The Secret History is Donna Tartt’s 1992 debut novel. It’s about classics students at a small, eccentric, private college in Vermont in the 80s. It’s heavily based on Donna’s own experience attending a small, eccentric, private college in Vermont in the 80s.
In 2019, an article by Lili Anolik came out interviewing classmates from around that time, and it turns out it was even more based on real life than most people knew. The big takeaway I had from that article, though, is that Donna Tartt seems more than a little autoandrophilic, and her college boyfriend Paul McGloin seems to have been kinda into it too.
TODD O’NEAL: Paul and Donna weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend. They were boyfriend and boy. She had a uniform. Black loafers, khaki pants—boys’ pants, not girls’—J. Press–type button-down, necktie, blue blazer with brass buttons, and hair in this funky little asexual bob. She looked like she came straight out of an English university. She and Paul were like Oxonian homosexuals or something. I once asked him, “What kind of relationship do you have?” And he said, “Well, that’s very funny, because she wants me to call her ‘my lad.’ ”
DONNA TARTT, LETTER TO JONATHAN LETHEM, DATED JANUARY 24, 1983 (DURING WINTER BREAK): I am now in Washington with The Man [Paul McGloin]. We have a nice little apartment in an old townhouse near Capitol Hill and all is well. . . . The raciest thing that’s happened to us was when we overheard a museum guard in the National Gallery mutter, “More faggots” as we walked into the room. (I was wearing a baggy sweater and trousers, no makeup, and my customary shapeless gray tweed coat. Perhaps I did look like a boy. . . .) It pleased Paul no end.
Esquire, “The Secret Oral History of Bennington: The 1980s’ Most Decadent College” (2019)
One thing to note is that Paul is the student of Claude (the eccentric classics professor who’s the model for Julian in the book). Paul is learning, in his classes, about male homosexuality from a romanticized Greco-Roman angle.
MAURA SPIEGEL: My understanding was that his classes were about being homosexual, and how to do it with grandeur and history and beauty.
Esquire, “The Secret Oral History of Bennington: The 1980s’ Most Decadent College” (2019)
This isn’t the same as the romanticized male/male ship in fanfic, but it’s not completely unlike it either. In both cases, people are drawing upon a trope male/male relationships as grand
Lili Anolik continued the investigation in the podcast Once Upon a Time… at Bennington College, looking more extensively into everything. The anonymous Student X (class of 82′ and friend of Paul) says:
Student X, interviewed now: And then this other thing—I don’t know why this filtered down, why anyone knew this—but just that she somehow, like, liked to have sex like a young boy? Like, I don’t even know what that means.
Except from Student X’s diary after she questioned Paul about the relationship: … [Paul] is in love with a “delightful creature,” a girl who looks like a little boy, whose sexuality seems to be that she wants to be treated like a homosexual man.
Once Upon a Time… at Bennington College, episode “Mississippi Chippy”
This streak appears, in a much more watered down form, in her book too. The Secret History has this background current of male homoerotic tension that’s so familiar to me from fanfic that I didn’t bat an eye at it upon reading the book, but which, upon reflection, is not actually ubiquitous to all female writers—just many. A brief romantic rundown of The Secret History: the friend group has 5 boys and 1 girl. At least half of the boys have a thing for that one girl, but they also have a lot of erotic tension with each other, namely between Richard, Charles, and Francis. Henry doesn’t, but it’s suggested that he may have an erastes/eromenos thing going on with their professor.
Ok, so Donna Tartt has an autoandrophilic streak. What of it?
Well… nothing. That’s sort of the point. This was the 80s. There was no one to tell Donna she could actually be gay if she wanted, no one to sell her medical treatments. The worst you can say of it is that it’s maybe disrespectful to fetishize male/male relationships this way, but compared to what’s going on today, that seems pretty mild. Donna’s not overstepping boundaries or imposing on actual gay men here. She’s got a straight boyfriend who’s happy to do this with her.
This is an example of how this same urge can play out in a different setting. It can play out fine. It doesn’t have to be like it is today.
Mo Essays 