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The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
A teacher at a girl's school in Edinburgh during the 1930s comes into conflict with school authorities because of her unorthodox teaching methods.
150 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1961
About the author
Muriel Spark
216 books1,096 followersDame Muriel Spark, DBE was a prolific Scottish novelist, short story writer and poet whose darkly comedic voice made her one of the most distinctive writers of the twentieth century. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Spark received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1965 for The Mandelbaum Gate, the Ingersoll Foundation TS Eliot Award in 1992 and the David Cohen Prize in 1997. She became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1993, in recognition of her services to literature. She has been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, in 1969 for The Public Image and in 1981 for Loitering with Intent. In 1998, she was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature". In 2010, Spark was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize of 1970 for The Driver's Seat.
Spark received eight honorary doctorates in her lifetime. These included a Doctor of the University degree (Honoris causa) from her alma mater, Heriot-Watt University in 1995; a Doctor of Humane Letters (Honoris causa) from the American University of Paris in 2005; and Honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, London, Oxford, St Andrews and Strathclyde.
Spark grew up in Edinburgh and worked as a department store secretary, writer for trade magazines, and literary editor before publishing her first novel, The Comforters, in 1957. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, published in 1961, and considered her masterpiece, was made into a stage play, a TV series, and a film.
Spark received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1965 for The Mandelbaum Gate, the Ingersoll Foundation TS Eliot Award in 1992 and the David Cohen Prize in 1997. She became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1993, in recognition of her services to literature. She has been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, in 1969 for The Public Image and in 1981 for Loitering with Intent. In 1998, she was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature". In 2010, Spark was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize of 1970 for The Driver's Seat.
Spark received eight honorary doctorates in her lifetime. These included a Doctor of the University degree (Honoris causa) from her alma mater, Heriot-Watt University in 1995; a Doctor of Humane Letters (Honoris causa) from the American University of Paris in 2005; and Honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, London, Oxford, St Andrews and Strathclyde.
Spark grew up in Edinburgh and worked as a department store secretary, writer for trade magazines, and literary editor before publishing her first novel, The Comforters, in 1957. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, published in 1961, and considered her masterpiece, was made into a stage play, a TV series, and a film.
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February 16, 2023After reviewing several of Muriel Spark's less well-known books recently, I'm now attempting to review the one that made her famous. I imagined that it would be the easiest to write about, being the one with the most interesting structure (and the least absurd plot), but no, the opposite has been the case. In fact, I've had to scrap the review I wrote the other day because, for all its sensible words, it completely missed the point of the book. I knew what the point was but I somehow got sidetracked due to the cunning of the main character, and ended up focusing my review entirely on Miss Brodie.
But, I hear you say, Miss Jean Brodie is the main character.
Well, she gets top billing on the front cover and in readers' minds, but that's only because the main character allows her to. The main character is pulling all the strings in this book, even the reader's.
Let's be clear, you say. There's a third person narrator in this book, and therefore the narrator is the one who pulls the strings. The narrator/author gives the characters their roles, and controls their fates. That's just how it is.
The way I see it, the main character and the narrator are one and the same person: Miss Sandy Stranger, aged ten when we first meet her. Of course, Sandy lets us think there's a narrator, but in reality the entire story is being told by Sandy herself. It's a kind of double act. If you look closely, you'll see that there isn't a single episode she couldn't have witnessed or heard about. And there's a clue about her 'authorship' of the story early in the book: The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. That's the title of a book that we are told Sandy will write in later life. It's ostensibly a psychology textbook about the perception of moral issues and how to act on them, but here's the thing: I believe that Sandy's 'Transfiguration' book is really this book, the 'Miss Jean Brodie' book. It's a very economical method, you see, this double act, just as in the case of Teddy Lloyd's portraits of the Brodie set which simultaneously looked like the sitter and also like Miss Brodie. Two portraits for one, two books for one! Why not?
One day you will go too far, I hear you say.
But wait a moment. Isn't the crux of 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' the perception of a moral issue and the decision to act on it?
Well, of course, you say, everyone knows that, whether they've read the book or seen the film. Everyone knows about Miss Brodie's incitement of her pupils towards fascism, and her subsequent enforced retirement. But what about the 'Transfiguration of the Commonplace'? How do you make that fit with your crazy theory?
Take a moment to consider what Sandy tells us about herself as a child: Sandy was never bored, but she had to lead a double life of her own in order never to be bored. Her double life as I see it involved the constant transfiguration of the commonplace. You see, Sandy's vision of everybody and everything is very acute, in spite of the fact that she has 'tiny' eyes. And Sandy proves time and time again that her 'tiny' eyes are capable of transforming even the most humdrum aspects of the world into something out of the ordinary. Everything she can transfigure gets transfigured. As she reads 'The Lady of Shalott' aloud in the classroom, Sandy is transformed into the Lady's confidante, and the classroom into Camelot. A walk with her classmates through the reeking network of Edinburgh slums becomes a breath-taking adventure in the Highlands with Alan Breck, the hero of 'Kidnapped'. A line of unemployed men queuing to enter a dole office becomes a dragon's body, unslayable. Miss Brodie herself, her brown head held high becomes Joan of Arc. On another day, her nose arched and proud, she is Sybil Thorndyke. Even the way the Brodie set wore their school hats was a transformation of the ordinary when narrated by Sandy.
But the opposite can also happen in Sandy's world, as when the Mona Lisa with her famous smile becomes simply a woman with her lower jaw swollen from a visit to the dentist. And Miss Jean Brodie eventually becomes a rather tiresome woman well past her prime. However, the most remarkable example of transfiguration concerns a piece of tinned pineapple. Here we are verging on transubstantiation: To Sandy the unfamiliar pineapple had the authentic taste and appearance of happiness and she focussed her small eyes closely on the pale gold cubes before she scooped them up in her spoon, and she thought the sharp taste on her tongue was that of a special happiness, which was nothing to do with eating...
Well, you say, all that is in the text of course, and a reader can make whatever patterns out of the facts she chooses, but none of it proves that Sandy is the narrator of this book.
Hmm. One of Sandy's favourite transformations involves daydreaming that she is plain Jane Eyre having enigmatic conversations with romantic moody Mr Rochester.
So..
You might remember that in this book, Sandy and the very romantic and moody Mr Lloyd have some enigmatic conversations in which he teases her about not being beautiful. Eventually however, they become lovers. The interesting thing about Mr Lloyd, and which makes me think Sandy invented him, is that he only has one arm. After all, by the time Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester eventually became lovers, he too had only one arm.
Now you really have gone too far! This entire review is completely absurd.
Is it really? Well, perhaps I have taken things to a bit of an extreme. Pity I deleted all those sensible words I wrote about Miss Brodie the other day...
But, I hear you say, Miss Jean Brodie is the main character.
Well, she gets top billing on the front cover and in readers' minds, but that's only because the main character allows her to. The main character is pulling all the strings in this book, even the reader's.
Let's be clear, you say. There's a third person narrator in this book, and therefore the narrator is the one who pulls the strings. The narrator/author gives the characters their roles, and controls their fates. That's just how it is.
The way I see it, the main character and the narrator are one and the same person: Miss Sandy Stranger, aged ten when we first meet her. Of course, Sandy lets us think there's a narrator, but in reality the entire story is being told by Sandy herself. It's a kind of double act. If you look closely, you'll see that there isn't a single episode she couldn't have witnessed or heard about. And there's a clue about her 'authorship' of the story early in the book: The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. That's the title of a book that we are told Sandy will write in later life. It's ostensibly a psychology textbook about the perception of moral issues and how to act on them, but here's the thing: I believe that Sandy's 'Transfiguration' book is really this book, the 'Miss Jean Brodie' book. It's a very economical method, you see, this double act, just as in the case of Teddy Lloyd's portraits of the Brodie set which simultaneously looked like the sitter and also like Miss Brodie. Two portraits for one, two books for one! Why not?
One day you will go too far, I hear you say.
But wait a moment. Isn't the crux of 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' the perception of a moral issue and the decision to act on it?
Well, of course, you say, everyone knows that, whether they've read the book or seen the film. Everyone knows about Miss Brodie's incitement of her pupils towards fascism, and her subsequent enforced retirement. But what about the 'Transfiguration of the Commonplace'? How do you make that fit with your crazy theory?
Take a moment to consider what Sandy tells us about herself as a child: Sandy was never bored, but she had to lead a double life of her own in order never to be bored. Her double life as I see it involved the constant transfiguration of the commonplace. You see, Sandy's vision of everybody and everything is very acute, in spite of the fact that she has 'tiny' eyes. And Sandy proves time and time again that her 'tiny' eyes are capable of transforming even the most humdrum aspects of the world into something out of the ordinary. Everything she can transfigure gets transfigured. As she reads 'The Lady of Shalott' aloud in the classroom, Sandy is transformed into the Lady's confidante, and the classroom into Camelot. A walk with her classmates through the reeking network of Edinburgh slums becomes a breath-taking adventure in the Highlands with Alan Breck, the hero of 'Kidnapped'. A line of unemployed men queuing to enter a dole office becomes a dragon's body, unslayable. Miss Brodie herself, her brown head held high becomes Joan of Arc. On another day, her nose arched and proud, she is Sybil Thorndyke. Even the way the Brodie set wore their school hats was a transformation of the ordinary when narrated by Sandy.
But the opposite can also happen in Sandy's world, as when the Mona Lisa with her famous smile becomes simply a woman with her lower jaw swollen from a visit to the dentist. And Miss Jean Brodie eventually becomes a rather tiresome woman well past her prime. However, the most remarkable example of transfiguration concerns a piece of tinned pineapple. Here we are verging on transubstantiation: To Sandy the unfamiliar pineapple had the authentic taste and appearance of happiness and she focussed her small eyes closely on the pale gold cubes before she scooped them up in her spoon, and she thought the sharp taste on her tongue was that of a special happiness, which was nothing to do with eating...
Well, you say, all that is in the text of course, and a reader can make whatever patterns out of the facts she chooses, but none of it proves that Sandy is the narrator of this book.
Hmm. One of Sandy's favourite transformations involves daydreaming that she is plain Jane Eyre having enigmatic conversations with romantic moody Mr Rochester.
So..
You might remember that in this book, Sandy and the very romantic and moody Mr Lloyd have some enigmatic conversations in which he teases her about not being beautiful. Eventually however, they become lovers. The interesting thing about Mr Lloyd, and which makes me think Sandy invented him, is that he only has one arm. After all, by the time Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester eventually became lovers, he too had only one arm.
Now you really have gone too far! This entire review is completely absurd.
Is it really? Well, perhaps I have taken things to a bit of an extreme. Pity I deleted all those sensible words I wrote about Miss Brodie the other day...
February 9, 2017
My initial reaction is, take Dead Poets Society, make the students young women instead of young men, replace the character played by Robin Williams with Iago and -poof! - you have this novel.
November 13, 2023
It's only possible to betray where loyalty is due.’
‘Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life,’ states Miss Jean Brodie, the titular character of Muriel Spark’s best regarded novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. This slim and seductive masterpiece tells the story of the ‘Brodie set,’ the young girls who were the pupils of Miss Brodie in Junior school and continue their relationship with her, for better or for worse, through the years that follow. This is a story of obsession and obedience, a dark look at the trope of inspirational figures and an examination of how individuality and group dynamics form a messy battlefield of power struggles that can give rise to fascist tendencies. Nearly flawless in its brevity and wit, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie succeeds through its elusive excursions into morality and interpersonal relationships across multiple character studies that are highly nuanced and evade tidy conclusions.
Dame Maggie Smith in her Oscar-winning role as Jean Brodie (1969)
I have a distinct memory surrounding my first read of this book back in 2009. I had picked it up at the Ypsilanti, Mi library and consumed it in one sitting on a warm spring day, sipping wine and near-feverishly pacing back and forth on my apartment balcony for the final chapter—this novel sinks into you and holds a power over your mind not unlike the titular teacher over her pupils. This is a novel that benefits from a re-reading, and many aspects of this struck me with more impact reading it again in 2022. The book struck me as refreshing, a book where the problematic aspects of the characters are certainly of its time, but in a way that really benefits the literary dynamics and emotional resonance of the novel.
In a substack essay by Brandon Taylor, he reflects on what D.H. Lawrence termed ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’ novels. ‘Morality in the novel is the trembling instability of the balance,’ Lawrence wrote, ‘when the novelist puts his thumb in the scale, to pull down the balance to his own predilection, that is immorality.’ The way Sparks crafts her characters with a realism of flaws and foibles, an instability of right and wrong, brought to mind Taylor’s reflections on the moral novel. While it is easy and correct to condemn Brodie for her flirtations with fascism, we also find her ‘quite an innocent in her way’ as well and sympathetic to her fight against the obdurate Calvanist moralizing and the undue campaign to oust her. There is a delicious irony in that she bests the oppressive system only to be brought down in secret by one of her own in what may very well be more an act of revenge instead of earnest concern to add another layer of complexities to what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in the novel. Returning to Taylor, I enjoy what he says about insatiable and complex ideas such as this:
This is, I believe, the type of fiction Sparks set out to create with Brodie, something that—while admittedly risking intentional fallacy here—may have inspiration from her time in 1944 working as a propagandist for Political Warfare Executive and the conflicts of her christian morality where the ends should not justify the means with a looser wartime morality where, perhaps, some might say they do. The way Sparks looks at how Brodie teaches the children to become a force to be reckoned with as a group but while preaching individuality (also praising Mussolini), while simultaneously using Mary Macgregor as a scapegoat and whipping post for the girls to rally around and, thusly, unify themselves more, is a hodgepodge of cruelty and being inspirational. We see here how the lessons of Brodie become propaganda, and give ‘the feeling that if you did a thing a lot of times, you made it into a right thing.’ Though one can’t help but also read the constant terming of the Brodie set as ‘the crème de la crème’ and not think of the ideas of the Übermensch.
See, the thing is though, you can’t help but enjoy reading Brodie ‘flattening their scorn underneath the chariot wheels of her superiority,’ but also feel remiss about cozying up to her character. Particularly as the group dynamics and her leadership is symbolic of how fascism can crop up under the guise of innocent ideas and activities and take hold of impressionable sorts who are most likely to idolize an authority figure. Sparks uses all her skills to make you like these characters even when you know you shouldn’t. She’s teasing you and breaking you down, not unlike the individual wills of the students. This is also Taylor’s point on moral fiction : this is a book about morality because nothing is clean-cut, everyone is a mixture of good and bad, as are all social dynamics. This is reality, and Taylor writes about how ‘moral fiction does not signal. That is propaganda.’ You don’t get to read this book and feel smugly superior to anyone for having the right morals, which is fitting as the novel is most critical on those who behave in this way. This is a glorious mess of morality and that is what I noticed most and loved during the reread.
‘Sandy looked back at her companions and understood them as a body with Miss Brodie for the head. She perceived herself, the absent Jenny, the ever-blamed Mary, Rose, Eunice, and Monica, all in a frightening little moment, in unified compliance to the destiny of Miss Brodie, as if God had willed them to birth for that purpose.’
