to continue to belong, Richard becomes deeply involved with Henry, Francis, and the twins. In response to Bunny’s threats, Henry decides that he has to be taken out of the picture. He plans to kill Bunny and make it look like an accident. Henry’s plan succeeds, but the investigation following Bunny’s disappearance takes a steep emotional toll on the entire group. Charles, for example, struggles with alcohol addiction and exhibits increasingly irrational behavior. One evening, Charles confronts Henry and threatens to shoot him, believing that Henry is responsible for the disintegration of their lives. In the ensuing struggle, Richard is shot in the stomach. Ultimately, Henry seizes control of the gun, and, in a dramatic gesture designed to reflect Julian’s peculiar aesthetic ideals of mingling death with beauty, takes his own life.

After Henry’s death, Richard returns to California. Francis ends up in New York, where he recovers from his own suicide attempt. The twins, Charles and Camilla, are separated both by distance and the emotional barriers that now exist between them. Professor Julian Morrow cancels his Greek Studies program and moves overseas, coldly removing himself from responsibility for his teachings. This work of psychological fiction explores the ways beauty and aesthetics, myth and meaning-making, and—ultimately—friendship can fuel dangerous and violent obsessions. In The Secret History, friendship is—ironically—the strengthening bond that enables these students to commit violent acts.