Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

The Scandal Of The Season by Sophie Gee

by
June 2007, no. 292

The Scandal Of The Season by Sophie Gee

Chatto & Windus, $32.95 pb, 289 pp

The Scandal Of The Season by Sophie Gee

by
June 2007, no. 292

The Rape of The Lock helped secure Alexander Pope’s reputation as a commanding poet of the early eighteenth century. This mock-epic poem, based on a real incident, satirises the trivialities of high society by comparing it with the epic world of the gods. One of Pope’s acquaintances, Lord Petre, cut off a ringlet of hair from his paramour Arabella, thereby causing a breach of civilities between the two families. Pope was asked to write a poem to make jest of the situation and to reconcile the disgruntled parties. Its success was due to the disparity between content and form, between his mischievous coupling of petty vanity and the lofty grandeur of traditional epic subjects. The rape of Helen of Troy thus becomes the theft of a curl of hair; instead of gods and goddesses there are ‘sylphs’ or guardian spirits, and great battles are converted to gambling bouts and flirtatious sparrings.

Sophie Gee’s first novel, set in 1711, takes the reader behind the heavy velvet curtains of Pope’s melodrama to reveal the leading players: Arabella Fermor, who ‘at the age of twenty-two combined beauty and cleverness in almost equal parts’; her suitor, Lord Petre; and a host of attendant ladies and gentleman, including Pope himself who, more often than not, is cast in a spectator role and is usually seen peering from the wings. The Scandal of the Season follows the seduction and dalliance of belle of the ball Arabella and her handsome lord amid the gossipy, bitchy world of clacking fans and hair ‘like confectionery’.

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.