The complexities of this book are outstanding, and expertly done as the novel is so succinct there is little room to hide the mechanics of it all. While written in a third person narration, it slowly becomes apparent that we are getting a narrative through the lens of a central character and any objectivity is suddenly on shaky grounds. Particularly with the knowledge of a Judas in the group, with the back and forth of the timeline teasing out tension and unveiling at a perfectly measured pace. While Brodie claims the title and is, for much of the novel, the focus, it is also about a usurping of power as we watch Sandy employ manipulations she learned from her teacher to take center stage and even becomes Mr. Lloyd’s lover. But at all times each student is what Brodie has made them, best exemplified when all of Lloyd’s portraits of the girls resembles both the girl and Brodie at the same time.
‘The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry,’ wrote poet Robert Burns, and we also witness the same occur to Miss Brodie. There is a wonderful irony present here, as Brodie rages against the Calvanist doctrine of predestination, creating her group of six and directing them on her own path as a rebuttal, only to watch her plans come undone. Even her own affair with Mr. Lowther comes to a quick end. In contrast, Sandy rejects Brodie’s teachings of individualism and free will, ending up a Catholic nun to carry out a larger plan of faith. The novel is rife with religious symbolism, turning Eidenburg into Spark’s near biblical narrative.
‘[M]y prime has truly begun. One’s prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognise your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur.’
There is much to explore in this novel, one so morally labyrinthian and nuanced while coming in just under 140pgs. The prose is flawless, like a siren seducing you in before emotionally dashing you on the rocks and forcing you to confront the many ambiguities in the book. But most of all, Jean Brodie is such a memorable character and written in such a way that questions if she is wise or manipulative, or is she good or bad, become beside the point as each aspect of this novel is so slippery. The film is quite good too, though it does take a more sympathetic approach towards the student who betrays than I believe was present in the novel (and preferred the ambiguity more). A quick read, but one that stays with you. It did with me for over a decade, and I suspect it will continue for many more.
4.5/5
‘Nothing infuriates people more than their own lack of spiritual insight.’
‘Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life,’ states Miss Jean Brodie, the titular character of Muriel Spark’s best regarded novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. This slim and seductive masterpiece tells the story of the ‘Brodie set,’ the young girls who were the pupils of Miss Brodie in Junior school and continue their relationship with her, for better or for worse, through the years that follow. This is a story of obsession and obedience, a dark look at the trope of inspirational figures and an examination of how individuality and group dynamics form a messy battlefield of power struggles that can give rise to fascist tendencies. Nearly flawless in its brevity and wit, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie succeeds through its elusive excursions into morality and interpersonal relationships across multiple character studies that are highly nuanced and evade tidy conclusions.
Dame Maggie Smith in her Oscar-winning role as Jean Brodie (1969)
I have a distinct memory surrounding my first read of this book back in 2009. I had picked it up at the Ypsilanti, Mi library and consumed it in one sitting on a warm spring day, sipping wine and near-feverishly pacing back and forth on my apartment balcony for the final chapter—this novel sinks into you and holds a power over your mind not unlike the titular teacher over her pupils. This is a novel that benefits from a re-reading, and many aspects of this struck me with more impact reading it again in 2022. The book struck me as refreshing, a book where the problematic aspects of the characters are certainly of its time, but in a way that really benefits the literary dynamics and emotional resonance of the novel.
In a substack essay by Brandon Taylor, he reflects on what D.H. Lawrence termed ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’ novels. ‘Morality in the novel is the trembling instability of the balance,’ Lawrence wrote, ‘when the novelist puts his thumb in the scale, to pull down the balance to his own predilection, that is immorality.’ The way Sparks crafts her characters with a realism of flaws and foibles, an instability of right and wrong, brought to mind Taylor’s reflections on the moral novel. While it is easy and correct to condemn Brodie for her flirtations with fascism, we also find her ‘quite an innocent in her way’ as well and sympathetic to her fight against the obdurate Calvanist moralizing and the undue campaign to oust her. There is a delicious irony in that she bests the oppressive system only to be brought down in secret by one of her own in what may very well be more an act of revenge instead of earnest concern to add another layer of complexities to what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in the novel. Returning to Taylor, I enjoy what he says about insatiable and complex ideas such as this:
‘moral fiction is not fiction that affirms your ideology about power systems and oppression. It does not make you feel like a good and righteous person. It may have no lessons for you to tweet about or put on Instagram or explain readily, wittily at dinner parties…Moral art…implicates and complicates your notions of good and bad. Moral art may call you a liar to your face. It reveals the shallowness of your thought…Moral does not mean good or lawful. Moral means true. Moral means you take your finger off the scale...’
This is, I believe, the type of fiction Sparks set out to create with Brodie, something that—while admittedly risking intentional fallacy here—may have inspiration from her time in 1944 working as a propagandist for Political Warfare Executive and the conflicts of her christian morality where the ends should not justify the means with a looser wartime morality where, perhaps, some might say they do. The way Sparks looks at how Brodie teaches the children to become a force to be reckoned with as a group but while preaching individuality (also praising Mussolini), while simultaneously using Mary Macgregor as a scapegoat and whipping post for the girls to rally around and, thusly, unify themselves more, is a hodgepodge of cruelty and being inspirational. We see here how the lessons of Brodie become propaganda, and give ‘the feeling that if you did a thing a lot of times, you made it into a right thing.’ Though one can’t help but also read the constant terming of the Brodie set as ‘the crème de la crème’ and not think of the ideas of the Übermensch.
See, the thing is though, you can’t help but enjoy reading Brodie ‘flattening their scorn underneath the chariot wheels of her superiority,’ but also feel remiss about cozying up to her character. Particularly as the group dynamics and her leadership is symbolic of how fascism can crop up under the guise of innocent ideas and activities and take hold of impressionable sorts who are most likely to idolize an authority figure. Sparks uses all her skills to make you like these characters even when you know you shouldn’t. She’s teasing you and breaking you down, not unlike the individual wills of the students. This is also Taylor’s point on moral fiction : this is a book about morality because nothing is clean-cut, everyone is a mixture of good and bad, as are all social dynamics. This is reality, and Taylor writes about how ‘moral fiction does not signal. That is propaganda.’ You don’t get to read this book and feel smugly superior to anyone for having the right morals, which is fitting as the novel is most critical on those who behave in this way. This is a glorious mess of morality and that is what I noticed most and loved during the reread.
‘Sandy looked back at her companions and understood them as a body with Miss Brodie for the head. She perceived herself, the absent Jenny, the ever-blamed Mary, Rose, Eunice, and Monica, all in a frightening little moment, in unified compliance to the destiny of Miss Brodie, as if God had willed them to birth for that purpose.’
The complexities of this book are outstanding, and expertly done as the novel is so succinct there is little room to hide the mechanics of it all. While written in a third person narration, it slowly becomes apparent that we are getting a narrative through the lens of a central character and any objectivity is suddenly on shaky grounds. Particularly with the knowledge of a Judas in the group, with the back and forth of the timeline teasing out tension and unveiling at a perfectly measured pace. While Brodie claims the title and is, for much of the novel, the focus, it is also about a usurping of power as we watch Sandy employ manipulations she learned from her teacher to take center stage and even becomes Mr. Lloyd’s lover. But at all times each student is what Brodie has made them, best exemplified when all of Lloyd’s portraits of the girls resembles both the girl and Brodie at the same time.
‘The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry,’ wrote poet Robert Burns, and we also witness the same occur to Miss Brodie. There is a wonderful irony present here, as Brodie rages against the Calvanist doctrine of predestination, creating her group of six and directing them on her own path as a rebuttal, only to watch her plans come undone. Even her own affair with Mr. Lowther comes to a quick end. In contrast, Sandy rejects Brodie’s teachings of individualism and free will, ending up a Catholic nun to carry out a larger plan of faith. The novel is rife with religious symbolism, turning Eidenburg into Spark’s near biblical narrative.
‘[M]y prime has truly begun. One’s prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognise your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur.’
There is much to explore in this novel, one so morally labyrinthian and nuanced while coming in just under 140pgs. The prose is flawless, like a siren seducing you in before emotionally dashing you on the rocks and forcing you to confront the many ambiguities in the book. But most of all, Jean Brodie is such a memorable character and written in such a way that questions if she is wise or manipulative, or is she good or bad, become beside the point as each aspect of this novel is so slippery. The film is quite good too, though it does take a more sympathetic approach towards the student who betrays than I believe was present in the novel (and preferred the ambiguity more). A quick read, but one that stays with you. It did with me for over a decade, and I suspect it will continue for many more.
4.5/5
‘Nothing infuriates people more than their own lack of spiritual insight.’
November 15, 2016
“The prime of Miss Jean Brodie” takes us back to the Edinburgh of the thirties. School mistress Miss Jean Brodie has selected six of her students to take as confidants. These girls will be the recipients of Miss Brodie’s unorthodox education that includes fictionalized versions of her love affairs magnified by her need to prolong her “prime” as much as possible.
The resulting story revolves around the complex, humoristic and even a bit extravagant relationship that Miss Brodie develops with her girls, who grow up under the shadow of their teacher’s frustrations and contradictions: quite liberal in certain areas, Miss Brodie’s radical conservatism shows in her admiration for fascist ideals. Caught in the swirling emotions of her overly dramatized romances, Miss Brodie underestimates the powerful influence she has over the lives of these impressionable young women that will lead one of them to betray her trust.
Besides the not so original plot, what resulted more fascinating to me is the technique through which Muriel Spark unfolds the personalities and the outcome of the characters. Many of the transcendental events are revealed in flash forwards that recur in a pattern of descriptive attributes of the already adult women, so the reader knows from the beginning what the future will have in store for the Brodie set: where will Rose’s magnetic sexuality lead her? Or Mary Macgregor’s clumsiness? Or Jenny’s natural beauty?
Nevertheless, the life experiences of these girls are irrelevant to the escalating dramatic tension of the narrative, where a somewhat cruel humor takes the stage and the eccentricity of Miss Brodie, whose emotions remain hidden from the reader and are only glimpsed through the girls’ perspectives, boosts to create a memorably ignoble character whose passion for life exceeds her manipulative nature. In the end, Miss Brodie’s blessing turns into her curse: she is condemned to live her life through her young surrogates and loses control of her own destiny.
Quite a peculiar little book.
Sharp, incisive and vibrant, it can easily deceive because of its apparent lightness and slightly comical undertone, but the somewhat veiled, subversive facet of Spark’s artistry won’t leave any reader indifferent, for Miss Brodie’s dilemmas and dirty secrets are, after all, our own.
The resulting story revolves around the complex, humoristic and even a bit extravagant relationship that Miss Brodie develops with her girls, who grow up under the shadow of their teacher’s frustrations and contradictions: quite liberal in certain areas, Miss Brodie’s radical conservatism shows in her admiration for fascist ideals. Caught in the swirling emotions of her overly dramatized romances, Miss Brodie underestimates the powerful influence she has over the lives of these impressionable young women that will lead one of them to betray her trust.
Besides the not so original plot, what resulted more fascinating to me is the technique through which Muriel Spark unfolds the personalities and the outcome of the characters. Many of the transcendental events are revealed in flash forwards that recur in a pattern of descriptive attributes of the already adult women, so the reader knows from the beginning what the future will have in store for the Brodie set: where will Rose’s magnetic sexuality lead her? Or Mary Macgregor’s clumsiness? Or Jenny’s natural beauty?
Nevertheless, the life experiences of these girls are irrelevant to the escalating dramatic tension of the narrative, where a somewhat cruel humor takes the stage and the eccentricity of Miss Brodie, whose emotions remain hidden from the reader and are only glimpsed through the girls’ perspectives, boosts to create a memorably ignoble character whose passion for life exceeds her manipulative nature. In the end, Miss Brodie’s blessing turns into her curse: she is condemned to live her life through her young surrogates and loses control of her own destiny.
Quite a peculiar little book.
Sharp, incisive and vibrant, it can easily deceive because of its apparent lightness and slightly comical undertone, but the somewhat veiled, subversive facet of Spark’s artistry won’t leave any reader indifferent, for Miss Brodie’s dilemmas and dirty secrets are, after all, our own.
August 22, 2020
“Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.”
We remember our best and worst teachers all our lives. The ones who moulded us, however much we resisted. I particularly remember the English teacher who continued to take an active interest in me after I dropped it as a subject, because I wanted to read purely for pleasure (I was thrilled to meet her again, a few years ago). The geography teachers who fostered a gentle rivalry among their Oxbridge hopefuls. And the house-mistresses who knew when to turn a blind-eye to midnight feasts and sneaking out. But I also remember some cruel PE teachers and an exceedingly boring and ineffective history teacher. And then there was the English and drama teacher who was best and worst: when sober, she was original, irreverent and inspirational, but when she was drunk, she was intimidating, irascible, and ineffective, and our best bet was to persuade her to read Just William aloud until the bell went (she taught ages 11-14)!
Where does Miss Brodie fit in this Venn diagram?
She was certainly memorable, but I was surprised to find myself asking if she was one of the best or worst teachers.
I’d somehow never read this famous 1961 novella set in an Edinburgh private school in the 1930s, nor seen the film starring Dame Maggie Smith.
The first two-thirds were a delightful portrayal of the dedicated, spiky, unconventional, feminist Miss Brodie’s grooming of her crème de la crème (six girls in the book, four in the film) to be cultured and to grasp all the opportunities life could offer, especially when they reach their Prime, whenever that may be. The final third suggested a different sort of grooming.
Flash forwards are not spoilers
The story mainly covers the girls’ last two years in the junior school, aged 10-12, in Miss Brodie’s class, through the senior school, which they leave around age 17, having remained in constant contact with her. Right from the start, there are frequent mentions of what the future holds, especially what will be each girl’s “fame”.
Opening minds
“To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul.”
Miss Brodie takes the girls to art galleries, museums, and to see the poorer areas of their city:
“It was Sandy’s first experience of a foreign country, which intimates itself by its new smells and shapes and its new poor.”
Each Saturday, she invites them to tea. She tells them about her fiancé who died in the Great War, her travels, her admiration for Mussolini, her opinions of the other teachers, and more besides.
Triangle - or polygon?
Romantic pre-pubescent girls, fascinated by adult relationships, notice Miss Brodie’s fondness for the two male teachers, apparently reciprocated, and Sandy and Jenny enjoy writing imagined love letters:
“If I am in a certain condition I shall place the infant in the care of a worthy shepherd and his wife, and we can discuss it calmly as platonic acquaintances. I may permit misconduct to occur again from time to
time as an outlet because I am in my Prime.”
Sweet, harmless, and amusing.
But later, things get more complicated, as Miss Brodie takes Sandy and Rose deeper into her confidence. She sees them as useful opposites: one with insight but no instinct, and the other with instinct but no insight. She uses them as... puppets, pawns, substitutes...?
