“Not by a Jury of Our Peers”: The Roles of Privilege and Critique in Dark Academia

Introduction

Dark Academia may have become synonymous with tweed jackets, tortoiseshell glasses, and a recreational interest in classic literature in the past few years, but that wasn’t always what it meant. Before taking off during the COVID-19 pandemic as a popular aesthetic, dark academia was known to a pretentious few as a genre. Much like the aesthetic, dark academia has exponentially grown in popularity over recent years, but people still seem to lose sight of what sets the genre apart from simply being a novel about characters who dress in collared shirts and polished oxfords. 

As with any genre, dark academia novels are full of their own tropes and requirements. It’s argued that many classic novels such as Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray or even Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein act as the genesis of the genre, and while those certainly act as inspiration, modern dark academia seems to derive from a single source. Donna Tartt’s The Secret History acts as the genesis for the tropes most often seen in contemporary dark academia. The novel, published in 1992, follows Richard Papen, a transfer student at the elite Hampden College in Vermont where he and the five other classics majors delve well past their studies and into madness. Typically, the books shuffled into the genre follow the same formula that was laid out in Tartt’s novel: a secluded group of wealthy,incredibly privileged students pursuing a seemingly worthless degree end up in the middle of a murder mystery. 

At its core, the dark academia genre is about the convergence of violence with the pursuit of academic excellence. The violence, typically depicted as a murder, must be committed by the main group of characters and come as a result of the toxicity of the academic setting. It is not enough for the novel to simply be set at a school, the school must be the kind of place that encourages its students to compete against each other and cultivate an environment that places success over their livelihood or that of someone else. This is the dark part of academia that authors are attempting to shine a light on: the drive to be the perfect student at the expense of everything else. Tartt’s novel showcases this drive from the institution directly, with Julian, the Hellenistic studies professor expressly telling the group’s ringleader to, “do what is necessary,” a sentence which eventually leads to the group murdering two people (Tartt 71). The students in Tartt’s novel are not necessarily seeking a 4.0, but Julian’s direct approval and the feeling of being the most enlightened of their group.

This kind of commitment to academia then of course begs the question: what type of person would choose to immerse themselves in their studies to the point of losing their humanity? The answer can be found in the characters themselves. Novels in the dark academia genre typically focus on the wealthy, white, male, and vicious. According to authors of the genre, these are the kinds of people who have traditionally filled these esteemed institutions as both faculty and students and would place their own education above human life. This is because, above all else, the novel must be a critique of the type of people who may recognize themselves within the pages and the institutions that instruct, hire, and create them more so than any other kind of person. 

Many critiques of the genre and the subsequent aesthetic seem to miss this point by arguing for more diverse representation. It’s true, the genre is overwhelmingly white, male, and wealthy, but that is the point. By claiming that authors like Tartt simply ignore diversity when choosing their characters, critics show that they, too, fell for the same trappings that caught characters like Richard Papen in the first place. As Richard slowly falls in love with the exclusive world his privileged classmates show him, he begins to ignore all their red flags. In both the real world and the novels that reflect them, the wealthy, white, and male are at fault for these problems within academia. They not only fill the classrooms as students but return as professors, ready to poison the minds of the new generation. In showing them at their worst, authors like Tartt are directly criticizing them. If there’s no critique in the pages, “it ends up just as a reiteration of the status quo and ruling class power,” and misses the point (Elan). These students are not glamorous idols, they are victims and villains in one, doing to the main character what has already been done to them, and neither part should be glorified.

Without this understanding woven into its pages, a novel does not fulfill the main requirement of dark academia and should not be considered part of the genre. If the main purpose of these books is to critique the rich, white, and generally male ruling class, placing people of color or groups of non-men in the same formula erases what the inventors of the genre had originally conceptualized. The phenomenon of placing a more diverse cast in the same roles is hardly the answer as it turns a critical eye at a scenario that is not nearly as prevalent in the real world. Erasing the intentional critique inherent to the genre sends the message to diverse readers that entering this world of toxicity and privilege is still something to aspire to and signals to writers that this is where they should focus their efforts. This is especially problematic given that these more diverse characters are not received by audiences in the same way that their white male counterparts are. Much like in the real world, they are not given the same grace for their mistakes. The standards for success are higher and when the entire genre centers on the mistakes and crimes of the central characters, readers do not forgive them the same way. 

