can i talk about how i dont think henry was trying to kill charles in the traditional sense? can i talk about how he was probably just setting charles up to do it himself? the pills, lending his car to a clearly drunk charles after a fight, giving him MORE alcohol after he was in the hospital due to it???
a/n: I've been watching the show about Kennedys and listening to American Divorce by Frank Ocean, can you tell.
It was, by all accounts, an ordinary evening when you came down the stairs with your suitcase in your hand.
You didn’t set it by the door. You set it in the center of the hall, upright, like a sentence you had finally decided to punctuate. The leather was worn at the handles, a relic from college, from the years when your possessions could still be counted and carried. You had carried it into this house five years ago, and now you were carrying it out, and Henry was in the study with the lamp on, turning a page of something in Greek with a slowness that you knew meant he had heard you on the stairs, had heard the particular weight of your step, and was waiting.
He did not look up when you entered. His hand rested on the page, his index finger holding his place, and the light pooled on the desk in a way that made his hair look darker than it was. The room smelled of paper and the faint metallic trace of ink, and for a moment you felt the old and treacherous pull of it, the way this room had always seemed like the interior of his skull made physical, orderly and severe and beautiful, a place where you had been permitted to exist but never quite to belong.
“You’re going somewhere,” he said.
“I’m leaving, Henry.”
Now he looked up. He removed his glasses, folded them, set them on the desk. He did this with the same deliberation he brought to everything, as though objects deserved ceremony, as though the world was a liturgy only he could properly perform. His face without the glasses was younger, more vulnerable, and you knew he knew this, and you knew he had removed them on purpose.
“Leaving,” he repeated. The word hung in the air between you, unhurried and unclaimed. He put his glasses back on. “That’s an imprecise verb. It doesn’t specify duration or intent. You could be leaving for the evening. You could be leaving for a month. You could be arranging the syntax to alarm me.”
“I’m not trying to alarm you.” You stayed in the doorway, your arms crossed over your chest in a way that felt defensive even to you. “I’m trying to be clear. I want a divorce.”
He didn’t move. His hand still rested on the book, but his eyes were on you now, and they were the color of winter water, depthless and very still. You had loved those eyes once with a ferocity that frightened you, had felt seen by them in a way you had never felt seen before, because Henry didn’t look at people the way other people did. He looked at them like he was reading a text in a language he was still learning, patient and exacting and willing to be wrong. But you had grown tired of being read.
“No,” he said.
The word was so simple, so without drama or heat, that for a moment you thought you had misheard him. You waited for the qualification, the argument, the logical progression of clauses that would dismantle your position and reassemble it into something unrecognizable. Henry did not say no to things. Henry said let us examine the premise, let us trace the genealogy of this impulse, let us determine whether you actually believe what you think you believe. But he had said no, and he was still looking at you, and his hand had still not moved from the page.
“You can’t just say no to a divorce,” you said, and your voice came out harder than you intended, sharp at the edges where you had meant it to be steady. “That’s not how it works.”
“It isn’t how the legal apparatus works, I’m aware.” He leaned back in his chair, and the leather made a soft sound, a sigh of old material. “The state of Vermont doesn’t require mutual consent, and I have no illusions about my ability to prevent you from filing a petition. That’s not what I meant. I meant no, I will not agree to this. I will not participate in the fiction that this is a mutual decision arrived at through shared reasoning. You want to leave me. That is your prerogative. But a divorce is a severance, my dearest, a nullification, and I will not sign my name to the idea that our marriage has ceased to exist in any meaningful sense simply because you have decided to be unhappy.”
It was the my dearest that did it. He used it rarely, only in moments of particular gravity or particular intimacy, and he pronounced it carefully. It was the name he had first called you when you were barely twenty and trembling with the effort of seeming more sophisticated than you were, and he had never abbreviated it, never reduced it to my dear or dearie or any of the other diminutives. He had kept it whole, and he had kept you whole, or so he believed, and now you were telling him that the wholeness was a cage.
