Notes on a Scandal, and the blurring of boundaries in schools

Sardonic crone-with-a-cat Barbara targets Sheba, a new teacher at St Georges - a North London comprehensive filled with the kind of kids who require a  firmer approach  than a flaky, upper middle class liberal can muster.  Though she does do rather well with one of the 15 year old boys.

Barbara defines herself as a person to whom people tell secrets.   While she regards this as a negative rather than a positive ("confirmation of my irrelevance"), it's a circumstance that she is happy to exploit...to win Sheba's friendship, to betray her and ultimately to gain full control over her.

Something in Sheba needs to confess to (and in some ways boast about) the affair.  Barbara fits the bill.  She listens carefully and calmly as Sheba regales her romanticised perspective of the romance.  A sort of Lady Chatterley's Lover, involving an underage Mellors. 

The boy's mother regards the affair as sexual abuse, while the tabloid press predictably regard it more as a case of a schoolboy getting lucky.  Barbara is cold and sardonic in her perception of the entanglement.

It must have been a pretty comic sight - the little suitor reaching on tippy-toe for his middle-aged mistress, the bike smashing to the ground.

To her mind, the boy is a plebeian character who has more or less full control in the relationship.  Certain scenes in the book add weight to her perspective, depicting a coarse, sniggering young oaf who moves on easily once his  sexual interest in Sheba wanes. 

'...I'm your first lickle boy , aren't I?' he went on.
Sheba was repulsed by his baby voice.  'Yes, you are,' she murmured.
He laughed and licked her arm.  'Don't like that, do you?'
'What?'  She was trying, she says, not to show him how much he was irritating her.
'Talking about your age and that...' he said.  He paused, apparently weighing up whether he dared to utter what was on his mind.  He giggled again.  'You're worried your vadge has gone loose.'  

Charming.  Sheba goes from being a woman everybody wants a piece of, to being deserted by all other than the eternally enamoured Barbara and the tabloid newspapers who would pick over what was left of the corpse.

Barbara's obsessive observation and narration of the scandal emphasises Sheba as victim rather than predator....but  that's inevitable given that Barbara is looking at her through predatory eyes.   Both women are figures of fun in their own way.   To be loathed, but also to be chuckled over.  Through Barbara's dry, incisive narration Heller reminds us that male sex offenders are never deemed funny - whereas female sex offenders often become the subject of ribald humour.   

...the vehemence with which we respond to men's sexual transgressions is proportionate to how discomfitingly common we know those transgressive urges to be.  A woman who interferes with a minor is not a symptom of an underlying tendency....According to evolutionary science, an affair like Sheba's  is nothing more than a freakish lay-by on the grand motorway  of human survival.  That's why men in pubs can afford to laugh at her


Where minors are caught up in sexual relationships with adults, double standards require that the girls are perceived as victims whereas they boys are regarded as lucky devils.  It's a double standard which is criticised frequently in articles of a masculinist  slant.  In Notes on a Scandal, though, it is the boy's furious mother who represents this perspective most strongly.  The mother who is determined that her son should be labelled as a victim in the matter, regardless of how he perceives it. Barbara notes:

Mrs Connolly is anxious lest Sheba 'benefit' from the double standard.  But I doubt very much that Sheba's comic oddity will actually earn her more leniency from the court.  In all likelihood, she'll receive the same punishment as a man.  The guardians of gender equality won't stand for anything else.  In the end, I suspect being female will do nothing for Sheba except deny her the grandeur of genuine villainy.

Whether the female teacher/male student situation is a comic oddity remains to be seen.  This article from Time Magazine suggests that while 90% of sexual harassment (of students by teachers) involves men as the harassers, the problem of predatory female teachers is on the increase.  Experts suggest part of the problem involves a blurring of the boundaries between teachers and students. Former deputy head teacher Christopher Drake, who nicknamed himself "the Salford Stallion" has frequently been cited in the media as an example of an immature teacher whose lack of boundaries resulted in affairs that caused all kinds of emotional turmoil and drama amongst students.

The Time magazine article notes that that female offenders are more likely to have emotional turmoil in their lives, and appear to be seeking comfort from the relationships.

Nonetheless, underage boys who have been sexually involved with older females can suffer the same kind of symptoms later on (alcoholism, depression etc) that underage girls who have been sexually active with older males often suffer from.  Particularly where those boys have been emotionally manipulated by a needy, older expert in emotional manipulation. 


Notes on a scandal certainly depicts Sheba as an immature woman seeking emotional comfort from her relationship with a minor who she has aggrandised as a young working class hero with tender sensibilities.  Stephen Connolly, the boy, is not depicted as the type to suffer from any long term ill effects.  Whether this is accurate, we do not know...as we only have Barbara's narrative of events to go on - and it is clear from the outset that her well of empathy yields a limited supply.  Most of which is reserved for her pet cat Portia.

Notes on a scandal is known as Notes on a Scandal: What Was She Thinking? in the US.