This can be seen directly in the reviews of these more diverse “dark academia” (or rather, campus thrillers as they should be called) books. A one-star review for Katie Zhao’s How We Fall Apart, a novel that follows the same formula but with a fully Asian American cast, critiques the novel on the belief that, “the characters themselves felt flat, built entirely on stereotypes…many asian american parents do push their children to succeed academically. However, every single character in this book lived this reality,” as if Zhao’s purpose in writing the novel wasn’t to critique that pattern (Lily). The characters don’t get the same leeway as their white counterparts, and neither it seems do the authors that create them. The same reviewer lauded Tartt’s characters and even has M.L. Rio’s novel, If We Were Villains, a novel in which the characters themselves acknowledge that they have been reduced to walking stereotypes, marked as to read. Many more follow the same pattern of praising novels with White characters and abhorring those centering people of color. 

This essay intends to examine Dark Academia as a genre through the lens of race, class, and gender, and why pulling its focus away from those who never consider their own as a contributing factor in their lives does the founders of the genre a disservice.

Adhering to the Formula

If simply changing the race of the main character is enough to sway readers’ opinions, one must examine the rest of the dark academia formula and why it works. The formula readers know and love begins with Tartt and The Secret History. In an interview with Today, Tartt cited her inspirations as including famous classics such as the Aeneid and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but her novel blazed its own path. Following a group of highly intelligent and privileged classics students at the prestigious and fictional Hampden College, The Secret History details a slow loss of humanity for the sake of academic excellence that would soon become a blueprint for authors to follow. There are five key aspects that make a dark academia novel. These aspects appear, of course, in Tartt’s novel, and those that followed: If We Were Villains by M.L Rio, and A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee. Rio’s novel follows Oliver Marks and his classmates as they pursue careers in classical Shakespearean performance, ultimately leading to Marks’ imprisonment for a classmate’s gruesome murder. Lee’s novel, the only one of the three to be marketed as Young Adult, follows Felicity Morrow as her elite group of high school seniors begin mysteriously dying in ways that relate directly to her research of the famous witches who died in their shared boarding house. 

The first of these aspects is the outsider main character. Tartt’s narrator, Richard Papen, is a new transfer student at his university. He has to fight his way into Greek classes and even once inside is surrounded by students much wealthier than him. Rio’s leading man, Oliver Marks, may be much more familiar with his classmates but has always been relegated to the sidelines of the group both in their day-to-day interactions, and their time spent on stage as highly trained Shakespearean actors. He himself admits that he is, “doomed to always play supporting roles in someone else’s story,” (Rio 12). Lee’s protagonist, Felicity Morrow, begins her story by returning to school after a year away, now finding herself in a group of strangers rather than the peers who’d left her behind by graduating on time. She spends her first few interactions with her new housemates lamenting the trends she’s missed and the distance this creates. Felicity, “was a resident of Godwin House when they were still first-years begging for directions to the dining hall,” and even the one-year age difference she has with some of the girls is too much for her (Lee 37). This outsider perspective is necessary because their new peers must have already succumbed to the institution, while the protagonist remains uncorrupted to show what these kinds of places can do to a person if left unchecked. If the novel’s purpose is to critique elite academic institutions, the protagonist’s purpose is to descend into madness at the institution’s hand. Without this descent, there is nothing particularly dark about the academies which the characters attend.

Their peers are the second ingredient to the dark academia recipe. Each of these novels features a tight-knit and secluded group. There are only six students studying Greek in The Secret History, seven studying Shakespeare in If We Were Villains, and five living in Godwin House in A Lesson in Vengeance. These numbers only go down as the deaths begin, and their seclusion allows the students to live in their own little world away from the confines and rules of society. Even in their elite schools, they’ve managed to achieve an even higher status by simply being a part of their group. The more time the protagonist spends with these students, the more they lose sight of their humanity and assimilate to become one of them. This separation is only heightened by the fact that in each of these novels, the students study nothing but their chosen field. There is no room for other hobbies or interests when you are consumed by your studies. As Dr. Paige Miller put it on the “Lost in the Stacks” podcast, this, “aligns with this love of obsessive learning,” and cuts off all contact with anyone who might save them (Bennet et al.) These characters then lose sight of a healthy view of academia until the only thing that still matters to them is their area of study. There’s no longer a concern for healthy habits or relationships, there’s only obsession, toxicity, and detachment from any kind of savior.