Image: Film poster (Source.)
Betrayal
"It's only possible to betray where loyalty is due."
(Said by a nun, towards the end.)
This is a Big Theme, oft mentioned. Miss Brodie goes to different protestant denominations every Sunday, but "was not in any doubt… that God was on her side whatever her course, and so she experienced no difficulty or sense of hypocrisy in worship” when she did not abide by the accepted rules of the church. She is “driven by an excessive lack of guilt” and thinks Catholicism is mere superstition. However, Biblical betrayal and sectarian differences are secondary.
Miss Brodie’s “more advanced and seditious” methods are not appreciated in the genteel girls’ school, and she’s aware the headmistress wants an excuse to force her out. She cultivates her Brodie Set to take her side and report to her when that’s been necessary, emphasising that her “leading out” approach is the opposite of putting her ideas in their heads. We also know from early on, and repeatedly thereafter, that someone will betray her. We assume it’s one of the six.
There’s another important betrayal that’s never mentioned outright. Should a teacher put her pupils in such a position in the first place? Regardless, Miss Brodie creates far more questionable situations, with damaging outcomes for three girls, including one not in Miss Brodie’s set, but acting under her influence.
Back to my Venn diagram, Miss Brodie is unarguably memorable, and she was good in the sense of effective, but she was bad - as she is portrayed here - in the wider, moral sense.
But maybe the unknown omniscient narrator seeks to justify themselves, as Miss Brodie did.
Perhaps a Catholic half-believes in Calvinistic predestination?
Maybe the narrator is prone to imaginative flights of fancy, as Sandy and Jenny were?
Maybe the narrator is Sandy?
Image: Broken trust (Source.)
Quotes
• “Vastly informed on a lot of subjects irrelevant to the authorised curriculum.”
• “The unfamiliar pineapple had the authentic taste and appearance of happiness.”
• “Goodness, Truth and Beauty come first.”
• “Art is greater than science… Art and religion first; then philosophy; lastly science.”
• “[Teachers] who had stalked past Miss Brodie… saying ‘good morning’ with predestination in their smiles.”
• “Dazzled by their new subjects… [until] the languages of physics and chemistry, algebra and geometry had lost their elemental strangeness… and become hard work.”
• “He looked at her with love and she looked at him severely and possessively.”
• “She looked… with the near-blackmailing insolence of her knowledge.”
• “Everyone likes to visit a nun, it provides a spiritual sensation.”
We remember our best and worst teachers all our lives. The ones who moulded us, however much we resisted. I particularly remember the English teacher who continued to take an active interest in me after I dropped it as a subject, because I wanted to read purely for pleasure (I was thrilled to meet her again, a few years ago). The geography teachers who fostered a gentle rivalry among their Oxbridge hopefuls. And the house-mistresses who knew when to turn a blind-eye to midnight feasts and sneaking out. But I also remember some cruel PE teachers and an exceedingly boring and ineffective history teacher. And then there was the English and drama teacher who was best and worst: when sober, she was original, irreverent and inspirational, but when she was drunk, she was intimidating, irascible, and ineffective, and our best bet was to persuade her to read Just William aloud until the bell went (she taught ages 11-14)!
Where does Miss Brodie fit in this Venn diagram?
She was certainly memorable, but I was surprised to find myself asking if she was one of the best or worst teachers.
I’d somehow never read this famous 1961 novella set in an Edinburgh private school in the 1930s, nor seen the film starring Dame Maggie Smith.
The first two-thirds were a delightful portrayal of the dedicated, spiky, unconventional, feminist Miss Brodie’s grooming of her crème de la crème (six girls in the book, four in the film) to be cultured and to grasp all the opportunities life could offer, especially when they reach their Prime, whenever that may be. The final third suggested a different sort of grooming.
Flash forwards are not spoilers
The story mainly covers the girls’ last two years in the junior school, aged 10-12, in Miss Brodie’s class, through the senior school, which they leave around age 17, having remained in constant contact with her. Right from the start, there are frequent mentions of what the future holds, especially what will be each girl’s “fame”.
Opening minds
“To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul.”
Miss Brodie takes the girls to art galleries, museums, and to see the poorer areas of their city:
“It was Sandy’s first experience of a foreign country, which intimates itself by its new smells and shapes and its new poor.”
Each Saturday, she invites them to tea. She tells them about her fiancé who died in the Great War, her travels, her admiration for Mussolini, her opinions of the other teachers, and more besides.
Triangle - or polygon?
Romantic pre-pubescent girls, fascinated by adult relationships, notice Miss Brodie’s fondness for the two male teachers, apparently reciprocated, and Sandy and Jenny enjoy writing imagined love letters:
“If I am in a certain condition I shall place the infant in the care of a worthy shepherd and his wife, and we can discuss it calmly as platonic acquaintances. I may permit misconduct to occur again from time to
time as an outlet because I am in my Prime.”
Sweet, harmless, and amusing.
But later, things get more complicated, as Miss Brodie takes Sandy and Rose deeper into her confidence. She sees them as useful opposites: one with insight but no instinct, and the other with instinct but no insight. She uses them as... puppets, pawns, substitutes...?
Image: Film poster (Source.)
Betrayal
"It's only possible to betray where loyalty is due."
(Said by a nun, towards the end.)
This is a Big Theme, oft mentioned. Miss Brodie goes to different protestant denominations every Sunday, but "was not in any doubt… that God was on her side whatever her course, and so she experienced no difficulty or sense of hypocrisy in worship” when she did not abide by the accepted rules of the church. She is “driven by an excessive lack of guilt” and thinks Catholicism is mere superstition. However, Biblical betrayal and sectarian differences are secondary.
Miss Brodie’s “more advanced and seditious” methods are not appreciated in the genteel girls’ school, and she’s aware the headmistress wants an excuse to force her out. She cultivates her Brodie Set to take her side and report to her when that’s been necessary, emphasising that her “leading out” approach is the opposite of putting her ideas in their heads. We also know from early on, and repeatedly thereafter, that someone will betray her. We assume it’s one of the six.
There’s another important betrayal that’s never mentioned outright. Should a teacher put her pupils in such a position in the first place? Regardless, Miss Brodie creates far more questionable situations, with damaging outcomes for three girls, including one not in Miss Brodie’s set, but acting under her influence.
Back to my Venn diagram, Miss Brodie is unarguably memorable, and she was good in the sense of effective, but she was bad - as she is portrayed here - in the wider, moral sense.
But maybe the unknown omniscient narrator seeks to justify themselves, as Miss Brodie did.
Perhaps a Catholic half-believes in Calvinistic predestination?
Maybe the narrator is prone to imaginative flights of fancy, as Sandy and Jenny were?
Maybe the narrator is Sandy?
Image: Broken trust (Source.)
Quotes
• “Vastly informed on a lot of subjects irrelevant to the authorised curriculum.”
• “The unfamiliar pineapple had the authentic taste and appearance of happiness.”
• “Goodness, Truth and Beauty come first.”
• “Art is greater than science… Art and religion first; then philosophy; lastly science.”
• “[Teachers] who had stalked past Miss Brodie… saying ‘good morning’ with predestination in their smiles.”
• “Dazzled by their new subjects… [until] the languages of physics and chemistry, algebra and geometry had lost their elemental strangeness… and become hard work.”
• “He looked at her with love and she looked at him severely and possessively.”
• “She looked… with the near-blackmailing insolence of her knowledge.”
• “Everyone likes to visit a nun, it provides a spiritual sensation.”
July 10, 2017
I know I’ve had this happen to me before, be surprised by a book. Let me explain. As I started reading The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, I imagine I would like it. Yes, I did. However, as I finished Muriel Spark’s novel my sentiments were much stronger. I knew that I had to read it again sometime soon. That has happened to me before, and don’t get me wrong, there have been many books that had the same impact on me. Like The Lover, Madame Bovary and Atonement, just to mention three of my favorite books. However, I just did not expect to feel it so strongly here.
There is a reason for that. This is a book about our perceptions of ourselves and of the people around us, and it is flawlessly done. Spark’s narrative is crisply and wryly witty, subtly ironic in its tone.
It's a fast and fun read, very scintillating and brilliantly structured. Spark has a mastery over her material, which few writers that I know have. She moves from time frame to time frame or from reality to imaginative fantasy, frequently without any transition.
The plot concerns the unconventional schoolteacher, Miss Jean Brodie, and tells how she seeks to influence a chosen group of schoolgirls - the so-called 'Brodie Set'. They are introduced to us as six pre-adolescent girls and are charming but flawed. Their fates are something that you end caring for deeply.
When Spark introduces one of her set, we are first exposed to her style:
As she plays with her narrative, going forward and backward in time, and going into the fanciful daydreams of the girls – particularly in the figure of Miss Brodie’s most promising student, Sandy – the story reads so easily that it could delude the reader to think it was effortlessly done.
This is one of the few books I've read where it seems entirely blatant that the author is in complete control of every aspect of her narrative. She writes with a richness that injects life into her work. The author is somehow able to pack a vast number of well-cultivated characters and expand into their lives and dreams into this 150-page book.
This seems to be the perfect description of Miss Jean Brodie:
Much of the novel is relayed through the eyes of Sandy, who becomes a confidante of the teacher. Miss Brodie virtually wages war on the school; as the beleaguered headmistress, Miss Mackay attempts to reign in her disturbing influence on the girls and find a way to force the teacher to resign. It is true that Miss Brodie tends to tell the girls about her ideas and love affairs, rather than drilling them with their lessons, but they are still her 'creme de la creme'.
For me, the book is about more than just a bunch of schoolgirls growing up. It's about passion, and friendship, superficial and otherwise, and the disappointment of seeing your idols as mere human beings with their constant need to belong that is such a normal feeling in us all. Despite all critic that we can lay at Miss Brodie for her meddling with her pupils, there is no doubt that they idolized her and enjoyed being in her care:
What delighted me was Spark's use of irony, humor, and finely controlled development. The author shines at character sketches, not only of Miss Brodie and her set, but also gives us considerable portraits of the sexy one armed art teacher, the shy music teacher, and even the limited but funny and rather inept and awkward headmistress. Spark catches accurately the malleable, romantic, changing perceptions of her supposedly sheltered girls as they grow up.
Brodie's is a tight-knit group, but, inevitably, one of her charges begins to see the dangers of Brodie's self-centered agenda, ending up betraying her. In the narrative, we read how Miss Brodie defines her pupils, Sandy, she calls insightful. Others are regarded as knowledgeable about sex or even stupid. Thus, we start to see how the teacher becomes a despot. We know for a fact that mentors, as any human being, are not always what they seem. Miss Brodie seems herself to reveal aspects of adolescent rebellion. And she revels in her influence, while her protégés are forced to mature too quickly. Miss Brodie admits openly how the admiration of her impressionable set is important to her:
Miss Brodie in her prime becomes an idealized and nurturing teacher for certain selected students. She repeatedly tells the girls their destinies as she sees them (and not always nicely); she goes to the extreme of encouraging one of them to have an affair with a married man, exactly the art teacher whom Miss Brodie seems to love.
At the same time, her humanity and flaws are all too clear - she idealizes Hitler, Franco, and Mussolini. The novel is set in the cultural backdrop of 1930's Edinburgh, and its puritanical environment. The wider background also appears in the Spanish civil war and the rise of fascism, which Miss Brodie fiercely and naively admires. However, this has to be viewed in its historical context, since fascist sympathies were fairly common in Britain before the war.
The fascisti are very present for the Brodie set:
Spark's vivid characterizations becomes an incantation-like repetition of certain phrases like 'creme de la creme' or 'in my prime'.
Despite the fact that Miss Brodie does not make up for a good role model or is far from being the ideal mentor for young girls, I could not help but be enthralled by her. And her imperfections are blatant. However, we can recognize several people we know in Miss Brodie. Starting with her disregard and even disrespect for others, who can say never to have sinned so? Here we have to be honest and include ourselves since everybody shares a little of Miss Brodie’s idiosyncrasies. For she is strong-willed and determined, intelligent and independent, and yet she is vulnerable because she wants so desperately to be revered by ‘her girls’ and be loved by the men in her otherwise lonely life.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a book that deserves to be read by everyone. Highly recommended!
_____
There is a reason for that. This is a book about our perceptions of ourselves and of the people around us, and it is flawlessly done. Spark’s narrative is crisply and wryly witty, subtly ironic in its tone.
"Would that I had been given charge of you girls when you were seven. I sometimes fear it’s too late, now. If you had been mine when you were seven you would have been the crème de la crème. Sandy, come and read some stanzas and let us hear your vowel sounds.”
It's a fast and fun read, very scintillating and brilliantly structured. Spark has a mastery over her material, which few writers that I know have. She moves from time frame to time frame or from reality to imaginative fantasy, frequently without any transition.
The plot concerns the unconventional schoolteacher, Miss Jean Brodie, and tells how she seeks to influence a chosen group of schoolgirls - the so-called 'Brodie Set'. They are introduced to us as six pre-adolescent girls and are charming but flawed. Their fates are something that you end caring for deeply.
When Spark introduces one of her set, we are first exposed to her style:
Back and forth along the corridors ran Mary Macgregor, through the thickening smoke. She ran one way; then, turning, the other way; and at either end the blast furnace of the fire met her. She heard no screams, for the roar of the fire drowned the screams, she gave no scream, for the smoke was choking her. [...] But at the beginning of the nineteen-thirties, when Mary Macgregor was ten, there she was sitting blankly among Miss Brodie’s pupils. “Who has spilled ink on the floor – was it you, Mary?”
As she plays with her narrative, going forward and backward in time, and going into the fanciful daydreams of the girls – particularly in the figure of Miss Brodie’s most promising student, Sandy – the story reads so easily that it could delude the reader to think it was effortlessly done.
This is one of the few books I've read where it seems entirely blatant that the author is in complete control of every aspect of her narrative. She writes with a richness that injects life into her work. The author is somehow able to pack a vast number of well-cultivated characters and expand into their lives and dreams into this 150-page book.
This seems to be the perfect description of Miss Jean Brodie:
She was not in any doubt, she let everyone know she was in no doubt, that God was on her side whatever her course, and so she experienced no difficulty or sense of hypocrisy in worship while at the same time she went to bed with the singing master. Just as an excessive sense of guilt can drive people to excessive action, so was Miss Brodie driven to it by an excessive lack of guilt.
Much of the novel is relayed through the eyes of Sandy, who becomes a confidante of the teacher. Miss Brodie virtually wages war on the school; as the beleaguered headmistress, Miss Mackay attempts to reign in her disturbing influence on the girls and find a way to force the teacher to resign. It is true that Miss Brodie tends to tell the girls about her ideas and love affairs, rather than drilling them with their lessons, but they are still her 'creme de la creme'.
“You know,” Sandy said, “these are supposed to be the happiest days of our lives.”
“Yes, they are always saying that,” Jenny said. “They say, make the most of your schooldays because you never know what lies ahead of you.”
“Miss Brodie says prime is best,” Sandy said.
