The Secret Chord

Content Warning: The book depicts multiple instances of rape including graphic accounts of nonconsensual sex and humiliation. The following section includes analysis of one or more of those instances.

Geraldine Brooks’s The Secret Chord explores in painful detail the abuses of male power. The entire narrative can be reduced to a series of five rapes and their consequences: The rape of David’s mother causes David to grow up in an atmosphere of violent hate; Mikhal is twice ripped away from the man she loves as David uses her to rise to royal power; David’s rape of Batsheva marks his break with God’s plan; and Amnon’s rape of Tamar begins the bloody familial conflict of David’s later years, which continues with Avshalom’s rape of David’s concubines. These rapes are not aberrations. The male domination of women is part of the fabric of society. The events leading to the first attack on David’s mother begin with her husband using his power to separate from her and bring in a maid who is afraid to resist him. This continues under David’s rule. If Tamar had not been raped, she would have been “used, and very soon, in some important piece of statecraft” (227).