The separation from any normalcy then leads to violence committed on and by a member of the inner circle. Typically, the violence comes in the form of a murder. This can either be a whodunnit as with If We Were Villains, or a whydunnit, as in The Secret History. As the line between reality and their studies blurs, these characters find themselves no longer seeing the consequences of their actions and kill the members of the group that don’t align with their problematic ideology. As that member pushes them too far, the only option the hive-minded group sees is elimination. Even the more noble murders, like that of the tyrannical Richard in Rio’s novel, stem from a detachment from civilized society. As Rio’s characters fall further and further into their Shakespearean archetypes, they forget that not every argument needs to end with a duel or a war. This is the dark part of dark academia: what it does to people. To go from studying for midterms to viewing murder as a logical next step is not something that happens by accident. It comes from the destructive and elitist nature of these hyper-competitive institutions.

Of course, it’s necessary to look at what exactly these characters are studying. Ancient Greek, Shakespearean performance, and the intersection of misogyny and witchcraft in literature may be enjoyable subjects, but they are hardly practical pursuits. Choosing a degree with little to no job security is either incredibly privileged or incredibly hopeful. The students pursuing these degrees must know they won’t be made millionaires, so must come from money that will fund their lavish lifestyles past college. Picking these things to devote their entire lives to is a way to flaunt their status as the elite of society. This makes sense as most importantly, dark academia must center on privileged students.

Understanding Privilege

Privilege is at the center of these novels because it takes a certain kind of person to believe that their studies matter more than the life of another. With race and class being inseparable, the choice to focus on students who are wealthy enough to afford a degree from a private university naturally alienates the majority of people of color and people who can’t afford their astronomical tuition fees. This erasure of people of color is seen in both Tartt’s and Rio’s novels, where no characters are ever described as being another race. Showcasing the white and wealthy highlights that these people are allowed to act in a way others are not which is why people of color can’t simply replace them in the formula. 

Rich white people can afford to be villains—to take the fall for crimes they didn’t commit, like Oliver Marks, or view murder as a simple, “redistribution of matter,” like Tartt’s Henry Winter, which is something that those treated more harshly by the justice system cannot (Tartt 302). Focusing on characters who are rich and white also highlights how the rest of the world will make excuses for these people and their villainous behavior. Students in Tartt’s world make it twenty years without hearing about the moon landing, and Lee’s have never taken a math class more advanced than basic algebra. But despite their lack of real-world knowledge, readers continue to find these characters, “so alluring and fascinating that you can’t help but fall in love with them,” as being rich, white, and educated will always make them aspirational to the masses (Book Club). As the protagonists fawn over their illustrious classmates, they act as a stand-in for the readers who do the same, both of whom are being tricked into ignoring how poisonous these characters really are. 

Gender and sexuality are also massive parts of what makes up privilege, and of the three discussed dark academia novels, only Lee’s follows a female protagonist or even allows their women agency. A Lesson in Vengeance breaks the pattern of dark academia only surrounding men by removing men from the picture entirely. At their all-girls school, these ladies are no longer a minority in their world, and due to their isolation (along with their status as rich and white), feel safe enough to commit the same atrocities as their male counterparts in the genre. Ellis, Lee’s version of Henry Winter, not only preys upon Felicity’s mental illness to get her to plan out the novel’s murders but has Felicity rehearse them with her. Though not revealed until the final act of the novel, Ellis not only practices but commits the murders she plans to use as plot points in her upcoming book. Even before this reveal, Felicity catches on, stating “I’m not one of your characters, Ellis. If something happens to me, you can’t throw out that page and rewrite it,” showing that she’s been lost to her art just like her male counterparts (Lee 366). By highlighting the same catastrophic obsession with their studies, Lee gets the point across by giving the characters more privilege, not less, and continuing the critique.

On the other hand, both Tartt and Rio only feature women in roles that are so heavily sidelined that they become more plot devices than characters. Camilla, the only female student in Tartt’s world, becomes the object of everyone's (even her brother’s) desires, but no one ever seems to ask her what she wants. The men make all the choices. This is taken further in Rio’s novel as the characters are made to be nothing more than their casting types. Wren, Meredith, and Filippa are reduced to Madonna, whore, and essentially wallpaper respectively. Meanwhile, the men of both novels get to be aggressors, killers, masterminds, comic relief, and the only complex love interests.