“Yes, but she never got married like our mothers and fathers.”
“They don’t have primes,” said Sandy.
“They have sexual intercourse,” Jenny said.
For me, the book is about more than just a bunch of schoolgirls growing up. It's about passion, and friendship, superficial and otherwise, and the disappointment of seeing your idols as mere human beings with their constant need to belong that is such a normal feeling in us all. Despite all critic that we can lay at Miss Brodie for her meddling with her pupils, there is no doubt that they idolized her and enjoyed being in her care:
Mary MacGregor, although she lived into her twenty-fourth year, never quite realised that Jean Brodie’s confidences were not shared with the rest of the staff and that her love-story was given out only to the pupils. […] On one occasion of real misery – when her first and last boy friend, a corporal whom she had known for two weeks, deserted her by failing to turn up at an appointed place and failing to come near her again – she thought back to see if she had ever been happy in her life; it occurred to her then that the first years with Miss Brodie, sitting listening to all those stories and opinions which had nothing to do with the ordinary world, had been the happiest time of her life.
What delighted me was Spark's use of irony, humor, and finely controlled development. The author shines at character sketches, not only of Miss Brodie and her set, but also gives us considerable portraits of the sexy one armed art teacher, the shy music teacher, and even the limited but funny and rather inept and awkward headmistress. Spark catches accurately the malleable, romantic, changing perceptions of her supposedly sheltered girls as they grow up.
Brodie's is a tight-knit group, but, inevitably, one of her charges begins to see the dangers of Brodie's self-centered agenda, ending up betraying her. In the narrative, we read how Miss Brodie defines her pupils, Sandy, she calls insightful. Others are regarded as knowledgeable about sex or even stupid. Thus, we start to see how the teacher becomes a despot. We know for a fact that mentors, as any human being, are not always what they seem. Miss Brodie seems herself to reveal aspects of adolescent rebellion. And she revels in her influence, while her protégés are forced to mature too quickly. Miss Brodie admits openly how the admiration of her impressionable set is important to her:
“Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.”
Miss Brodie in her prime becomes an idealized and nurturing teacher for certain selected students. She repeatedly tells the girls their destinies as she sees them (and not always nicely); she goes to the extreme of encouraging one of them to have an affair with a married man, exactly the art teacher whom Miss Brodie seems to love.
"It was plain that Miss Brodie wanted Rose with her instinct to start preparing to be Teddy Lloyd’s lover and Sandy with her insight to act as an informant on the affair. It was to this end that Rose and Sandy had been chosen as the crème de la crème. There was a whiff of sulphur about the idea which fascinated Sandy in her present mind. After all, it was only an idea. And there was no pressing hurry in the matter, for Miss Brodie liked to take her leisure over the unfolding of her plans, most of the joy deriving from the preparation, […]"
At the same time, her humanity and flaws are all too clear - she idealizes Hitler, Franco, and Mussolini. The novel is set in the cultural backdrop of 1930's Edinburgh, and its puritanical environment. The wider background also appears in the Spanish civil war and the rise of fascism, which Miss Brodie fiercely and naively admires. However, this has to be viewed in its historical context, since fascist sympathies were fairly common in Britain before the war.
The fascisti are very present for the Brodie set:
"It occured to Sandy [...] that the Brodie set was Miss Brodie's fascisti, not to the naked eye, marching along, but all knit together for her need and in another way, marching along. That was all right, but it seemed, too, that Miss Brodie's disapproval of the Girl Guides had jealousy in it, there was an inconsistency, a fault. Perhaps the Guides were too much a rival fascisti, and Miss Brodie could not bear it. Sandy thought she might see about joining the Brownies. Then the group-fright seized her again, and it was necessary to put the idea aside, because she loved Miss Brodie."
Spark's vivid characterizations becomes an incantation-like repetition of certain phrases like 'creme de la creme' or 'in my prime'.
Despite the fact that Miss Brodie does not make up for a good role model or is far from being the ideal mentor for young girls, I could not help but be enthralled by her. And her imperfections are blatant. However, we can recognize several people we know in Miss Brodie. Starting with her disregard and even disrespect for others, who can say never to have sinned so? Here we have to be honest and include ourselves since everybody shares a little of Miss Brodie’s idiosyncrasies. For she is strong-willed and determined, intelligent and independent, and yet she is vulnerable because she wants so desperately to be revered by ‘her girls’ and be loved by the men in her otherwise lonely life.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a book that deserves to be read by everyone. Highly recommended!
_____
May 27, 2019
Sex, art and politics. Three areas of life where idealism can get stuck in and have a field day. Miss Brodie has made a vocation of applying gold glitter to her preferences in life and seeks with single-minded righteousness to create a likeness of herself in her pupils. But in this novel Muriel Spark shows us she's not a great fan of idealism. In fact, she mercilessly ridicules it as a philosophical blueprint.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie sets itself up as a moral fable. Except it refuses to answer any of the moral questions it throws up in any pat convenient fashion. We have a classroom where there are two guiding lights - the ostensibly inspiring and progressive Miss Brodie, the teacher, and the ostensibly repressive mediocre headmistress, Miss Mackay. At face value it would appear a straightforward struggle between an admirable advocate of free thought and a life-sapping advocate of rote learning. No hesitation here on who one is going to side with. But Spark throws one firecracker after another into the mix. Miss Brodie becomes more and more morally questionable, not least for her cheap reactionary enthusiasm for fascism. The headmistress, whatever faults she might have, is not a supporter of Mussolini and Hitler, "strong men" as Brodie calls them. Miss Mackay articulates in her mediocre cerebration the fraught moral ambivalence fizzing throughout this novel when she tells one of her pupils: "You are very fortunate in Miss Brodie. I could wish your arithmetic papers were better. I am always impressed by Miss Brodie's girls in one way or another. You will have to work at ordinary humble subjects for the qualifying examination. Miss Brodie is giving you an excellent preparation for the senior school. Culture cannot compensate for lack of hard knowledge. I am happy to see you are devoted to Miss Brodie. Your loyalty is due to the school rather than to any one individual."
The generous inspiring teacher awakening the sensibilities of her pupils has become a cliché of unalloyed virtue in our culture. But Spark refuses to go down this beaten path. She takes us into the woods. In fact, it's highly questionable whether Miss Brodie's influence has any positive repercussions on any of her girls in later life. I loved it!
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie sets itself up as a moral fable. Except it refuses to answer any of the moral questions it throws up in any pat convenient fashion. We have a classroom where there are two guiding lights - the ostensibly inspiring and progressive Miss Brodie, the teacher, and the ostensibly repressive mediocre headmistress, Miss Mackay. At face value it would appear a straightforward struggle between an admirable advocate of free thought and a life-sapping advocate of rote learning. No hesitation here on who one is going to side with. But Spark throws one firecracker after another into the mix. Miss Brodie becomes more and more morally questionable, not least for her cheap reactionary enthusiasm for fascism. The headmistress, whatever faults she might have, is not a supporter of Mussolini and Hitler, "strong men" as Brodie calls them. Miss Mackay articulates in her mediocre cerebration the fraught moral ambivalence fizzing throughout this novel when she tells one of her pupils: "You are very fortunate in Miss Brodie. I could wish your arithmetic papers were better. I am always impressed by Miss Brodie's girls in one way or another. You will have to work at ordinary humble subjects for the qualifying examination. Miss Brodie is giving you an excellent preparation for the senior school. Culture cannot compensate for lack of hard knowledge. I am happy to see you are devoted to Miss Brodie. Your loyalty is due to the school rather than to any one individual."
The generous inspiring teacher awakening the sensibilities of her pupils has become a cliché of unalloyed virtue in our culture. But Spark refuses to go down this beaten path. She takes us into the woods. In fact, it's highly questionable whether Miss Brodie's influence has any positive repercussions on any of her girls in later life. I loved it!
January 17, 2014
Henry Louis Vivian Derozio is a name possibly not known or cared for beyond the frontiers of India.
At the tender age of 17 this man of Anglo-Indian descent, possessing a sharp intellect and an even sharper tongue, was already a Professor of English Literature and History, busy influencing a group of eager, well-bred young men hailing from affluent Bengali families in Calcutta. He became a leading figure in the age of socio-cultural reform movements in Bengal in the dawn of the 19th century through his dissemination of Western philosophical and scientific ideas at a time when our society was stagnating in a cesspool of ignorance and blind prejudices. And his close-knit group of brilliant young students of the Hindu College who were referred to by the smart moniker of 'Derozians', much in the same manner of the ill-famed 'Brodie set' of TPOMJB, were viewed with as much suspicion as unacknowledged respect. But following the pattern of reception of new ideas which are regarded 'radical' and therefore dangerously subversive in their times, Derozio was expelled from the Hindu College and this in turn applied an abrupt brake on the Young Bengal movement.
As much as my teenage self had looked upon the Derozio name and his legacy with a kind of starry-eyed deference, post-acquaintance with a fictional educator as sociopathic and ambiguous as Miss Jean Brodie, I am forced to view this whole idea of an inspirational teacher weaning a student away from conventional methods of learning with utmost skepticism. No I do not intend to overlook Derozio's small but significant contribution to the collective betterment of our society of the times which in turn greatly aided the nationalist movement later on. But maybe, it will be wise to probe deeper for the unadulterated truth rather than be so guilelessly accepting. I am sure both Muriel Spark and Derozio himself would have approved.
Young, impressionable minds being shaped according to someone else's personal standards of nauseating elitism and if one is unlucky enough to fall under the spell of some conniving Miss Jean Brodie in her prime, being sucked right into a sinister trap.
What a slippery slope this is! This setting about to correct the course undertaken by a young learner under the facade of challenging conformity, with a perverse sense of authoritarian entitlement.
'I know better than you, therefore you must follow my instructions.'
In the way of Miss Jean Brodie's attempts at manipulating adolescent girls into competing with each other to be made a part of her venerated 'crème de la crème', people of insidious intent devise ways of propagating some attractive piece of ideology with confident pronouncements of it being the 'path of righteousness' and all that familiar drivel.
Which is why I now realize how treacherous traversing this distance between not knowing and knowing a little better is - there's no way to fill up the vacuum of ignorance other than with information in any form that is available nearby and you better hope that pedagogical influence of the likes of the magnetic Miss Jean Brodies of the world does not hold free reign in the vicinity at the time.
It's been a while since something quite as innocuous sounding as the above claim has left me feeling so deeply unsettled.
At the tender age of 17 this man of Anglo-Indian descent, possessing a sharp intellect and an even sharper tongue, was already a Professor of English Literature and History, busy influencing a group of eager, well-bred young men hailing from affluent Bengali families in Calcutta. He became a leading figure in the age of socio-cultural reform movements in Bengal in the dawn of the 19th century through his dissemination of Western philosophical and scientific ideas at a time when our society was stagnating in a cesspool of ignorance and blind prejudices. And his close-knit group of brilliant young students of the Hindu College who were referred to by the smart moniker of 'Derozians', much in the same manner of the ill-famed 'Brodie set' of TPOMJB, were viewed with as much suspicion as unacknowledged respect. But following the pattern of reception of new ideas which are regarded 'radical' and therefore dangerously subversive in their times, Derozio was expelled from the Hindu College and this in turn applied an abrupt brake on the Young Bengal movement.
As much as my teenage self had looked upon the Derozio name and his legacy with a kind of starry-eyed deference, post-acquaintance with a fictional educator as sociopathic and ambiguous as Miss Jean Brodie, I am forced to view this whole idea of an inspirational teacher weaning a student away from conventional methods of learning with utmost skepticism. No I do not intend to overlook Derozio's small but significant contribution to the collective betterment of our society of the times which in turn greatly aided the nationalist movement later on. But maybe, it will be wise to probe deeper for the unadulterated truth rather than be so guilelessly accepting. I am sure both Muriel Spark and Derozio himself would have approved.
Young, impressionable minds being shaped according to someone else's personal standards of nauseating elitism and if one is unlucky enough to fall under the spell of some conniving Miss Jean Brodie in her prime, being sucked right into a sinister trap.
What a slippery slope this is! This setting about to correct the course undertaken by a young learner under the facade of challenging conformity, with a perverse sense of authoritarian entitlement.
'I know better than you, therefore you must follow my instructions.'
In the way of Miss Jean Brodie's attempts at manipulating adolescent girls into competing with each other to be made a part of her venerated 'crème de la crème', people of insidious intent devise ways of propagating some attractive piece of ideology with confident pronouncements of it being the 'path of righteousness' and all that familiar drivel.
Which is why I now realize how treacherous traversing this distance between not knowing and knowing a little better is - there's no way to fill up the vacuum of ignorance other than with information in any form that is available nearby and you better hope that pedagogical influence of the likes of the magnetic Miss Jean Brodies of the world does not hold free reign in the vicinity at the time.
"Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life."
It's been a while since something quite as innocuous sounding as the above claim has left me feeling so deeply unsettled.
November 12, 2023
I BEATI ANNI DEL FULGORE
Maggie Smitt interpreta Miss Jean Brodie nel film, ruolo che le valse l’Oscar come migliore attrice protagonista.
Miss Brodie non si confidava con le colleghe: la sua storia d’amore la rivela soltanto alle sue allieve.
Miss Brodie racconta alle sue ragazze - prese a dieci anni e condotte fino all’adolescenza, anche se a questa età con frequentazione extra scolastica - tutte quelle storie e opinioni che non c’entravano niente con il mondo normale. E promette che farà di loro “la crème de la crème”.
Forse per questo gli anni spesi con lei, sotto la sua ala, rimangono i migliori nella vita di quelle bambine. Poi ragazze. Poi donne. Fino a che non capiscono, fino a che il loro mondo cambia.
Il film del 1969 è diretto da Ronald Neame.
Miss Brodie è anticonformista. Divide il suo amore – o forse meglio dire il suo slancio, a cominciare da quello fisico – tra il maestro di disegno e quello di musica: lei ha che ha una passione sfrenata per l’arte in genere, preferisce quella visiva alla musica. Ma il maestro di disegno è marito e padre, quello di musica single e libero: quindi, col primo non va oltre un bacio pieno di fulgore, un bacio indimenticabile, mentre col secondo divide pomeriggi, sere, e anche qualche nottata. Come dire, al primo regala il cuore, al secondo il suo corpo.
Il titolo del film in originale è lo stesso del romanzo: invece, in Italia, il film uscì col titolo “La strana voglia di Jean” che mi pare chiaro cosa volesse vellicare. Per fortuna non si arrivò a Jean-tutta-calda-coscialunga.
Si salta nel tempo contemporaneamente tra passato e futuro senza dimenticare il presente, si entra e si esce dal componimento pseudo letterario che due bambine, poi ragazze, compongono all’insegna del sentimentalismo più sfrenato, un mix di personaggi veri e altri presi a prestito dai momenti più romantici di Jane Austen. Spark anticipa, spoilera, e chissenefrega, è un’autentica meraviglia questo gioco di flashback e flashforward, è raro trovare salti così repentini, ed è ancora più raro poterli seguire senza mai smarrirsi.
