ABSTRACT
My title, ‘Beauty in Trouble’ , comes from a rather mischievous poem by Robert Graves from the 1950s:
is is ‘beauty’ in its clichéd sense of beauty in distress – the classic ‘fallen’ heroine of popular ction, who scavenges o the good guy, before returning, with the inevitability of night, to ‘ e end who beats, betrays and sponges on her. / Persuades her white is black, / Flaunts vespertilian wing and cloven hoof ’. e end of the poem, quoting Shakespeare’s sonnet 116 to the ‘good angel’ – ‘would you to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediment?’ – implies that she gets what she deserves.