Even the way that queerness is handled in The Secret History feels as if it’s an extension of misogyny. With the characters latching onto Greek mannerisms and forgetting their modern opinions, even Richard himself notes that he doesn’t, “suppose that anyone who has devoted much energy to the study of Classics can be very much disturbed by homosexuality,” (Tartt 217-218). This intellectualist take on sexuality makes it hard to view the kiss between Richard and Francis as anything truly romantic instead of the erastes and eromenos roles continued in the 20th century. In Ancient Greece, these relationships weren’t based on love, but power, and it was, “unmanly for a boy to accept the [eromenos] role…effeminate men were ruthlessly satirized,” for taking the same role as a woman (Fone). It’s a more elevated form of misogyny. Even Richard himself didn’t view kissing a man as romantic, he had to, “ascertain that there is no queerness involved in his relationship,” to be able to relax in his friendships (Dickens). 

While there are expressly queer characters in all three novels, the oppression of queer people is erased in varying ways. Tartt normalizes it into a Greek context, Rio doesn’t allow her characters to act on it, and Lee, as they did with gender, makes it the norm. All this is to keep the characters as privileged as possible so that they don’t remember what it’s like to be at the bottom of the food chain if they even knew in the first place. In no way are these authors critiquing queerness, simply including it and showing that it is possible to diversify the genre while keeping the very privilege that defines it.

The Critique

The true critique lies in where these characters derive their varying power. Focusing on these rich white men and exaggerating just how out of touch they are with the rest of the world may look, “exciting and provocative,” to some, but is meant to be grotesquely eye-opening (Bennet et al.). Tartt may have based Hampden College and its students off of her own alma mater and college friends, but heightened and twisted versions of them. 

This heightening of real-world scenarios is intended to make the critique all the more obvious, but according to Gallagher and Greenblatt, it’s difficult to separate ideology from the critique of it. This is evident in the way that dark academia novels are received by audiences, but does not diminish the fact that they are first and foremost a critique of the students and institutions that encourage their behavior. By the middle of the 19th Century, “writers had begun to stress the fabricated nature of the whole social world,” including the ruling class (Gallagher et al.).

This critique may also be able to explain why dark academia became so popular during the COVID-19 pandemic. Author Siena Sterling attributes it to a desire to, “skewer and reveal the truth behind the idyllic university,” as a result of COVID taking that experience away from Gen Z (Kittner). If they cannot attend the universities of their dreams, today’s teenagers will destroy the notion that schools are something to dream about altogether. Or perhaps they’re simply living in the same fantasy that allowed Richard Papen to not notice his friends were killers, and continue to idealize a world they cannot enter. 

The critique is inherent to the genre. Showing this dark side of academia, however exaggerated, is on purpose because this happens in the real world too, if not to the same murderous extent, then to a much more internal level of self-inflicted violence and neglect. This, too, is seen in the novels, with Lee showcasing teenagers only eating breakfast consisting of, “leftover cold coffee…and…as many acetaminophen as [she] can handle on an empty stomach, (Lee 304) because not every terrible thing has to be as momentous as murder.

If the characters are an exaggeration, so are their actions. Most students aren’t going around killing their classmates with notions of poetic justification, but they are killing themselves or at least neglecting their own health in pursuit of academic excellence. This of course applies to all students, but disproportionately impacts those who have to try harder for the same results: people of color and women. These groups, “have centuries of exclusion from academia to catch up on after all; therefore, they must prove them-selves harder,” which leads to meal skipping and losing sleep all in pursuit of a grade (Zarevich). The students in these fictional works don’t have to try as hard, but still feel the pressures of academia and crack in a different, more life-threatening way. 

Breaking from the Formula

Dark academia may be purposeful in its formulaic structure, but that does not mean there is no room for diversity within the genre. Readers are not wrong for wanting stories that represent them or for wanting a break from reading the same story over and over. Authors wishing to diversify the genre simply have to take a different path to the same destination of a critique. Many have already tried with varying results. 