Un assaggio della sua scrittura che definire originale è riduttivo, sempre segnata da una sottile linea di ironia:
Quella primavera la mamma di Jenny aspettava un bambino, non ci furono piogge degne d’essere ricordate e l’erba, il sole e gli uccelli, abbandonato l’egocentrico umore invernale, incominciarono a pensare anche agli altri. L’antica storia d’amore di Miss Brodie fu ricamata, sotto l’olmo, con nuovi e curiosi fili…
Miss Brodie trascorre le estati in Italia. Non ama per niente la chiesa cattolica, ma ama e ammira il duce e le camicie nere. In classe si esibisce in un saluto romano, spiegando la bellezza di quelle divise e di quel portamento, mischiando Mussolini con Giulio Cesare. Siamo all’alba degli anni Trenta, il fascismo italiano non è ancora un pericolo internazionale. Intanto in Germania Hitler è diventato cancelliere e Miss Brodie subisce anche il fascino delle sue Camicie Brune e per le vacanze di quell’anno cambia mèta, Germania invece che Italia.
La sua attrazione verso tutti i fascismi la porta ad “ammaestrare” una nuova protetta in modo perversa: la giovane vuole partire per la Spagna, per raggiungere suo fratello e unirsi alla lotta repubblicana – Miss Brodie la spinge sì a partire, ma la convince ad aggregarsi alle forse di Franco. Solo che lungo la strada…
Il gruppo scelto è composto da sei ragazze: sei, proprio la metà degli apostoli. E il paragone è meno peregrino di quanto si possa pensare perché non è così esagerato notare che Miss Brodie si pone davanti alle sue protegée come incarnazione di dio (anche se non esattamente il dio cattolico, più quello calvinista, o metodista, o presbiteriano, o evangelico…).
Ma nonostante le sue apostole sia solo sei, una di loro assumerà il ruolo che si dice fu di Giuda Iscariota: la tradirà con la direttrice della scuola, che ne approfitterà per liberarsi finalmente dell’ingombrante e troppo autonoma Miss Brodie.
Cacciata da scuola, chiuderà subito il ciclo dei suoi anni fulgenti per spegnersi definitivamente poco dopo.
Maggie Smitt interpreta Miss Jean Brodie nel film, ruolo che le valse l’Oscar come migliore attrice protagonista.
Miss Brodie non si confidava con le colleghe: la sua storia d’amore la rivela soltanto alle sue allieve.
Miss Brodie racconta alle sue ragazze - prese a dieci anni e condotte fino all’adolescenza, anche se a questa età con frequentazione extra scolastica - tutte quelle storie e opinioni che non c’entravano niente con il mondo normale. E promette che farà di loro “la crème de la crème”.
Forse per questo gli anni spesi con lei, sotto la sua ala, rimangono i migliori nella vita di quelle bambine. Poi ragazze. Poi donne. Fino a che non capiscono, fino a che il loro mondo cambia.
Il film del 1969 è diretto da Ronald Neame.
Miss Brodie è anticonformista. Divide il suo amore – o forse meglio dire il suo slancio, a cominciare da quello fisico – tra il maestro di disegno e quello di musica: lei ha che ha una passione sfrenata per l’arte in genere, preferisce quella visiva alla musica. Ma il maestro di disegno è marito e padre, quello di musica single e libero: quindi, col primo non va oltre un bacio pieno di fulgore, un bacio indimenticabile, mentre col secondo divide pomeriggi, sere, e anche qualche nottata. Come dire, al primo regala il cuore, al secondo il suo corpo.
Il titolo del film in originale è lo stesso del romanzo: invece, in Italia, il film uscì col titolo “La strana voglia di Jean” che mi pare chiaro cosa volesse vellicare. Per fortuna non si arrivò a Jean-tutta-calda-coscialunga.
Si salta nel tempo contemporaneamente tra passato e futuro senza dimenticare il presente, si entra e si esce dal componimento pseudo letterario che due bambine, poi ragazze, compongono all’insegna del sentimentalismo più sfrenato, un mix di personaggi veri e altri presi a prestito dai momenti più romantici di Jane Austen. Spark anticipa, spoilera, e chissenefrega, è un’autentica meraviglia questo gioco di flashback e flashforward, è raro trovare salti così repentini, ed è ancora più raro poterli seguire senza mai smarrirsi.
Un assaggio della sua scrittura che definire originale è riduttivo, sempre segnata da una sottile linea di ironia:
Quella primavera la mamma di Jenny aspettava un bambino, non ci furono piogge degne d’essere ricordate e l’erba, il sole e gli uccelli, abbandonato l’egocentrico umore invernale, incominciarono a pensare anche agli altri. L’antica storia d’amore di Miss Brodie fu ricamata, sotto l’olmo, con nuovi e curiosi fili…
Miss Brodie trascorre le estati in Italia. Non ama per niente la chiesa cattolica, ma ama e ammira il duce e le camicie nere. In classe si esibisce in un saluto romano, spiegando la bellezza di quelle divise e di quel portamento, mischiando Mussolini con Giulio Cesare. Siamo all’alba degli anni Trenta, il fascismo italiano non è ancora un pericolo internazionale. Intanto in Germania Hitler è diventato cancelliere e Miss Brodie subisce anche il fascino delle sue Camicie Brune e per le vacanze di quell’anno cambia mèta, Germania invece che Italia.
La sua attrazione verso tutti i fascismi la porta ad “ammaestrare” una nuova protetta in modo perversa: la giovane vuole partire per la Spagna, per raggiungere suo fratello e unirsi alla lotta repubblicana – Miss Brodie la spinge sì a partire, ma la convince ad aggregarsi alle forse di Franco. Solo che lungo la strada…
Il gruppo scelto è composto da sei ragazze: sei, proprio la metà degli apostoli. E il paragone è meno peregrino di quanto si possa pensare perché non è così esagerato notare che Miss Brodie si pone davanti alle sue protegée come incarnazione di dio (anche se non esattamente il dio cattolico, più quello calvinista, o metodista, o presbiteriano, o evangelico…).
Ma nonostante le sue apostole sia solo sei, una di loro assumerà il ruolo che si dice fu di Giuda Iscariota: la tradirà con la direttrice della scuola, che ne approfitterà per liberarsi finalmente dell’ingombrante e troppo autonoma Miss Brodie.
Cacciata da scuola, chiuderà subito il ciclo dei suoi anni fulgenti per spegnersi definitivamente poco dopo.
January 9, 2020
During the latter half of 2019, I noted that many GR friends were reading Muriel Spark. Quite a few reviews of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie popped up on the site. I had seen the movie starring Maggie Smith as Jean Brodie and remembered her portrayal well. I decided I best read one of her novels as I hadn’t done so to date.
Set in 1930’s Scotland, Jean Brodie teaches in a small private school in Edinburgh. She takes a few favored young girls under her wing to teach them the ways of the world from her perspective which are seen by many as unconventional. Her chosen girls become known as the Brodie set. At first her ideals seem innocent, but as the book progresses a permeating darkness appears.
The book is narrated by Sandy, one of the Brodie set. Through her young eyes we see a subtle humor in their circumstances. Most significantly with the love life of their teacher who doesn’t find it necessary to restrain herself with all the details. Brodie’s passion and independence influence the Set’s behavior. They hold themselves above others in the school. Behind the scenes, however, develops an increasing influence that is both lovable and cruel. Mss Brodie’s control turns manipulative. She speaks of fascism and fantasy. Jean Brodie plans their future, until someone close betrays her. There are many hidden depths to this book.
Although Jean Brodie’s actions are disturbing, I couldn’t help but feel bad for her throughout the book. Her forced early retirement is sad.
A lovely book and a favorite.
5 out of 5 stars
Set in 1930’s Scotland, Jean Brodie teaches in a small private school in Edinburgh. She takes a few favored young girls under her wing to teach them the ways of the world from her perspective which are seen by many as unconventional. Her chosen girls become known as the Brodie set. At first her ideals seem innocent, but as the book progresses a permeating darkness appears.
The book is narrated by Sandy, one of the Brodie set. Through her young eyes we see a subtle humor in their circumstances. Most significantly with the love life of their teacher who doesn’t find it necessary to restrain herself with all the details. Brodie’s passion and independence influence the Set’s behavior. They hold themselves above others in the school. Behind the scenes, however, develops an increasing influence that is both lovable and cruel. Mss Brodie’s control turns manipulative. She speaks of fascism and fantasy. Jean Brodie plans their future, until someone close betrays her. There are many hidden depths to this book.
Although Jean Brodie’s actions are disturbing, I couldn’t help but feel bad for her throughout the book. Her forced early retirement is sad.
A lovely book and a favorite.
5 out of 5 stars
May 20, 2023
Most everybody well-versed on Muriel Spark suggests this book as a starting point with the prolific Scottish author. So, I started with this one. But if I had been one of the “Brodie set”, or indeed Miss Brodie herself, I would probably have started elsewhere.
Would that have been wise or simply redundant? Would I have had demonstrated an independent spirit or just a self-righteous tendency to go against the flow at all costs? Miss Brodie would have claimed the former.
In my case, of course, the cost was negligible; even if the plot hadn’t turned out as good as expected, it would have provided the certainty that the writing was plainly brilliant and worth further investigation. As it is, I really liked the novel as a whole and I’m grateful to Muriel Spark for elevating my safe choice to a wise one. She wasn’t as gracious with her colorful protagonist, whose defiant choices weren’t always received with equal contentment by her milieu.
Who is Jean Brodie in her prime? Not simply a teacher at an all-girls school in Edinburgh in the 1930s (inspired by the author’s real-life tutor Miss Kay, who believed that education should “lead out” what was already there rather than “put in”) but an ambiguous character, open to all kinds of interpretation on the part of the reader – and on the part of her students. The “Brodie set”, a selected group of six girls at that most impressionable, pre-pubescent age, is supposedly destined to become “the crème de la crème” not only through their exposure to their mentor’s stories and opinions, that have nothing to do with their ordinary world, but also through her (not always conscious) machinations. Her obscure motives turn this deceptively simple story into a fascinating, complex read.
For all its insinuations Spark’s prose is straightforward in its plot development and dialogue. But only there. In the end it left me wondering:
-Was this a moral, a political or a sexual tale?
-Was Miss Brodie an enlightened pedagogue or a manipulative egocentric? A liberated, sensual woman or a disillusioned spinster “who couldn’t stand it anymore”? An idealist or a misled fantasist?
-Was she even the protagonist or was the leading part snatched off her by the same character who kept betraying her on many levels throughout the book?
-Was this a tale of ideas (individualism vs collectivism, progressiveness vs conformity, loyalty vs antagonism) or a parable on the themes of Judas’s betrayal and Christian guilt?
Spark doesn’t preach, dote or condemn. Neither does she answer any of the above. I found the novel deliciously entertaining and multi-layered enough to keep me transfixed from beginning to end. Safe choices are not that bad after all – sorry, Miss Brodie.
Much obliged for an intriguing introduction to your author; she, too, upstaged you, but it was your story that managed to leave me wanting for more.
Would that have been wise or simply redundant? Would I have had demonstrated an independent spirit or just a self-righteous tendency to go against the flow at all costs? Miss Brodie would have claimed the former.
In my case, of course, the cost was negligible; even if the plot hadn’t turned out as good as expected, it would have provided the certainty that the writing was plainly brilliant and worth further investigation. As it is, I really liked the novel as a whole and I’m grateful to Muriel Spark for elevating my safe choice to a wise one. She wasn’t as gracious with her colorful protagonist, whose defiant choices weren’t always received with equal contentment by her milieu.
Who is Jean Brodie in her prime? Not simply a teacher at an all-girls school in Edinburgh in the 1930s (inspired by the author’s real-life tutor Miss Kay, who believed that education should “lead out” what was already there rather than “put in”) but an ambiguous character, open to all kinds of interpretation on the part of the reader – and on the part of her students. The “Brodie set”, a selected group of six girls at that most impressionable, pre-pubescent age, is supposedly destined to become “the crème de la crème” not only through their exposure to their mentor’s stories and opinions, that have nothing to do with their ordinary world, but also through her (not always conscious) machinations. Her obscure motives turn this deceptively simple story into a fascinating, complex read.
For all its insinuations Spark’s prose is straightforward in its plot development and dialogue. But only there. In the end it left me wondering:
-Was this a moral, a political or a sexual tale?
-Was Miss Brodie an enlightened pedagogue or a manipulative egocentric? A liberated, sensual woman or a disillusioned spinster “who couldn’t stand it anymore”? An idealist or a misled fantasist?
-Was she even the protagonist or was the leading part snatched off her by the same character who kept betraying her on many levels throughout the book?
-Was this a tale of ideas (individualism vs collectivism, progressiveness vs conformity, loyalty vs antagonism) or a parable on the themes of Judas’s betrayal and Christian guilt?
Spark doesn’t preach, dote or condemn. Neither does she answer any of the above. I found the novel deliciously entertaining and multi-layered enough to keep me transfixed from beginning to end. Safe choices are not that bad after all – sorry, Miss Brodie.
Much obliged for an intriguing introduction to your author; she, too, upstaged you, but it was your story that managed to leave me wanting for more.
December 16, 2023
At an old school in Scotland
There were six little girls
Hand-picked for a glimpse
Into Jean Brodie's world.
She was in her prime
And with a little dedication
Would make of them
The crème de la crème.
(On second reading I found the novel to be somewhat underwhelming. Tame, lacking zing--except when the protagonist opens her mouth to speak. Jean Brodie, with her soft spot for fascist dictators, remains a goddess, and so all secondary characters inadvertently pale in comparison--even the members of her set become less interesting once she is no longer their teacher. The History Boys, my personal favorite in the influential teachers genre, owes much to Jean Brodie, I'm sure.)
May 23, 2019
Nothing infuriates people more than their own lack of spiritual insight…
There are very few books which get hold of you from the very first line, for the words are refined with such a surgical precision that you may realize, any sort of modification would come as superfluous and redundant. The authors, who may control the great literary baton to such an effect that there seems to be a pleasing unison between mind and words, are one of the most endangered species. For one always overdo something until one refines it. But there are a few authors who seem to control the mind of readers through an unseen but profound string of narrative which they pull along or otherwise as and when they please. Many a times, we see that people digress much, though sometimes intentionally, to put forward their views which may be clouded. However, we have intellectually unclouded authors such as Muriel Spark who are not prone to descriptive digression, and are able to find the kind of symmetries, echoes and reflections that are a manifestation of the naturally poetic vision. For poetry doesn’t necessarily mean impasto or excrescence, but an infinite unpackability, with which the work of the clean-lined writer is richly pregnant. Spark is one of those authors who neither seduced by nor convinced of the seductive effects of nimiety or explication. Partly this is because she is a poet, and partly it is because she makes characters who are at once individuals and archetypes. It is also because she is technician of the highest order. The restraint and control of the technique render the creation not flat but right.