“It’s not that I’ve decided to be unhappy,” you said. “It’s not a decision. It’s not a rational thing, Henry, that’s the point. I’m not making an argument. I’m telling you how I feel.”
“Feelings are transient.” He stood now, and the movement was unhurried, unfolding, that tall frame rising out of the chair the way smoke rises, slow and inevitable. “Feelings are weather. I’ve never understood the modern insistence on treating them as though they were permanent geographical features. You feel restless. You feel constrained. These are real sensations, I don’t dispute that. But sensations pass. A marriage is not supposed to be subject to every shift in the emotional barometer. If it were, no marriage would last a decade.”
“You’re doing the thing,” you said, and your voice cracked a little, and you hated it. “You’re doing the thing where you take my feelings apart like a clock and show me all the pieces and then act surprised when I don’t feel better about being a clock that strikes true only twice a day.”
He stopped. He was standing in front of the desk now, one hand resting lightly on the edge of it, and there was something in his expression that you couldn’t read, a flicker that might have been hurt or might have been calculation. With Henry, the two had always been indistinguishable. He felt things deeply, you knew that, maybe more deeply than anyone you had ever met, but he metabolized emotion through the intellect the way other people metabolize food, and by the time it reached his face it had been processed into something else.
“I’m not trying to take you apart,” he said, and his voice was quieter now, the register lower. “I’m trying to understand. You’ve told me you want a divorce, but you haven’t told me why. You’ve told me you’re unhappy, but you haven’t told me what unhappiness means to you in this context. If I’m failing you in some specific way, I want to know it. If there’s something you need that I’m not providing, I want to provide it. But a divorce is a solution in search of a problem, and I can’t address a problem I don’t understand.”
You looked at him, and for a moment you saw him the way you had seen him when you were twenty-two and newly graduated and terrified of the world, saw the strange and luminous intelligence of him, the way he moved through life like a scholar in a library that happened to contain other people. He had married you because you had needed marrying. Your finances had been a ruin, your family a disaster you didn’t talk about, your writing ambitions fragile and unformed and easily crushed. He had offered you structure, stability, the shelter of his name and his bank account and his unwavering conviction that your work mattered. He had never asked you to be a wife in any traditional sense. He had never expected dinner on the table or a clean house or children you didn’t want. He had only expected you to exist in the same space, to come home eventually, to let him love you in the peculiar and exacting way that he loved.
And for a long time, that had been enough. It had been more than enough. It had been the first safety you had ever known.
But safety, you had learned slowly and then all at once, was not the same thing as freedom. And you had begun to suspect, in the small hours of the morning when Henry was asleep and the house was so quiet you could hear your own blood moving, that you had traded one kind of captivity for another, and that the second kind was lined in velvet and called itself love.
“You haven’t done anything wrong,” you said. “That’s the problem, Henry. There’s nothing to fix. There’s no argument I can make that you can counter. I just...I need to figure out who I am without you. I’ve never been without you. I went from my parents’ house to college to you, and I’ve never had a life that was just mine, and I’m twenty-seven years old and I don’t know what I would choose if I were choosing for myself alone. Do you understand that? Can you understand that?”
He was quiet for a long moment. Then he moved, crossing the room toward you with that particular gravity of his, and he stopped just in front of you, close enough that you could smell the faint clean scent of his soap, the papery smell of old books that always clung to his clothes. He didn’t touch you, but his hand lifted and hovered near your face, not quite landing, as though he were asking permission.
“You want to leave,” he said. “Then leave.”
You blinked. “What?”
“Leave. Travel. Take a year. Go to New York, go to Europe, go wherever it is you need to go to conduct this investigation into your own identity. I’m not stopping you. I’ve never stopped you from doing anything. You’ve been free to pursue your writing, free to come and go as you please, free to structure your days however you see fit. If that freedom hasn’t been sufficient, then take more. Take all of it. But a divorce...” He stopped, and for just a moment, the mask slipped, and you saw something raw underneath, something that looked almost like fear. “A divorce is a door that closes. I won’t close that door. I won’t close any door that leads to you.”