Diversity can come in many forms, the first of which is deviations from the dark academia formula. Maggie Steifvater’s The Raven Boys seemingly fits many of the requirements by taking place in an elite academic setting and having its characters present for a character’s death, but it lacks the most important aspect: the critique. There is no critique of private schools, only a glorification of the free time that money can buy. While both school and violence are important to the plot, the two are entirely separate from each other. Many readers argue that the setting alone should win this novel a place in the genre, but it simply does not fit as a result of breaking too many of the genre’s conventions.

Another deviation from the tried and true formula is Damien Chazelle’s film Whiplash. Not only does the film stray from the formula by not being an obscure novel full of thesaurus entries, but a widely received movie that strays from the blueprint in many ways. Andrew may not have been given a close group of friends in his elite music school, but he does find his obsessive equal in his conductor. The film exaggerates and critiques the obsessed artist, a similar danger to the obsessive student, with Andrew literally getting hit by a car and insisting on playing his concert before the shattered glass has even fallen from his hair. In doing so, there is an argument made for an expansion on what the dark part of dark academia is. If not murder, then perhaps declining mental health so long as it remains a direct result of the institution and pursuit of excellence. If anything, the film is a more realistic portrayal of the same phenomenon. With no murder, Andrew is forced to take the pressure to be perfect out on himself like many real students.

In terms of diversifying the characters themselves, authors have already tested the waters. As with A Lesson in Vengeance, dark academia novels are finding more and more ways to center women. By taking away men as a whole and giving female characters as much privilege and power as them, Lee did not so much break the mold as they did fill it in a different way. 

Other authors have opted for changing the races of these characters. Katie Zhao’s How We Fall Apart diversifies dark academia by focusing on Asian American characters. In an attempt to critique the model minority myth, the novel highlights the specific injustices these students face within academia, and directly critiques the institutions that uphold the myth. It fulfills many of the tropes of the genre including two mysterious deaths, but the novel falls short of achieving true dark academia status by continuing to show the students as good people. These are not the fanciful, self-important murderers of Hampden College, but Zhao’s characters drove a peer to attempting suicide and still come off as the heroes. The characters, while awful in the name of academic success, do not succumb to the institution, they actively fight against it. In painting the institution as the only villain, there’s no critique of students or privilege even in such a wealthy setting.

In contrast, Ace of Spades by Faridah Abke-Iymide is a successful attempt at a dark academia novel that both diversifies its cast and how the story is told. Instead of focusing on the group of elite students, the novel follows their potential victims: the only two Black students at the school. Devon and Chiamaka not only take a wide array of classes but hardly even know each other. They are not tight-knit or isolated in any way. As a scholarship student, Devon is ostracized by his wealthier peers, and while Chiamaka might fit into the same tax bracket as her friends, she is still the only Black girl in the group and the only queer one at that. There’s no clever reworking of queer oppression this time, Chiamaka knows for a fact that people in her life do not view her sexuality as a positive thing. As the two are hunted in a racist school tradition, Abke-Iymide throws the blueprint away and paves her own path through dark academia. This novel is a critique of both the real-life students who view academia as their playground and the genre that gave them a voice and does so in a way that expands the entire genre as a whole. In one move, Ace of Spades shows that dark academia can be more if only authors are willing to change with it.

Conclusion

While still widely undefined as a genre, dark academia has many tropes as requirements that must be fulfilled. Most important among that list is the presence of a critical eye on the academic institutions that perpetuate class inequality. In an attempt to capture that critique, many novels in the genre follow the same formula. Centering on a group of rich, white, and mostly male students as they slowly lose their grasp on humanity in favor of academic excellence and showcasing those characters as horrible people clearly shows how the glamorous world they occupy is not one readers should aspire to. Without this critique, authors instead focus on the gothic architecture and vintage fashion that are now synonymous with the genre without adding anything more or truly writing a dark academia novel. 

Of course, any genre full of rich, white men is subject to criticism for lacking diversity, but by refusing to follow that same formula, many authors miss the mark. Dark academia, like any genre, can evolve to include different voices, but it must follow a different structure as well.

Minorities do not have the same experiences as their white male counterparts, in either the real world or fiction. These universities may someday be full of a wide array of people, but that would simply mean the critique must lie elsewhere. If authors are not willing to reconstruct the genre instead of simply placing more diverse characters in the same scenarios as white men, they are not allowing dark academia to critique the very thing it was created for.