The Brodie’s set were small girls firstly under the glamour of a woman who herself was glamorized by Fascism, by romantic death, by war, by myth, by the old songs, and of course by what she refers to as Goodness, truth and beauty. Miss Brodie, who always said of herself that she was in her prime, was in love with Mr. Lloyd, the art master, but he was married, so she gave him up. Instead she had a love affair with Mr. Lowther, the music master. He tired of her & married Miss Lockhart, the science teacher. After that, Miss Brodie concentrated on the eventuality of a love affair between Rose, one of her set, who modelled for Mr. Lloyd. She derived a vicarious pleasure from this. She confided in Sandy, another member of her set. We see Brodie’s determination to instill a love of art and beauty in her pupils, witness her defiance of educational orthodoxy and learn of her relations with a raffish art teacher and a shy music master. We are also reminded of Brodie’s unstinting admiration for Mussolini. She is also, we are reminded, a charismatic fascist. She finds a vibrant charm in fascism, which according to her, carries an air of art. Although Brodie claims education is “a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul”, she is actually a rigid dogmatist, firmly announcing that Giotto is the greatest Italian artist, and even a classroom pimp in her attempt to manipulate the sexual progress of her girls. One of the novel’s achievements is the spare but realistic way that Spark maps out their sexual awakening. When first her set is devised, the girls are ten years old and on the verge of raising questions about their own sexualities. Miss Brodie’s hubristic desire for a heightened life; the easiness with which lies come to her; her cultural snobberies and limitations; her desire for control and victory, reflects her faults. Miss Brodie plans to control and manipulate the lives of her girls- Brodie’s set. But you realize that Spark actually controls the narrative of the book through girls of Brodie’s set. We see a constant struggle of individuality of the girls of Brodie's with the collective identity of the set, to come out of the influence of Miss Brodie and to realize life on their own.
You are very fortunate in Miss Brodie. I could wish your arithmetic papers had been better. I am always impressed by Miss Brodie’s girls in one way or another. You will have to work hard at ordinary humble subjects for the qualifying examination. Miss Brodie is giving you an excellent preparation of the Senior school. Culture cannot compensate for the lack of hard knowledge. I am happy to see you are devoted to Miss Brodie. Your loyalty is due to the school rather than to any one individual.
The use of time to control the narrative of the book is second to none, which is not stream-of-consciousness but the use of flashbacks and flash- forwards, it is one of the delicious discomfitures offered by the work of Spark -her swiveling proleptic use of time. We see that the book keeps on moving to and fro in timeline as if the movement between the present and future is intercepted by uncertainties of the past, the glimpses of a tree is seen before sowing of seed. This technique allows for certain, character-forming pieces of information to be revealed at opportune moments, rather than as they might have become apparent if the narrative was to follow a traditional chronology.The author of the book cleverly uses duplication while moving effortlessly through time, the trick is quite masterfully used to manipulate the memory of the readers in way so that narrator does not leave his/ her readers and always guides the reader as he/ she wants. This unique technique of Spark does not forclose upon suspense but rather tightens its momentum which underlines her might as an author. Spark also used laughter as one of the means of getting reality of the inescapable across her readers. The mortal relief in the universe is of laughter. Miss Brodie resorts to the rhetorical tricks and poses of staginess, the children resort to the self- dramatizing and internal escape of day-dreaming. There is an omnipresent third person narrator who controls the narrative of the book right through the end. One of the girls from the Brodie's set happens to write a book about metamorphosis of Brodie's set from commonplace. It is a coming of age psychology book about morality, it sows the seeds of skepticism in the mind of reader and you are bound to think whether this very book is the book which she writes, that's very smart and unique of Spark.
All of us have at least one such teacher who made us much of what we are, I came under influence of such a teacher around 10 years ago, he exposed me to classical literature and philosophy especially existentialism, nihilism and absurdism. It underlines the power of this great book whose themes being, in their concrete specific evocation of the commonplace, wonderfully transfigured, unforgettable and universal. The book is technically beyond praise. The pressure it exerts upon mind is controlled by a guiding spirit that reveals to us the moral universe while affording the refreshment of laughter and revelation. It is one of those deceptively thoughtful books which leave you baffled and sort of words with its undercurrent of themes which demand a careful study of the characters- perhaps disquieted but not really with the intent to re-read it, for you vividly remember what has transpired through the pages of this book but you are not sure whether you understood it the way it should have been or everyone has his/ her own understanding. And probably I’m not sure too whether I’ve done justice to the book, for I’ve not felt such helplessness to express what I feel.
4.5/5
There are very few books which get hold of you from the very first line, for the words are refined with such a surgical precision that you may realize, any sort of modification would come as superfluous and redundant. The authors, who may control the great literary baton to such an effect that there seems to be a pleasing unison between mind and words, are one of the most endangered species. For one always overdo something until one refines it. But there are a few authors who seem to control the mind of readers through an unseen but profound string of narrative which they pull along or otherwise as and when they please. Many a times, we see that people digress much, though sometimes intentionally, to put forward their views which may be clouded. However, we have intellectually unclouded authors such as Muriel Spark who are not prone to descriptive digression, and are able to find the kind of symmetries, echoes and reflections that are a manifestation of the naturally poetic vision. For poetry doesn’t necessarily mean impasto or excrescence, but an infinite unpackability, with which the work of the clean-lined writer is richly pregnant. Spark is one of those authors who neither seduced by nor convinced of the seductive effects of nimiety or explication. Partly this is because she is a poet, and partly it is because she makes characters who are at once individuals and archetypes. It is also because she is technician of the highest order. The restraint and control of the technique render the creation not flat but right.
The Brodie’s set were small girls firstly under the glamour of a woman who herself was glamorized by Fascism, by romantic death, by war, by myth, by the old songs, and of course by what she refers to as Goodness, truth and beauty. Miss Brodie, who always said of herself that she was in her prime, was in love with Mr. Lloyd, the art master, but he was married, so she gave him up. Instead she had a love affair with Mr. Lowther, the music master. He tired of her & married Miss Lockhart, the science teacher. After that, Miss Brodie concentrated on the eventuality of a love affair between Rose, one of her set, who modelled for Mr. Lloyd. She derived a vicarious pleasure from this. She confided in Sandy, another member of her set. We see Brodie’s determination to instill a love of art and beauty in her pupils, witness her defiance of educational orthodoxy and learn of her relations with a raffish art teacher and a shy music master. We are also reminded of Brodie’s unstinting admiration for Mussolini. She is also, we are reminded, a charismatic fascist. She finds a vibrant charm in fascism, which according to her, carries an air of art. Although Brodie claims education is “a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul”, she is actually a rigid dogmatist, firmly announcing that Giotto is the greatest Italian artist, and even a classroom pimp in her attempt to manipulate the sexual progress of her girls. One of the novel’s achievements is the spare but realistic way that Spark maps out their sexual awakening. When first her set is devised, the girls are ten years old and on the verge of raising questions about their own sexualities. Miss Brodie’s hubristic desire for a heightened life; the easiness with which lies come to her; her cultural snobberies and limitations; her desire for control and victory, reflects her faults. Miss Brodie plans to control and manipulate the lives of her girls- Brodie’s set. But you realize that Spark actually controls the narrative of the book through girls of Brodie’s set. We see a constant struggle of individuality of the girls of Brodie's with the collective identity of the set, to come out of the influence of Miss Brodie and to realize life on their own.
You are very fortunate in Miss Brodie. I could wish your arithmetic papers had been better. I am always impressed by Miss Brodie’s girls in one way or another. You will have to work hard at ordinary humble subjects for the qualifying examination. Miss Brodie is giving you an excellent preparation of the Senior school. Culture cannot compensate for the lack of hard knowledge. I am happy to see you are devoted to Miss Brodie. Your loyalty is due to the school rather than to any one individual.
The use of time to control the narrative of the book is second to none, which is not stream-of-consciousness but the use of flashbacks and flash- forwards, it is one of the delicious discomfitures offered by the work of Spark -her swiveling proleptic use of time. We see that the book keeps on moving to and fro in timeline as if the movement between the present and future is intercepted by uncertainties of the past, the glimpses of a tree is seen before sowing of seed. This technique allows for certain, character-forming pieces of information to be revealed at opportune moments, rather than as they might have become apparent if the narrative was to follow a traditional chronology.The author of the book cleverly uses duplication while moving effortlessly through time, the trick is quite masterfully used to manipulate the memory of the readers in way so that narrator does not leave his/ her readers and always guides the reader as he/ she wants. This unique technique of Spark does not forclose upon suspense but rather tightens its momentum which underlines her might as an author. Spark also used laughter as one of the means of getting reality of the inescapable across her readers. The mortal relief in the universe is of laughter. Miss Brodie resorts to the rhetorical tricks and poses of staginess, the children resort to the self- dramatizing and internal escape of day-dreaming. There is an omnipresent third person narrator who controls the narrative of the book right through the end. One of the girls from the Brodie's set happens to write a book about metamorphosis of Brodie's set from commonplace. It is a coming of age psychology book about morality, it sows the seeds of skepticism in the mind of reader and you are bound to think whether this very book is the book which she writes, that's very smart and unique of Spark.
All of us have at least one such teacher who made us much of what we are, I came under influence of such a teacher around 10 years ago, he exposed me to classical literature and philosophy especially existentialism, nihilism and absurdism. It underlines the power of this great book whose themes being, in their concrete specific evocation of the commonplace, wonderfully transfigured, unforgettable and universal. The book is technically beyond praise. The pressure it exerts upon mind is controlled by a guiding spirit that reveals to us the moral universe while affording the refreshment of laughter and revelation. It is one of those deceptively thoughtful books which leave you baffled and sort of words with its undercurrent of themes which demand a careful study of the characters- perhaps disquieted but not really with the intent to re-read it, for you vividly remember what has transpired through the pages of this book but you are not sure whether you understood it the way it should have been or everyone has his/ her own understanding. And probably I’m not sure too whether I’ve done justice to the book, for I’ve not felt such helplessness to express what I feel.
4.5/5
September 2, 2018
"Truth is stranger than fiction."
And that is a strange truth indeed considering the amount of strange things Muriel Spark manages to fit into her slim fiction.
Miss Brodie's prime is as strange a phenomenon as they come. She is both modern and traditional, radical and conservative, openminded and protectionist. She is a Natural Fascist in the 1930s, a Scottish schoolmistress by trade but a girl shaper by profession. Give her a girl at an impressionable age, and she will form out of that malleable clay the kind of portrait her heroes Mussolini and Hitler would have burned.
She sneaks into the portraits of one man while taking possession of the eating and sleeping habits of another, but it won't be possible for the desperate Headmistress to get rid of her relying on a sex scandal.
Politics, a mere side interest, will be her downfall, and her Judas will differ from the traditional one in the fact that she does not really feel guilt - one can only betray where loyalty is due, she thinks, and once you look underneath the shiny surface, all narcissists - even those in their prime - look ridiculous.
As stories go, this one sparkles just as much as a glass of vintage champagne.
For the record, though: don't try to achieve Miss Brodie's downfall by checking her drinking habits, she barely shares a half-bottle of sherry with her set of six girls on her birthday. That's it.
Politics, not sex and drugs, will bring her down, unlike most male narcissists, who get away with both fascism and unconventional sex.
And that is a strange truth indeed considering the amount of strange things Muriel Spark manages to fit into her slim fiction.
Miss Brodie's prime is as strange a phenomenon as they come. She is both modern and traditional, radical and conservative, openminded and protectionist. She is a Natural Fascist in the 1930s, a Scottish schoolmistress by trade but a girl shaper by profession. Give her a girl at an impressionable age, and she will form out of that malleable clay the kind of portrait her heroes Mussolini and Hitler would have burned.
She sneaks into the portraits of one man while taking possession of the eating and sleeping habits of another, but it won't be possible for the desperate Headmistress to get rid of her relying on a sex scandal.
Politics, a mere side interest, will be her downfall, and her Judas will differ from the traditional one in the fact that she does not really feel guilt - one can only betray where loyalty is due, she thinks, and once you look underneath the shiny surface, all narcissists - even those in their prime - look ridiculous.
As stories go, this one sparkles just as much as a glass of vintage champagne.
For the record, though: don't try to achieve Miss Brodie's downfall by checking her drinking habits, she barely shares a half-bottle of sherry with her set of six girls on her birthday. That's it.
Politics, not sex and drugs, will bring her down, unlike most male narcissists, who get away with both fascism and unconventional sex.
Read
July 25, 2019A masterpiece.
Rather like The Girls of Slender Means you are strongly aware of the economical construction, the careful rocking of the narrative backwards and forwards in time so that you know everything that will happen in the story in advance. Yet this has an odd effect in maintaining and sustaining the narrative, you are shifted from wanting to know what will happen, to how it will happen, to why it will happen, from events, dear boy, events to psychology.
As I approached the end of this simple story about schoolgirls, sex and their teacher, I thought I had realised something clever about the teacher, only to find on page 120 one of the characters thought the same thought as I had had, but more economically. After I had finished the book, I then, in my typical dark and suspicious mode of thinking began to dourly realise that I hadn't probably thought that thought at all, rather it had been planted by the author herself, which might be clever considering that she's dead .
This is to be expected, because this is a book about teaching and education, is education as the word implies, about leading forth, as one might lead a donkey up and down a beach, or is education about stuffing things into to the tender heads of young people? Naturally the author, who was not only Sparky but also witty and cunning does both. Actually this book makes me feel a bit sick, on bookshop shelves I see fat things, books that look to be half a tree thick, and here's this thing that's like an arrow. It could be shot through a shelf of over written tripe. I blame computers, in previous days when authors used manual typewriters and carbon paper, there was a real incentive not to type too much, just to spare your fingers.
Anyway, that's enough prattling, here is this terribly short book about schoolgirls, sex, teachers, education, God, and Fascism (not necessarily in that order). In which the author works on you by turns with a rasp or a hand plane. I read and think to myself "how was this done"? And I run my fingers over the page as though it was a cabinet, feeling for the joins. Anyway, read it if you have a care to.
Rather like The Girls of Slender Means you are strongly aware of the economical construction, the careful rocking of the narrative backwards and forwards in time so that you know everything that will happen in the story in advance. Yet this has an odd effect in maintaining and sustaining the narrative, you are shifted from wanting to know what will happen, to how it will happen, to why it will happen, from events, dear boy, events to psychology.
As I approached the end of this simple story about schoolgirls, sex and their teacher, I thought I had realised something clever about the teacher, only to find on page 120 one of the characters thought the same thought as I had had, but more economically. After I had finished the book, I then, in my typical dark and suspicious mode of thinking began to dourly realise that I hadn't probably thought that thought at all, rather it had been planted by the author herself, which might be clever considering that she's dead .
This is to be expected, because this is a book about teaching and education, is education as the word implies, about leading forth, as one might lead a donkey up and down a beach, or is education about stuffing things into to the tender heads of young people? Naturally the author, who was not only Sparky but also witty and cunning does both. Actually this book makes me feel a bit sick, on bookshop shelves I see fat things, books that look to be half a tree thick, and here's this thing that's like an arrow. It could be shot through a shelf of over written tripe. I blame computers, in previous days when authors used manual typewriters and carbon paper, there was a real incentive not to type too much, just to spare your fingers.
