You're barking, fucking mad. You don't know how to love. You have never, your whole life. Me, Jennifer Dodd. You're nothing but waste and disappointment! You bitter old virgin. You're lonely for a reason. They loathed you at school, all of them. I was the idiot who bothered, but only because no one told me you're a fucking vampire! So what is it, Bar? You want to roll around the floor like lovers? You want to fuck me, Barbara? --Sheba Hart
Finally I had the chance to see the movie, Notes on a Scandalwhich starred Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett. The story revolves around Sheba, an art teacher (Blanchett) who had an affair with one of her 15-year old students and Barbara, an old and lonely teacher who befriended Sheba and later blackmailed her as she discovers the affair of Sheba.
This movie delves on the issue of not only family life but also lesbian themes but more than that it’s a story of two lonely women trap in a convention-driven society.
The Different faces 
Barbara: The walking irony
A spinster who wears this façade of a strong and happy woman but deep inside, her bitterness and loneliness is slowly eating her up. She lives all alone in her house and keeps a diary where she kept all her secrets and gold stars. People trust me with their secrets. But who do I trust with mine? You, only you.
Like everyone else in this planet, Barbara wants to connect and longs to be with someone. She wants to be found by her soul mate and to realize that maybe her days won’t be as lonely as it was now. When she met Sheba, she knew right then and there that she’s the one she waited for her whole life. Perhaps, it was Sheba’s mysterious personality that attracted Barbara to her. People like Sheba think they know what it is to be lonely. But of the drip, drip of the long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. What it's like to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the launderette. Or to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor's hand sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin. Of this, Sheba and her like have no clue.
She capitalized on her knowledge of Sheba’s affair and she promised to keep it as a secret as long Sheba will value her more than Sheba values her family. She honestly thought that she and Sheba had a deep connection. But when she discovered that Sheba is still having an affair with Steven and that she rather be with her family than comfort her when her cat died, she knew then that it’s payback time.
Her perception of Sheba’s family and problematic marriage life made her think that she’s going to be Sheba’s oasis or savior in a sense that she’s going to free Sheba from these shackles.
Sheba: The woman who trangressed
Devoted mother and wife. Married her professor who is, 20 years her senior. She’s trying to cope up with the demands of having a child with Down syndrome and other family needs. She decided to teach not only to have a “break” from her monotonous life but also to find herself once again. 
Like Barbara, Sheba felt lonely and burdened by her family and marriage. She found solace and escape in Steven, her 15-year old student. Though, she’s aware that having a relationship with her student is “ridiculous and immoral” she let it happened in the belief that she’s “entitled” to do that. This is going to sound sick, but something in me felt... entitled. You know, I've been good all my adult life. I've been a decent wife, a dutiful mother coping with Ben. This voice inside me kept saying "why shouldn't you be bad, why shouldn't you transgress? I mean, you've earned the right."
She likened Barbra of that of a vampire because she (Bar) just really sucked people's energies and emotions by being too clingy and possessive.
If there’s one thing both these women are alike it would be they’re both lonely and are searching for something to fill in the gap in their lives. Barbara was looking for a companion or a friend as she would label it. On the other hand, Sheba was looking for meaning, for her self.
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