Cate Blanchett as Sheba Hart and Judi Dench as Barbara Covett in Notes on a Scandal (2006)
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Learning to read across and compare texts is central to all A-level specifications
Scandals and secrets have been at the heart of the novel since it first appeared as a distinctive literary genre. From Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740) about a clandestine affair between a servant and a grandee, through Mr Rochester’s wife hidden in the attic in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) to D. H. Lawrence’s novel with the self-explanatory title, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928), scandals and secrets have provided fiction with compelling plots and characters whose flaws and (self-)deceptions have fascinated readers.
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