Anyway, that's enough prattling, here is this terribly short book about schoolgirls, sex, teachers, education, God, and Fascism (not necessarily in that order). In which the author works on you by turns with a rasp or a hand plane. I read and think to myself "how was this done"? And I run my fingers over the page as though it was a cabinet, feeling for the joins. Anyway, read it if you have a care to.
June 24, 2017
My humble apologies must go to Muriel Spark, who not only did I assume was an American but also still in the land of the living (died 2006), until I discovered she turned out to be a bonny wee lass from Scotland (so much for my literary knowledge). One thing I am definitely sure of though, 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' is definitively British through and through.
Short and bittersweet, this features a quite sublimely constructed narrative full of wit and brevity where the story focuses on the comic and ultimately tragic schoolmistress Jean Brodie (partly based on Spark’s own teacher at her Edinburgh school), and her set of six wonderfully distinctive girls (Monica, Sandy, Rose, Mary, Jenny, and Eunice) getting the most out of her prime years. At first, her ideas about beauty and goodness, her mysterious glamour and charm will dazzle and seduce her girls – “the crème de la crème” – at the Marcia Blaine School, but in the end the same gifts will go on to cause her untimely downfall. Deftly laid out we flash backwards and forwards, to and from the 1930s, where education was a million miles away from the overly confident tech-savvy kids of today, one thing that remains the same though, girls will be girls. There's the boisterous gossip on romance and sex, falling in and out with friends, and dreaming of a bright future, whatever that may hold.
There is also a great enemy lying in wait, the moody headmistress Miss Mackay, who believes not only are the girls being manipulated by Jean Brodie, but she is engaged in sex with the art teacher, Teddy Lloyd, with whom Miss Brodie is hopelessly in love. Could there have be a betrayal on behalf of one of her girls?.
She would take leave for Austria and Germany for a time, only to return consumed by fascism from mainland Europe prior to The Second World War. “Give me a girl at an impressionable age,” she boasts, “and she is mine for life.” Eventually that prediction will be fulfilled in the saddest way imaginable.
Spark turns her novel into a deep questioning of authorial control and limit, there is a god-like power of omniscience in Jean Brodie that made her a household name in terms of postwar fictional characters, Spark forces us to become Brodie's pupils as in the course of the novel we never leave the school to go home, alone, with Miss Brodie. We surmise that there is something unfulfilled and even desperate about her, but the novelist refuses us access to her interior. Brodie talks a great deal about her prime, but we don't witness it, and the nasty suspicion falls that perhaps to talk so much about one's prime is by definition no longer to be in it. But this is just as much a playground ballad of Brodie's girls as it is a study of Brodie, each one has their own space within the novel, you do get acquainted and comfy with them, although it's Sandy who plays more of an important role.
On reflection this caught me completely off guard, I wasn't expecting it to hold my attention the way it did, but it worked, predominantly down to Spark's stupendous narrative that captured the old-school ways and that quintessential relationship between teacher and pupils. 4/5
Short and bittersweet, this features a quite sublimely constructed narrative full of wit and brevity where the story focuses on the comic and ultimately tragic schoolmistress Jean Brodie (partly based on Spark’s own teacher at her Edinburgh school), and her set of six wonderfully distinctive girls (Monica, Sandy, Rose, Mary, Jenny, and Eunice) getting the most out of her prime years. At first, her ideas about beauty and goodness, her mysterious glamour and charm will dazzle and seduce her girls – “the crème de la crème” – at the Marcia Blaine School, but in the end the same gifts will go on to cause her untimely downfall. Deftly laid out we flash backwards and forwards, to and from the 1930s, where education was a million miles away from the overly confident tech-savvy kids of today, one thing that remains the same though, girls will be girls. There's the boisterous gossip on romance and sex, falling in and out with friends, and dreaming of a bright future, whatever that may hold.
There is also a great enemy lying in wait, the moody headmistress Miss Mackay, who believes not only are the girls being manipulated by Jean Brodie, but she is engaged in sex with the art teacher, Teddy Lloyd, with whom Miss Brodie is hopelessly in love. Could there have be a betrayal on behalf of one of her girls?.
She would take leave for Austria and Germany for a time, only to return consumed by fascism from mainland Europe prior to The Second World War. “Give me a girl at an impressionable age,” she boasts, “and she is mine for life.” Eventually that prediction will be fulfilled in the saddest way imaginable.
Spark turns her novel into a deep questioning of authorial control and limit, there is a god-like power of omniscience in Jean Brodie that made her a household name in terms of postwar fictional characters, Spark forces us to become Brodie's pupils as in the course of the novel we never leave the school to go home, alone, with Miss Brodie. We surmise that there is something unfulfilled and even desperate about her, but the novelist refuses us access to her interior. Brodie talks a great deal about her prime, but we don't witness it, and the nasty suspicion falls that perhaps to talk so much about one's prime is by definition no longer to be in it. But this is just as much a playground ballad of Brodie's girls as it is a study of Brodie, each one has their own space within the novel, you do get acquainted and comfy with them, although it's Sandy who plays more of an important role.
On reflection this caught me completely off guard, I wasn't expecting it to hold my attention the way it did, but it worked, predominantly down to Spark's stupendous narrative that captured the old-school ways and that quintessential relationship between teacher and pupils. 4/5
January 14, 2015
"Who is the greatest Italian painter?"
"Leonardo da Vinci, Miss Brodie."
"That is incorrect. The answer is Giotto, he is my favourite."
Jean Brodie. Oh Miss Jean Brodie. She may be one of my new favourite heroines in literature. I mean she's like up there with Emma Bovary from Madame Bovary, she's that good. I think there were other characters in this novel? Idk. I don't care. It's all about Jean. I love Jean. Jean. Jean. Hmmm I'm starting to think I liked her character more than the book itself. Oh well. I'd recommend this just so you can read probably one of the greatest characters in 20th Century fiction.
"Leonardo da Vinci, Miss Brodie."
"That is incorrect. The answer is Giotto, he is my favourite."
Jean Brodie. Oh Miss Jean Brodie. She may be one of my new favourite heroines in literature. I mean she's like up there with Emma Bovary from Madame Bovary, she's that good. I think there were other characters in this novel? Idk. I don't care. It's all about Jean. I love Jean. Jean. Jean. Hmmm I'm starting to think I liked her character more than the book itself. Oh well. I'd recommend this just so you can read probably one of the greatest characters in 20th Century fiction.
April 3, 2024
A sterling example of narrative compression and non-chronological structure. A book that gets the reader involuntarily exclaiming aloud such is its brilliance, its self assurance, its high level of artistic attainment.
May 22, 2009
Hit the snooze button. Because you won't wanna wake up early to finish this trite piece of over-celebrated frump. Miss Jean Brodie is the kind of co-dependent teacher that smart kids steer clear of -- except here she attracts otherwise likable school girls and prods them along this tiresome plot like dying heifers. Spark's flat characters repeat the same dumb one-liners until you wonder how anyone ever thought this author was clever. One student dies in a fire. Another joins a nunnery. But when compared to carrying on as a character in this book, those both seem like pretty attractive options to me. But perhaps this book did teach me something valuable about myself -- there is a limit to what I will tolerate in the name of culture, classics, and feminism. This book lies somewhere far beyond.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 9, 2019
Muriel Spark dipped her pen once more in that poisonous inkwell of hers and wrote this extraordinary tale of the unconvential behaviour of mistress Miss Jean Brodie which leaves you wondering if you are supposed to dig through layers of distortion and perspectives to learn what actual impact Miss Jean Brodie had on the life of each of her Brodie set girls. Or is it much more simple and is the clutch of Jean Brodie on her set only a positive imput on these impressionable girls’ lifes. The story is set in the middle 1930’s, so Miss Brodie’s quite unorthodox ideas and actions in that time frame could only be aired in her small circle, the school board being constantly on the look-out for a reason to dismiss her. Jean Brodie, being in her prime as is repeated time and again, was rebellious, sometimes quite vile, but also showed a remarkable innocence in judgement towards the social issues of her time, such as professing an admiration for Mussolini and Hitler. She even picked one of her girls to volunteer to go to Spain to fight for Franco’s cause upon leaving school. I thought the admiration for these supposedly strong men had a somewhat sexual aspect for frustrated Miss Brodie. Yet, I do not think she really corrupted the girls with her actions and ideas. No-one writes a book like Muriel Spark, so enjoyable, yet so hilariously sneaky!
November 22, 2023
Miss Jean Brodie is a teacher at Marcia Blaine School in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is pre-WWII, and Miss Brodie is leading a group of six ten-year old girls. She is unconventional and doesn’t adopt the rigid learning protocols of the time. Instead, Miss Brodie employs a style based on telling stories, including stories of her own travels, romances even, and she attempts to inspire, by encouraging the girls to learn from history, romanticism, and the classics.
Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life
Art is greater than science. Art comes first, then science
These methods are at odds to the Scottish school system, and the school’s headmistress Miss Mackay. In fact, Miss Mackay drops into Miss Brodie’s classes at random intervals in what seems to be an attempt to catch out this radical young teacher. Alas, to no avail – however, her attempts to find evidence of Miss Brodie’s unusual methods and personal life (to dismiss her) become more sophisticated as time goes on. She eventually does this to the point of attempting to discover aspects of her love-life with male teachers at the school by engaging the services of one or two of the girls – the “Brodie Set”.
Maggie Smith and 2/3 of the ‘Brodie Set’ in the 1969 movie
Brodie is interesting because she is a character I was originally sympathetic to. However, as time progressed, there was something about her that made me uncomfortable. She did control the girls to an extent I thought was more about her than the girls. There seemed to be a certain, selfishness about her – parts of her personality that were a bit ‘off’. She even said the girls were ‘lucky’ to have her, as she was ‘in her prime’ – wow!
Miss Brodie also had positive things to say about pre-war Mussolini and even pre-war Hitler (she did travel to these countries). But, reflecting on this – she wouldn’t have been the only one, at that time.
Miss Brodie also had love interests with two male teachers at the school, all good – nothing wrong with that (unless you’re Miss Mackay) but it was Miss Brodie’s actions towards this later in the book I found inappropriate and totally unbelievable.
The message for me in this story relates to the incredible impact teachers and other adults can have on young impressionable kids, they can be, and often are, life changing. I’m talking about non-parents here – as the result of parental influence is obvious.
Did I enjoy this? If it wasn’t such a short piece I would have probably DNF’d. I am glad I didn’t because there were some surprises in the latter third. But I didn’t enjoy the young girl chitter, chatter, but I did find the life of Miss Brodie interesting in part. This is a story that probably won’t stay with me.
3 Stars
Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life
Art is greater than science. Art comes first, then science
These methods are at odds to the Scottish school system, and the school’s headmistress Miss Mackay. In fact, Miss Mackay drops into Miss Brodie’s classes at random intervals in what seems to be an attempt to catch out this radical young teacher. Alas, to no avail – however, her attempts to find evidence of Miss Brodie’s unusual methods and personal life (to dismiss her) become more sophisticated as time goes on. She eventually does this to the point of attempting to discover aspects of her love-life with male teachers at the school by engaging the services of one or two of the girls – the “Brodie Set”.
Maggie Smith and 2/3 of the ‘Brodie Set’ in the 1969 movie
Brodie is interesting because she is a character I was originally sympathetic to. However, as time progressed, there was something about her that made me uncomfortable. She did control the girls to an extent I thought was more about her than the girls. There seemed to be a certain, selfishness about her – parts of her personality that were a bit ‘off’. She even said the girls were ‘lucky’ to have her, as she was ‘in her prime’ – wow!
Miss Brodie also had positive things to say about pre-war Mussolini and even pre-war Hitler (she did travel to these countries). But, reflecting on this – she wouldn’t have been the only one, at that time.
Miss Brodie also had love interests with two male teachers at the school, all good – nothing wrong with that (unless you’re Miss Mackay) but it was Miss Brodie’s actions towards this later in the book I found inappropriate and totally unbelievable.
The message for me in this story relates to the incredible impact teachers and other adults can have on young impressionable kids, they can be, and often are, life changing. I’m talking about non-parents here – as the result of parental influence is obvious.
Did I enjoy this? If it wasn’t such a short piece I would have probably DNF’d. I am glad I didn’t because there were some surprises in the latter third. But I didn’t enjoy the young girl chitter, chatter, but I did find the life of Miss Brodie interesting in part. This is a story that probably won’t stay with me.
3 Stars
June 1, 2019
I had always avoided reading this because, having seen both the 60s film and a TV adaptation shown in Scotland in the early 80s, I thought I knew the basic story too well. As it happens, I found the novel compelling even though I knew the story.
I understand that Muriel Spark based the character of Jean Brodie partly on a real-life teacher from her own schooldays, a Miss Christina Kay. Like Miss Brodie, Miss Kay had a group of favourites from among her girl pupils; she used the expression “crème de la crème”; and she admired Mussolini. Even allowing for an element of borrowing, I find Jean Brodie one of the most interesting of all literary creations. Initially her dominance over “The Brodie Set” is relatively harmless, but as the novel progresses she becomes more and more controlling and manipulative, and her actions become ever more bizarre. She proudly claims descent from the 18th century Edinburgh criminal Deacon William Brodie, who famously (notoriously?) led a double life, by day a respected businessman and member of the Town Council; by night the leader of a gang of housebreakers and robbers. The parallels with Jean Brodie’s life are all too clear.
“She was not in any doubt, she let everyone know she was in no doubt, that God was on her side whatever her course…Just as an excessive sense of guilt can drive people to excessive action, so was Miss Brodie driven to it by an excessive lack of guilt.”
Despite some of the themes, there is a lightness throughout the novel, that mitigates Miss Brodie’s otherwise sinister actions. One or two parts are laugh-out-loud funny. An outstanding piece of work that fully deserves its fame.
I understand that Muriel Spark based the character of Jean Brodie partly on a real-life teacher from her own schooldays, a Miss Christina Kay. Like Miss Brodie, Miss Kay had a group of favourites from among her girl pupils; she used the expression “crème de la crème”; and she admired Mussolini. Even allowing for an element of borrowing, I find Jean Brodie one of the most interesting of all literary creations. Initially her dominance over “The Brodie Set” is relatively harmless, but as the novel progresses she becomes more and more controlling and manipulative, and her actions become ever more bizarre. She proudly claims descent from the 18th century Edinburgh criminal Deacon William Brodie, who famously (notoriously?) led a double life, by day a respected businessman and member of the Town Council; by night the leader of a gang of housebreakers and robbers. The parallels with Jean Brodie’s life are all too clear.
“She was not in any doubt, she let everyone know she was in no doubt, that God was on her side whatever her course…Just as an excessive sense of guilt can drive people to excessive action, so was Miss Brodie driven to it by an excessive lack of guilt.”
