sorry if you've already spoken about this but i was wondering what thoughts you had regarding the twins and gender. it is one of my favourite aspects of their characters
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
so the twins aren’t really about escaping gender, and not entirely about embodying it either. they are proof how deeply those roles are ingrained, and how even when you try to move around them, you’re just negotiating with the same structure not break free from it.
