47 pages • 1 hour read
The Secret History
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Chapters 2-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary
Richard is anxious about dressing appropriately for lunch with Bunny. He borrows a silk jacket from a party-loving costume design student named Judy Poovey, who also tells him that she knows Bunny. She then relates an odd encounter at one of her parties, wherein she had a drunk altercation with Camilla that led one of her male friends to rise to her defense. Henry and Charles then violently defended Camilla, breaking the man’s collarbone and ribs. At the restaurant, Bunny warmly welcomes Richard and orders a lavish lunch with multiple courses and many alcoholic beverages. Over lunch, Bunny fills Richard in on the backgrounds of Julian’s students, expressing particular discomfort with the idea that Francis might be gay. After dinner, Bunny pretends that he accidentally left his wallet at home and attempts to stick Richard with the bill. When Richard truthfully explains that he is unable to pay, Bunny calls Henry, who arrives disgruntled, as Bunny has pulled this stunt many times.
The next day on campus, Charles and Camilla talk to Richard about his lunch with Bunny. Denying Richard’s observation that Henry and Bunny do not like each other, Camilla reflects that Henry’s seriousness balances Bunny’s frivolity. Charles and Camilla invite Richard over for dinner at their apartment, and Henry, Bunny, and Francis join them. Richard still feels a bit ill from the excessive alcohol at yesterday’s lunch and struggles to contribute to the conversation. He leaves early, believing he’s made a less-than-favorable impression. After these interactions, Richard begins to doubt his decision to pursue studies with Julian, and he arranges a meeting with him. While waiting outside Julian’s office, Richard covertly observes Henry having a strange conversation with Julian in which Henry asks, “Should I do what is necessary?” (71), and Julian replies that Henry should “only, ever do what is necessary” (71). Bewildered by what he’s seen, Richard leaves before he is spotted.
On Friday night, Camilla invites Richard to accompany their group on one of their regular weekend excursions to an old Victorian house in the country that is owned by Francis’s aunt. Richard quickly falls into a comfortable weekly routine consisting of classes in Julian’s office, once-a-week dinners at Charles and Camilla’s, and weekend getaways with the whole group at Francis’s aunt’s home. He spends almost all of his time with this intimate group of students, and his tastes and habits begin to meld with theirs. Richard’s pretense of being an aloof scholar from a wealthy Californian family is readily accepted. Only Henry sees through Richard’s performance, quietly asking him, “You’re not very happy where you’re from, are you?” (84). Richard is touched by Henry’s commiseration, and he develops a strong sense of loyalty toward Henry.
In his narrative, Richard begins to describe some of the subtle ways in which Bunny does not cohere with the classics group. In addition to being a poor student and a financial leech, Bunny is in a long-term codependent relationship with a girl named Marion, who dislikes Bunny’s friends and refuses to spend time with them. Richard hints that Marion resents their elevated tastes, whereas Bunny simply feigns elevated tastes in literature and art without any real understanding. Richard also slyly suggests that the classics group sees him as a kind of replacement for Bunny—someone whose aesthetics and ideas are more closely aligned with theirs. Meanwhile, the autumn unfolds in a series of beautiful, languorous days, broken by occasional events such as an accident wherein Camilla steps on glass and badly cuts her foot. During this accident, everyone in the group is overwhelmed and frightened until Henry takes charge and removes the glass himself. As the days pass, Richard begins to feel close to his classics colleagues and sees them as his friends. Charles even proposes the idea that Francis might purchase the Victorian house from his aunt so that they can all live there together after graduation. In retrospect, Richard wonders at his younger self’s inability to recognize certain red flags, for even then, he was sometimes left out of activities that the other five pursued together.
