I Need A Lobotomy

Hi no proper introductions needed

my thoughts are based upon channeling Apollo though fumes and my asks are always open for business /// my posts are in no way an analysis or even a proper research, just my notes

ao3-

characters

henry

Henry is not Nietzsche’s übermensch , henry in love , dirty Missouri past , the not so mysterious guy , having a secret relationship with henry , Henry’s manipulation (romantic) , Henry’s obsession with death , why is henry attractive?, Henry and camilla is Henry a gentleman; why homer? why camilla?

charles

the twins

camilla

why camilla enjoyed her relationship with charles, is she a misogynist (?) , the twins , Henry and Camilla

richie (dick)

Richard and his violence

thoughts

beauty is terror (?) , honest thoughts medieval beauty

commentary , bunny and Henry , tsh and employment hypocrisy in tsh

posts I love

charles, done by someone who shouldn’t be allowed to talk about his backside but gets him SO RIGHT, henry and immobility same dude, bunny the Madonna and the whore

Camilla was not the symbol of purity or order. She was messy, her life was messy, engaging with her was inherently complicated because of Charles. Richard romanticized her but Henry knew exactly what she was like. She trusted him implicitly and spent more time with him. This whole idea of Henry seeing Camilla as a piece of aesthetic as well not only cheapens their relationship, but is logically impossible. Henry was the one she trusted with all the fucked up things in her life, he witnessed everything firsthand. At worst, he might've thought she was fragile and needed protection. But that would actually be true about her in the situation itself, he respected Camilla's likeness with himself too much to think of her to be fragile and weak as a person. She's the one who was more like Henry and went down with him to check if Bunny was dead and potentially finish the job.

Henry used the fear he held over Charles from the murder to finally extract Camilla from him and his abuse because Charles was deranged in a very possessive and violent way about Camilla even before the whole thing went down. This could be seen as him considering himself the hero in the story. Less "The order being restored" and more "the Perseus rescue". He was in excellent spirits, sleeping with her in the hotel, etc. Also, he did act like a romantic towards Camilla. It negates his apparent rigid view you described.

I understand that the book is very aesthetic even if people deny falling for it with foam at their mouths and that it's tempting to find ancient Greek parallels in everything but sometimes it doesn't work. Or at least, your points in this case came off as weak and not applicable. I agree with what you said about Homer and Nolan's movie, and the father/dad parallels. But it doesn't go with "why did he love Camilla?". At least not in the way you explained it. Maybe it could work more with Julian and Henry from a slightly different angle.

That is not to say you can't post whatever you want. Tumblr is all about silly little rants. It's still better than the shitposts Secret History tags are filled with. Sorry if this ask is going to sound mean. I don't mean to be mean, I just found the post funny and confusing and I love discussions.

I like discussions too and while I do think of this ask a substantive critique, that doesn’t take away the fact it’s wrapped in unnecessarily abrasive rhetoric.

However you do have offered enough in it to think about —and while I dont accept its conclusions let alone your tone— let’s humour this definitely not insulting ask of yours.

Your point is valid and based on the novel-yes.

Henry rescues Camilla, sleeps with her, spends money on her, and tries to free her from Charles.

I do not deny that their romantic relationship is canon. It is.

It is the conclusion we reach however where we disagree.

But why Homer?

And why Camilla?

.

Henry loves Homer but why? Yes he is a classics student but why not chose Thucydides for example with his gorgeous syntax? What is in Homer’s epics worth loving for Henry?

It’s a sentiment I never quite understood.

In school we studied Homer two years in a row first with iliad and odyssey followed by Helen (Euripides’s fanfiction on Homer) and yet the story has always felt emotionally sterile and mildly discomforting when it came to its relationships especially the Odysseus/Penelope love. I never understood it, I never felt the love that supposedly had Odysseus fight with gods and waves to return back to. And the same emotions I felt when it comes to Henry/Camilla.

Richard drunk, opening the wrong door

Francis and Charles:

i don’t really know enough about the topic to have any opinions of my own but i feel like it's a thorny and complex part of the book

the way I screamed when I saw this ask, sorry for taking SO long but I had to pass genetics and biology

I think the twins are one of the most interesting ways The Secret History plays with gender, but once again its not in a straightforward sense. As most themes in the book it’s filtered through terms of performance, expectation, and what happens when those structures start to slip.

They grow up in a very specific environment (Virginia, older guardians, traditional expectations). as identical siblings that were exposed to something uncomfortable: how arbitrary gender roles can be when two people begin from almost the same “template” and are then split into entirely different social categories. Camilla is expected to become a certain kind of woman (I like to think of the southern belle type in an ironic sense), Charles a certain kind of man. That division isn’t natural it’s imposed and in my opinion there is something “violating” in imposing an identity to anyone especially a child.

then they get to Hampden and while someone would assume it’d be their chance to explore their identity more freely, the removal of the previous rigid structure doesn’t give liberation but leaves confusion because patriarchy and sexism is so embedded in our culture it requires effort (and courage) to break free of it. so despite the distance they don’t exactly reject those roles, but they don’t fully embody them either. They move within them, distort them, sometimes even use them.

Camilla is especially interesting to me because she seems to occupy a very precise middle space. She isn’t overtly feminine in a way that would make her easy to dismiss (Marion), she doesn’t perform sexual liberation (Judy) but she’s not rejecting femininity either. She’s composed, elegant, and difficult to pin down—intellectually present but never loud about it, desired but not easily objectified. It gives her a kind of quiet authority, but it’s also a very legible form of femininity. She doesn’t step outside the system as much as she finds a way to exist within it “on her own terms” or rather terms which allow her to respect her “female” self.

Charles, on the other hand, destabilises masculinity more visibly—he’s volatile, dependent, emotionally uncontained.

And I think that’s where their dynamic becomes “thorny.” Their codependency creates a space where those roles don’t hold in the same way anymore. The usual hierarchy between masculine and feminine starts to blur and collapse, and what replaces it isn’t freedom.

to me , I believe Camilla even enjoyed in some subconscious level that dynamic, because it’s control and power her gender isn’t “supposed” to have over the other gender which was supposed to be “above” her