“Secrets in this novel are disclosed only once their protective shelter is no longer required.”
“The word secrecy derives from the Latin secretum, which means to set apart, and from secernere, which means to separate, as with a sieve, which suggests that secrecy is a method of separating and dividing, placing something – or someone – out of the way.”
“In Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation (1983), the Swedish-born philosopher Sissela Bok defines a secret neutrally, as deliberately blocked communication: ‘Anything can be a secret so long as it is kept intentionally hidden.’ Its content, Bok writes, might be less important than its use in differentiating ‘insiders’ – those in the know – from ‘outsiders’, and thus demarcating hierarchies.”
“Secrecy can overtly serve personal interest, as when children keep information from others to avoid punishment, like concealing that they didn’t eat their broccoli. But secrecy also serves more fundamental purposes: it contributes to the formation of our inner awareness and autonomy; it creates a space for the imagination; and, as well as being a weapon of exclusion, it is an essential tool of friendship.”
“Children are not born with the ability to keep a secret. They grapple with employing secrecy gradually. In a series of studies in Germany and Australia conducted in the 1980s and ’90s, the psychologists Elisabeth Flitner, Alan Watson and Renate Valtin all found that the concept of secrecy undergoes major changes in children between the ages of five and 12. With the younger children, the researchers venture, it aids the formation of a sense of self.”
“The games children play from an early age – peekaboo, treasure hunt, hide and seek – are based on secrecy and, crucially, exposure. Kids love hiding games but they also struggle not to give themselves away.”
“One reason, suggests the Dutch-born phenomenologist Max van Manen in Childhood’s Secrets (1996), is that young children have trouble with the idea that they are not there. Hiding teaches them the more complex idea that, although you cannot be seen, you still exist, after which comes the successful closeting away, from adults, for hours, in secret camps, constructed at home or in the garden, which allows them to create and control their own environment, aiding the development of independence.”
“Secret places and passwords are byways that allow children to construct their own physical and mental arenas and patrol their borders, loosening themselves, slowly – safely – from the constant supervision of adults.”
“At five or six, children understand the concept of a secret but find one hard to keep. They’ll blurt out their knowledge of a surprise party or birthday present. While they can just about keep the information to themselves, the strain is obvious: if you wish to, you could easily wheedle it out of them.”
“The next stage is to keep something to oneself with no one knowing. The 19th-century French psychologist Pierre Janet argued that the child’s discovery of secrecy is a significant event because it heralds the birth of an inner world. When a child realises that thoughts and ideas can be kept within and are not accessible to others, they understand that there is a demarcation between their world, which is inner, and that which is outer.”
“In his memoir Father and Son (1907), the English poet Edmund Gosse describes such an experience as an exhilarating awakening. He had broken a lead pipe, part of the garden fountain, and is waiting in fear for what he assumes is the inevitable discovery (his father was keen to find and punish the culprit), until it dawns on him that he is safe, as someone else is suspected:
There was a secret in this world and it belonged to me and to a somebody who lived in the same body with me. There were two of us, and we could talk with one another… it was in this dual form that the sense of my individuality now suddenly descended upon me.”
“In keeping something from a parent and other family members, children experience the separating power of secrecy, which can be deeply unsettling: they are placed at a distance from those important to them, which can be isolating and lonely.”
“But as Edmund found, it also means you can talk to yourself. Secret journals and diaries play a part in this, too. On the blank pages of a notebook, for their eyes only, children can record their honest thoughts and feelings.”
“The German sociologist Georg Simmel was one of the first modern scholars to examine secrecy, and his salient observations in ‘The Sociology of Secrecy and of the Secret Societies’ (1906) still stand. He believed secrecy was one of the ‘greatest achievements of humanity’. Why?”
“Because secrets create a more complicated life experience. Once people can keep secrets, he observed, they can live in two worlds. Secrets allow us to think thoughts that we are not obliged to act upon, or can nurture us until we do act. They create space for reflection and possibility; allow us to imagine life differently.”
“for older children, secrecy is tied to norms of friendship. The six- to 10-year-olds they studied expressed uncertainty about divulging a secret, especially about a friend. By 12, a promise not to tell is binding. Children at this age need to be part of a group, to connect with non-adult peers, and secrecy is a way to forge these intense relationships.”
“Secrets are a currency that is spent creating inclusion and exclusion. But confiding in someone is also an expression of trust – and a requirement of intimacy, which is why sharing a secret is so precarious: you open yourself up and make yourself vulnerable, offering the keeper an opportunity for manipulation and coercion.”
“Children often try to keep personal problems – a fight with a mate, bullying, an abusive teacher, an alcoholic parent – from adults and friends, in order to try to manage their own affairs, protect loved ones, or not be labelled a ‘grass’.”
“keeping a secret exerts a physical toll, weighing people down: secrets are experienced as burdens, they say, that impact negatively on the body and the mind.”
“But since we know that learning to navigate the power of secrecy is essential to becoming an autonomous individual – a person among others, involved in meaningful and lasting relationships – perhaps children need to be able to administer small amounts of secrecy in their lives. They need room to experiment with secret-keeping, without being weighed down by secrets too large or too grave to bear. Every child needs a little secrecy.”