“Henry, that’s not fair. You can’t just keep the house and the marriage and the name and wait for me to come back like I’m on some kind of extended sabbatical from being your wife. That’s not how separation works.”
“Why not?” His head tilted slightly, and the lamplight caught the planes of his face, the high cheekbones, the serious mouth. “Why must separation follow a prescribed form? We’ve never been a prescribed sort of couple. We married for reasons that made sense to us and to no one else. We’ve lived in a way that makes sense to us and to no one else. Why should our separation be any different? You want space. I’m giving you space. You want to figure out who you are. I’m offering you the means to do that. The only thing I’m denying you is the symbolic finality of a legal document that would, in practical terms, change nothing about the arrangement I’m proposing.”
“It would change everything,” you said. “It would change the fact that I wouldn’t be married to you anymore.”
“And that’s what you want.” His voice was very even, but there was a tension in his jaw now, a muscle moving beneath the skin. “To not be married to me. Specifically and categorically. Not to be free, because you already are free, but to be free of me.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what you meant.” He turned away from you then, walked back toward the desk, and his shoulders were set in a line that you recognized, the line of him gathering himself, constructing the argument, building the fortress stone by stone. When he turned back, his face had recomposed itself into something calmer, almost gentle.
“Let me tell you what I think will happen, and then you can tell me I’m wrong. I think you’re restless, and I think restlessness feels to you like a moral failing, like evidence that you’ve made a mistake. I think you’ve been reading too many novels about women who leave, about self-actualization through departure, and you’ve convinced yourself that the only authentic life is one you build entirely alone. I think you’re bored, my dearest, and you’ve mistaken boredom for imprisonment because it’s easier to blame me than to admit that fulfillment is difficult and intermittent for everyone, regardless of their marital status.”
You stared at him. “That’s a very tidy theory.”
“It’s a theory. I’m open to correction.”
“You’re not. You’re never open to correction. You just listen and nod and then proceed to dismantle whatever I’ve said with that...that scalpel you have instead of a personality, and by the end I don’t even know what I believe anymore because you’ve made everything so clear that I can’t see my own thoughts.”
He flinched. It was small, barely perceptible, a flicker around the eyes, but you saw it, and you knew you had wounded him. The scalpel instead of a personality. You had meant it to wound. You had wanted him to feel some fraction of what you felt, which was a constant low-grade erosion, a sense that the person you had been when you met him had been slowly planed away into something smoother and smaller and more manageable. He had never meant to do that. You knew he had never meant to. But intention was not the same thing as effect, and you were tired of being managed.
“I see,” he said. His voice had gone very quiet, almost toneless, the way it did when he was concentrating on not showing emotion. “So it’s not the marriage you object to. It’s me. It’s the fundamental architecture of my mind. That’s not something I can change, my dearest. I would if I could. I would be someone simpler and warmer and less analytical, someone who could give you the kind of love that doesn’t feel like an examination. But I can’t. This is what I am. I thought you knew that when you married me.”
“I did know that.” Your eyes were burning, and you refused to cry, refused to give him the satisfaction of tears even though Henry had never, not once, treated your tears as a weakness or a manipulation. He had always handled your emotions with the same careful reverence he brought to rare manuscripts, as though they were precious and fragile and worth preserving. That was part of the problem. He was so careful with you. He was so careful, and you were suffocating. “I knew what you were. I just didn’t know what it would feel like to live inside it for years. I didn’t know that I would start to disappear.”
“You haven’t disappeared.” He moved toward you again, and this time he did touch you, his hand landing on your shoulder. “You’re the most present person I’ve ever met. You fill every room you enter. When you’re not here, the house feels empty in a way that has nothing to do with physical space. You’ve published two novels. You have readers who write you letters. You have a life that is entirely your own, and I’ve done nothing but support it. How have you disappeared?”
