The Secret History & Feminism
The Secret History & Feminism
By Evie Marshall
“There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty—unless she is wed to something more meaningful—is always superficial.”
Donna Tartt’s novel The Secret History largely focuses on human existence as performance. Ironically, though, her communication of such matters has been coined as performative by some, a clear reflection of the exact concepts she comments on.
The book as a whole is a commentary on hedonism, the philosophy where pleasure—in the sense of the satisfaction of desires—is the ultimate priority, and it is morally acceptable to achieve this at all and any costs. To the characters of the work, beauty falls under that hedonistic definition of pleasure and is the driving force of their actions. Tartt writes about beauty as an all-consuming force—horrific and destructive. As she once wrote, “Beauty is terror,” and Camilla—her only female main character—cannot escape the never-ending performance of beauty.
While the story itself is masterfully written and organized, the problems with Tartt’s work arise regarding this irony. Since its release in 1992, the main debate on behalf of her work stems from whether or not this is an intentional ironic commentary on aestheticism, as the plot revolves around the dangerous effects of romanticisation.
Wherever Tartt stands on this, one thing is certain: her work reflects her own experience as a woman, as a performer. All her female characters, of which there are very few, are defined only by the men around them; they are either written as something pretty to look at and pine over or as less intelligent, disposable creatures, used mostly for comedic value. While Camilla represents the first of the two, Judy Poovey, a side character in the story, is a brilliant example of the latter.
In Tartt’s work, women are simply counterparts to men, existing in servitude to them. Her sexualization, aestheticisation, and deplorable treatment of the female characters is a clear reminder of Margaret Atwood’s sentiments in A Robber Bride, in which she states that “inside every woman is a man watching a woman.” When Camilla isn’t in the presence of the male characters, it’s almost like she ceases to exist at all unless she is being fantasised about—usually imagined to be sprawling in bed like the subject of a Renaissance painting.
Camilla’s gender is written to be some elusive, fantastical thing. As if she’s not even a human at all, but some other-worldly being. She is compared to a deity on multiple occasions: perfect and untouchable, the ultimate object of desire. Every single man in her life desires her in some capacity, whether it’s lust or love. This, in the context of The Secret History, gives her immeasurable value. It makes her superior to all other women around her, but it also traps her. When one is confined to the restraints and expectations thrust upon them, they cannot exist outside of them, cannot be human. This is how Camilla is controlled by the men in her life, unable to stray from the character they have created for her.
Ultimately, whether Tartt’s female character makeup was an intentional writing choice or simply a reflection of the misogynistic views of beauty ingrained into women’s lives is entirely subjective. Without any confirmation or acknowledgment of these debates from Tartt, all one can do as a reader is take the sentiments she provides and continue to spread the word of their truths, fallacies, and significance, with hopes of creating a more united future for women.