Chapter 3 Summary
Hampden College shuts down at the end of the fall term, and Richard must find a temporary living situation over winter break. While the other five students vacation at home or abroad, Richard finds lodging in a warehouse and experiences a hellish two weeks living there, during which he contracts pneumonia due to the bitter cold. When Henry returns home early from his vacation in Rome with Bunny, he rescues Richard from his illness and unsafe living situation, takes him to the hospital, then brings him to his own apartment and nurses him back to health. On the wall of Henry’s room, Richard notices an old photo from a 1945 issue of Life magazine featuring Julian with actress Vivien Leigh, famous for her role as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. Henry explains that Julian is connected with celebrities, politicians, and other elite figures.
Henry admits that his vacation with Bunny didn’t go well; he became exasperated with Bunny’s loud personality, so he left Bunny in Rome and paid for his apartment. Henry bemoans Bunny’s expensive tastes and irresponsible spending habits, telling Richard, “No matter what Bunny tells you to the contrary, he hasn’t a cent and neither does his father” (128). Henry also shows disdain for Bunny’s academic abilities and claims that he “has no business being in college” (129). Later, Bunny returns from the trip wearing a new Italian suit. He cheerfully gushes about the trip but he also cryptically accuses Henry of helping Richard merely because his “conscience [is] hurting [him]” (131). When Henry invents ways to escape from Bunny, it becomes clear to Richard that something happened in Rome between them to damage their relationship. That night, someone bangs on the door, but they do not answer. The next day, Francis comes to the apartment, and Richard overhears him and Henry arguing anxiously about some mysterious plans related to Bunny.
Chapters 2-3 Analysis
In this section of the novel, the transformative nature of Richard’s association with his much wealthier peers becomes more and more prominent as he continues to elaborate upon his pretenses of wealth, further developing the theme of False Identity as a Tool and a Trap. Given the loftier social element with which he is struggling to integrate, his self-consciousness and imposter syndrome around the other classics students cause them to favorably interpret his social awkwardness as a cold, mysterious aloofness—which makes him all the more desirable. Thus, his deliberate deception opens doors to social spaces that would otherwise block him out on the basis of his low economic status; upon achieving success in becoming a part of this new elite world, Richard grows more and more enamored of this lifestyle that far exceeds his means. However, he soon learns The Hidden Costs of Class Inequality when his masquerade lands him in several awkward situations, the first of which occurs when Bunny conveniently “forgets” his wallet after ordering an expensive meal and expects Richard to pick up the tab just like his other friends would. This incident also allows the author to set up a sharp contrast between Richard and Bunny, for although Bunny and Richard effectively play the same role—that of a lower-class student pretending to have access to wealth that doesn’t exist—Henry respects Richard’s relative independence just as much as he resents the incessant financial demands that Bunny makes on him. Henry’s appreciation of Richard’s true identity inspires a deep sense of loyalty in the protagonist, which Henry will later use to his advantage when planning Bunny’s murder. While Richard continues to model his tastes after his fellow classics students, assimilating into the world of their rituals and routines, he begins to subtly replace Bunny. Thus, Bunny’s status as an outlier within the group becomes increasingly clear, for in addition to the social issues that he causes his friends, he is revealed to be academically untalented, crass in his tastes, and a financial burden. Richard, on the other hand, suffers through a bitter winter in an unsafe warehouse rather than borrow money from his estranged family.
As the classics students begin to cohere into a more solid group, the exclusive nature of their association takes on an almost cult-like essence, for Julian’s exalted and mysterious aura combines with his affectations toward exclusivity to create a rarified social environment that the students believe themselves fortunate to inhabit. However, they hold an overly idealized view of their professor, and they remain unaware of his reasons for creating such a demanding social setting for his students and exacting promises that they will study only with him even amidst a university full of other academic opportunities. Chapters 2 and 3 also hint suggestively at the larger scope of Julian’s mysterious influence, by showing him pictured with old celebrities; the author uses these details to raise unspoken questions about Julian’s background and true motivations. Thus, an element of uncertainty is introduced into the plot even as the classics students commit more deeply to their academic course of action, which, combined with the recent unrest over Bunny’s disruptive behavior, introduces a variety of possibilities for future conflict, foreshadowing the difficulties to come.
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