“Because none of that feels like mine.” The words came out before you could stop them, raw and unpolished, the kind of emotional confession you usually avoided because Henry would take it and turn it over and hold it up to the light until it didn’t belong to you anymore. “Because everything I’ve done, I’ve done knowing you were here. Knowing you were reading it, or going to read it. Knowing you had an opinion. I don’t know what my writing sounds like without your voice in my head. I don’t know what I sound like. I don’t know who I am when I’m not being reflected back at me through your eyes, and I can’t live my whole life as a reflection, Henry. I can’t.”
He was silent. His hand still rested on your shoulder, and you could feel the warmth of it through your blouse, the slight pressure of his fingers. He was not gripping you, not holding you in place, but he was not letting go either.
“Then go,” he said again. “Go and find out. Go to a city where I’m not, and write in a room where I’ll never read what you’ve written, and meet people who don’t know my name. Do all of it. Take whatever time you need. But don’t ask me to sign a piece of paper that says you’re never coming back. I won’t do it. I would rather you leave me and stay married than divorce me and stay gone.”
“That’s irrational.”
“Yes,” he said, and his voice broke, just slightly, a hairline fracture in the marble facade. “It is. I’m aware of that. I’m aware that I’m not behaving logically. I’m aware that the reasonable response to a spouse asking for a divorce is to negotiate terms and part amicably and wish each other well. But I am not reasonable about you. I have never been reasonable about you. I have loved you unreasonably for seven years, and I don’t know how to stop, and I don’t want to learn.”
You closed your eyes. Behind your lids, you could see the life he was offering you, the strange and generous and unsettling life of a woman who was married but absent, who came and went like weather, who was free to do anything except sever the tie completely. It was not what you wanted. You wanted a clean break, a new beginning, the chance to build a self that owed nothing to anyone. But looking at him now, at the desperate composure of his face, at the way his hand trembled almost imperceptibly against your shoulder, you understood that a clean break was not something he was capable of giving you. He would let you go, but he would never let you disappear. He would keep the door open, the lamp lit, the space beside him in the bed cool and empty and waiting. He would wait forever if he had to, not because he was patient but because he was incapable of conceiving of an alternative.
A part of you, a small and shameful part, was relieved. Because leaving was terrifying, and leaving forever was more terrifying still, and Henry was offering you a way to leave without really leaving, to be gone and still belong somewhere, to have the freedom you craved and the anchor you resented in equal measure.
“I’m going to go,” you said, and your voice came out hoarse. “Tonight. I’m going to New York. I have a friend who can put me up for a while. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
“I know.” His hand dropped from your shoulder. He stepped back, giving you space, and the distance between you felt suddenly enormous, a chasm carved out of the quiet air of the study. “Take the car to the station. I’ll have someone pick it up tomorrow.”
“You’re not going to fight me?”
“I’ve been fighting you for the last half hour. I’m not going to physically prevent you from leaving, if that’s what you mean. I’m not a jailer, my dearest. I’m your husband. I’m the man who loves you. And I’m telling you that you can go wherever you need to go, and do whatever you need to do, and I will be here when you come back. Whether that’s in a month or a year or five years. This is your home. I am your home. I don’t know how to be anything else.”
You wanted to say something. You wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that a person couldn’t be a home, that home was supposed to be a place you chose and not a person you were tethered to. But the words wouldn’t come. They were caught somewhere in your throat, tangled up with the love you still felt for him despite everything, the love that was the whole problem, the love that had grown so large and so consuming that it had eaten all the other parts of you.
You turned and walked out of the study. Your suitcase was still in the hall, and you picked it up and carried it to the door. The night air hit your face when you opened it, cool and pine-scented, and you stood for a moment on the threshold, looking out at the dark road that led away from this house, away from this life, away from him.
Behind you, you heard his footsteps. He had followed you to the hall, and he was standing at the entrance to the study, watching you with those blue eyes that had seen so much of you, maybe all of you, maybe more of you than you had ever seen of yourself.
“You know where the station is,” he said. “Call when you arrive. Not for my sake. For yours. I’ll worry otherwise.”
You nodded without turning around. You couldn’t turn around. If you turned around, you would see his face, and if you saw his face, you would stay, and if you stayed, you would hate yourself, and if you hated yourself, you would eventually hate him too, and that was the one thing you could not bear.
You walked out into the dark, and you did not look back, and the door stayed open behind you for a long time, the light from the hall spilling out onto the gravel driveway like a path you could still choose to follow home.
I haven’t seen anyone comment on how many Bunny & Charles parallels there are in The Secret History…
Them both being the first ones to actively go against Henry— Bunny for the Battenkill murder and Charles for Bunny’s murder. Both for what we can assume are moral reasons, at least to an extent. While everyone claims that Bunny’s disagreement with the murder has nothing to do with the actual immorality of it all, it always appears that he does, especially with the whole scene where Julian says that Bunny’s been questioning him about Sin and Forgiveness, and that he thinks he’s going to go to church, when Bunny has stated to be one of if not the least religious out of the whole group.
Dare I compare the desperation and borderline insanity of Bunny and Charles towards the end (if we believe that the written note actually was from Bunny, because I’ve seen people argue it’s not and it’s actually a pretty convincing argument). Both of them thinking that Henry was going to kill them, both of them trying their hardest to live (Bunny being found with dirt under his nails because he was grabbing at everything while he fell; Charles trying to kill Henry).
Francis calling Charles an old friend just like how Charles (and Henry himself) described Bunny/Henry… okay… (pages 192, 62, and 457)
Also Camilla saying she knows Charles better than anyone just like how Henry says he knows Bunny better than anyone. (Pages 484 & 192)
Charles, after everything happens with Bunny and Camilla, bursting into rooms without knocking just like Bunny used to. (Pages 515 & 455)
Charles falling away from the intellectual/academic aesthetic they all have going on, the one that Bunny never fit, after everything happens. Especially on page 520 when he’s yelling at Henry…
Henry pointing out the he wouldn’t use the word “kidnap” when talking about Charles, just like he said the whole “I prefer to think of it as a redistribution of matter” when discussing Bunny.
At the end, Marion marrying Bunny’s brother (who looks just like him) and Francis marrying a blue-eyed blonde (just like Charles).
These are only the ones I can remember off the top of my head, but I find it very interesting!
Everytime someone says Bunny Corcoran would love AI an angel dies. The man who wrote his paper mulitple days early on metahemeralism and john donne? The man who relied fully on Henry to correct him if he was wrong because Henry knows everything? Why would he use AI when he has his whimsiful brain and a human walking encyclopedia at his disposal???
Not to mention Richard says himself Bunny is far too original for his own good hence his paper being almost incomprehensible to anyone but him…
Nooo don't think of Francis' character as only his sexuality (both meaning his queerness and just. him and sex) you're so sexy ahaaaa
Nooooooo please talk about his relationship with his mother and his relationship with substances and his mother being an addict and how he was raised and how he didn't seem to have a stable home when growing up (summers in Switzerland and winters in France or whatever it was) and how he was sent away to school and how yes his sexuality was important to who he was but talk to me about how he was a hypochondriac during the AIDs crisis while going out into the woods and having sex and talk to me about how he was lazy but still stubborn enough to work through and finish that French book by I don't remember their name right now and talk to me about how he would sing to himself and how he had this idea that he was worth more than people that often stems from wealth and talk to me about how he thought he had bad looks and talk to me about how he was scared and how he was mean and how he was human you're so sexy ahaaaaa
Francis with an overbearing mother he had to hide everything from. Francis watching her spiral into addiction and stealing his own fix every so often. Francis who was packed off from private school to private school based on his family's whims and never really felt at home in any of them. Francis who suffered from hypochondria during the AIDS crisis but couldn't go to anyone about it out of shame. Francis who procrastinates on homework Francis who wonders if he has any real friends Francis with expertly masked crippling anxiety Francis being raised as superior to anyone else wondering why he feels like such a mess all the time Francis with traits and issues and
any female born in greek mythology can't cook...all they know is magic potions, launch a thousand ships, defy aphrodite, be bisexual, weave the narrative & lie
janainaart
theartofmadeline
snowghoul
germansingergirl