Despite some of the themes, there is a lightness throughout the novel, that mitigates Miss Brodie’s otherwise sinister actions. One or two parts are laugh-out-loud funny. An outstanding piece of work that fully deserves its fame.
November 14, 2021
Blast from the past - read this in high school and couldn't put it down. I used to admire quite a few of my teachers so much, but this novel opened my eyes to their fallibility and humanity. A very timely lesson for me.
Loved the movie adaptation with the incomparable Maggie Smith.
August 9, 2019
I found that I could not read the passages where Miss Brodie speaks unless my inner ear rendered them in the voice of the inimitable Maggie Smith. The combination of Jean Brodie's precise vocabulary and elegance of structure with Smith's lilting tones, and prolonged vowels - meant that at least for me, the two could not be separated. The passages where Jean Brodie speaks, did not come to life unless I allowed this rhythmic Edinburgh melody to prevail.
'There is an old tradition for this practice,' said Miss Brodie. 'Many families in the olden days could afford to send but one child to school, whereupon that one scholar of the family imparted to the others in the evening what he had learned in the morning. I have long wanted to know the Greek language, and this scheme will also serve to impress your knowledge on your own minds. John Stuart Mill used to rise at dawn to learn Greek at the age of five, and what John Stuart Mill could do as an infant at dawn, I too can do on a Saturday afternoon in my prime.'
I experimented quite a bit, reading (silently) in flat English, without Smith's voice: and then with the accent - ". . . ohhn yoorrr ohhnn miindz". She has a very refined, upper class lilt, which I think is relatively easy for me to reproduce, as I was born in Scotland.
I read this in my teens, so at least 35 years ago, and then I would have watched the film; probably before I went to university - at home. Or perhaps I saw the film and then was inspired to read the book, which I remembered rested on a row of shelves in the bathroom, opposite the toilet. There it was - difficult to miss. The 1965 penguin edition as above.
I knew that as I re-read it there would be parts I would not have understood as a teen, and yet I was surprised. I found that I had perfectly understood Sandy. As a teenager I naturally stepped into her shoes, and not those of the teacher. The hidden intimate life of the teacher, of adults in general, as a distinct other world, was something I was familiar with.
But Sandy is clever, more so than her age actually allows for - although she passes from 10 to 18 in the course of the book, from 1930 to 1938, in the books historical setting. Again, and I noted this in A Far Cry From Kensington, Muriel Spark does not quite separate the perception of the child/growing teenager from her own adult perspective, from which of course the story is written. This is her sixth novel, first published in 1961, when Spark would have been 43;
Now Sandy considered Miss Brodie not only to see if she was desirable, but also to find out if there was any element of surrender about her, since this was the most difficult part of the affair to realize. She had been a dominant presence rather than a physical woman like Norma Shearer or Elizabeth Bergner. Miss Brodie was now forty-three and this year when she looked so much thinner than when she had stood in a classroom or sat under an elm, her shape was pleasanter but it was still fairly large compared with Mr Lowther's. He was slight and he was shorter than Miss Brodie. He looked at her with love and she looked at him severely and possessively.
This underscores Miss Brodie's campaign to feed up the slight Mr Lowther, and thus make him a better match for her. For Sandy it is clear that Miss B is not in love with the music teacher. And the coincidence of age between author and character, strongly suggests that Spark has projected a lot of herself into Miss Brodie. At the same time, she has drawn on her experiences as a schoolgirl, so that Sandy is also very much an incarnation of Muriel Spark.
The interplay of how is it possible that one has become the other is in fact the whole dynamic of the book. Spark's ability to reproduce herself as both Sandy the child whose perspective is at odds with the adult world and the young woman/educator, struggling to free herself of patriarchy is remarkable. Indeed Spark's insistence on self-developement as the key to independence and empowerment are what her fiction is all about. Her books are the process or the means to her self-realization, as well as the products of it.
I was deliciously pleased to compare the many things that my adult mind noticed in contrast with my memories of reading the book as a teenager. I thought wow, what an excellent education these girls are receiving - Physics, Chemistry, Biology - dissecting a worm, melting Magnesium in tubes to create flashes of white light, art, music, and painting, drawing and gymnastics, and all of this in the 1930s - my Dad has always upheld that Scotland, had, has had a superior educational system than in England. Although Miss Brodie teaches at a private school - the Marcia Blaine School for girls.
Secondly I recognized that particular Romantic dilemma that most women experience at some point in their lives: the man with whom you form a steady, reliable connection, one who is delighted to have you, and then the other, the Mr Lloyds of the world, who are excruciatingly not available, and yet it is these ones who fulfill all our fantasies.
Here is Miss Brodie developing her passions, for the elusive Mr Lloyd, the one-armed art teacher:
They tried but failed to shut up.
He smashed the saucer to the floor.
Amid the dead silence which followed he picked on Rose Stanley and indicating the fragments of the saucer on the floor, he said, 'You with the profile - pick this up.'
He turned away and went and did something else at the other end of the long room for the rest of the period, while the girls looked anew at Rose Stanley's profile, marvelled at Mr Lloyd's style, and settled down to drawing a bottle set up in front of a curtain. Jenny remarked to Sandy that Miss Brodie really had good taste.
'He has an artistic temperament, of course,' said Miss Brodie when she was told about the saucer. And when she heard that he had called Rose 'you with the profile', she looked at Rose in a special way, while Sandy looked at Miss Brodie.
There is a great deal of humour in this book, especially when the 11/12 year olds, Sandy and Jenny are speculating about Miss Brodie's love life. There are some oh so accurate comments and guesses about what goes on, but at the same time, there is this terribly sad story of the demise of Miss Brodie after one of her girls has betrayed her. In fact, she does not live for very long after her early retirement from the school. In the latter part of the book, there are several mentions of the girls visiting her grave, and there is one last visit that Sandy makes; where Miss Brodie seeks to establish once and for all who betrayed her. But Sandy is quiet. In fact Sandy's ommission of guilt is loud and clear - her penance I feel is that she takes herself off to a nunnery - to become Sister Helena, not what Miss Brodie had in mind as "dedication", is what one of Sandy's friends points out.
Miss Mackay the headmistress is constantly on the warpath to try and squeeze out of the girls precise information regarding Miss Brodie's teaching methods and subjects, but as it turns out all the Brodie set become high achievers, except Mary McGregor who dies at an early age in an hotel fire.
But - Sandy. The problem is that Sandy is too clever by half - and quickly surmises for herself that Miss Brodie despite her high aims for the girls has led a life not entirely on par with her ideals, and this is most apparent in her infatuation with the art teacher, not to mention her rather squalid treatment of the music teacher Mr Gordon Lowther, all of which is gradually and deeply felt by Sandy. There is an odd reference to Calvinism towards the end which I did not entirely understand - I vaguely get that Miss Brodie's sins loomed large and loud in the eyes of the 18 year old, who felt herself persuaded to participate in some way in Miss Brodie's fantasy.
And this is the part that particularly interested: my memory of my teenage reading, in contrast to my response now. As a teenager I quite fully understood that Sandy had been corrupted by Miss Brodie - that is how I saw it, and that Brodie deserved her comeuppance. In fact it is Sandy who feels betrayed - and yet when I read it now, I feel more for Miss Brodie, who has no real idea of what has upset Sandy.
It is the old question of parents and children - Miss Brodie is very much a beloved parent to all the girls in her set - and I see now how Sandy scorned Miss Brodie's lack of resolve to act on her principles and yet I also know how difficult those wonderful principles are to live by. And there you have it - I am 52 and no longer fired up with principles and vigours and ideals about love and life.
'There is an old tradition for this practice,' said Miss Brodie. 'Many families in the olden days could afford to send but one child to school, whereupon that one scholar of the family imparted to the others in the evening what he had learned in the morning. I have long wanted to know the Greek language, and this scheme will also serve to impress your knowledge on your own minds. John Stuart Mill used to rise at dawn to learn Greek at the age of five, and what John Stuart Mill could do as an infant at dawn, I too can do on a Saturday afternoon in my prime.'
I experimented quite a bit, reading (silently) in flat English, without Smith's voice: and then with the accent - ". . . ohhn yoorrr ohhnn miindz". She has a very refined, upper class lilt, which I think is relatively easy for me to reproduce, as I was born in Scotland.
I read this in my teens, so at least 35 years ago, and then I would have watched the film; probably before I went to university - at home. Or perhaps I saw the film and then was inspired to read the book, which I remembered rested on a row of shelves in the bathroom, opposite the toilet. There it was - difficult to miss. The 1965 penguin edition as above.
I knew that as I re-read it there would be parts I would not have understood as a teen, and yet I was surprised. I found that I had perfectly understood Sandy. As a teenager I naturally stepped into her shoes, and not those of the teacher. The hidden intimate life of the teacher, of adults in general, as a distinct other world, was something I was familiar with.
But Sandy is clever, more so than her age actually allows for - although she passes from 10 to 18 in the course of the book, from 1930 to 1938, in the books historical setting. Again, and I noted this in A Far Cry From Kensington, Muriel Spark does not quite separate the perception of the child/growing teenager from her own adult perspective, from which of course the story is written. This is her sixth novel, first published in 1961, when Spark would have been 43;
Now Sandy considered Miss Brodie not only to see if she was desirable, but also to find out if there was any element of surrender about her, since this was the most difficult part of the affair to realize. She had been a dominant presence rather than a physical woman like Norma Shearer or Elizabeth Bergner. Miss Brodie was now forty-three and this year when she looked so much thinner than when she had stood in a classroom or sat under an elm, her shape was pleasanter but it was still fairly large compared with Mr Lowther's. He was slight and he was shorter than Miss Brodie. He looked at her with love and she looked at him severely and possessively.
This underscores Miss Brodie's campaign to feed up the slight Mr Lowther, and thus make him a better match for her. For Sandy it is clear that Miss B is not in love with the music teacher. And the coincidence of age between author and character, strongly suggests that Spark has projected a lot of herself into Miss Brodie. At the same time, she has drawn on her experiences as a schoolgirl, so that Sandy is also very much an incarnation of Muriel Spark.
The interplay of how is it possible that one has become the other is in fact the whole dynamic of the book. Spark's ability to reproduce herself as both Sandy the child whose perspective is at odds with the adult world and the young woman/educator, struggling to free herself of patriarchy is remarkable. Indeed Spark's insistence on self-developement as the key to independence and empowerment are what her fiction is all about. Her books are the process or the means to her self-realization, as well as the products of it.
I was deliciously pleased to compare the many things that my adult mind noticed in contrast with my memories of reading the book as a teenager. I thought wow, what an excellent education these girls are receiving - Physics, Chemistry, Biology - dissecting a worm, melting Magnesium in tubes to create flashes of white light, art, music, and painting, drawing and gymnastics, and all of this in the 1930s - my Dad has always upheld that Scotland, had, has had a superior educational system than in England. Although Miss Brodie teaches at a private school - the Marcia Blaine School for girls.
Secondly I recognized that particular Romantic dilemma that most women experience at some point in their lives: the man with whom you form a steady, reliable connection, one who is delighted to have you, and then the other, the Mr Lloyds of the world, who are excruciatingly not available, and yet it is these ones who fulfill all our fantasies.
Here is Miss Brodie developing her passions, for the elusive Mr Lloyd, the one-armed art teacher:
They tried but failed to shut up.
He smashed the saucer to the floor.
Amid the dead silence which followed he picked on Rose Stanley and indicating the fragments of the saucer on the floor, he said, 'You with the profile - pick this up.'
He turned away and went and did something else at the other end of the long room for the rest of the period, while the girls looked anew at Rose Stanley's profile, marvelled at Mr Lloyd's style, and settled down to drawing a bottle set up in front of a curtain. Jenny remarked to Sandy that Miss Brodie really had good taste.
'He has an artistic temperament, of course,' said Miss Brodie when she was told about the saucer. And when she heard that he had called Rose 'you with the profile', she looked at Rose in a special way, while Sandy looked at Miss Brodie.
There is a great deal of humour in this book, especially when the 11/12 year olds, Sandy and Jenny are speculating about Miss Brodie's love life. There are some oh so accurate comments and guesses about what goes on, but at the same time, there is this terribly sad story of the demise of Miss Brodie after one of her girls has betrayed her. In fact, she does not live for very long after her early retirement from the school. In the latter part of the book, there are several mentions of the girls visiting her grave, and there is one last visit that Sandy makes; where Miss Brodie seeks to establish once and for all who betrayed her. But Sandy is quiet. In fact Sandy's ommission of guilt is loud and clear - her penance I feel is that she takes herself off to a nunnery - to become Sister Helena, not what Miss Brodie had in mind as "dedication", is what one of Sandy's friends points out.
Miss Mackay the headmistress is constantly on the warpath to try and squeeze out of the girls precise information regarding Miss Brodie's teaching methods and subjects, but as it turns out all the Brodie set become high achievers, except Mary McGregor who dies at an early age in an hotel fire.
But - Sandy. The problem is that Sandy is too clever by half - and quickly surmises for herself that Miss Brodie despite her high aims for the girls has led a life not entirely on par with her ideals, and this is most apparent in her infatuation with the art teacher, not to mention her rather squalid treatment of the music teacher Mr Gordon Lowther, all of which is gradually and deeply felt by Sandy. There is an odd reference to Calvinism towards the end which I did not entirely understand - I vaguely get that Miss Brodie's sins loomed large and loud in the eyes of the 18 year old, who felt herself persuaded to participate in some way in Miss Brodie's fantasy.
And this is the part that particularly interested: my memory of my teenage reading, in contrast to my response now. As a teenager I quite fully understood that Sandy had been corrupted by Miss Brodie - that is how I saw it, and that Brodie deserved her comeuppance. In fact it is Sandy who feels betrayed - and yet when I read it now, I feel more for Miss Brodie, who has no real idea of what has upset Sandy.
It is the old question of parents and children - Miss Brodie is very much a beloved parent to all the girls in her set - and I see now how Sandy scorned Miss Brodie's lack of resolve to act on her principles and yet I also know how difficult those wonderful principles are to live by. And there you have it - I am 52 and no longer fired up with principles and vigours and ideals about love and life.
December 17, 2015
4.5/5
Of course, this lack of major interaction between my younger self and academic personas was a double edged sword. Perhaps a little more insistence from one of my favorite English teachers would have saved me years of mistaken pursuit of a Bioengineering degree, putting me via influential measures on my current path and avoiding all that fumbling around with personal choice. However, when looking at a book like this, I see the time I spent finding myself as well worth the cost of years and money and all that jazz. My distrust for authority figures may be on the paranoid side, but my questioning of everyone and everything alongside painstakingly gained self-worth has, is, and will continue to serve me better than any other tool at my disposal.
Thus, I see this Miss Jean Brodie as a seductive force that would have easily bowled me over in my younger days. Those times are long past, and her sway has been reduced by time to a portion of her power, a slogan in essence of that aesthetically minded mob machination of Fascism so well known to history. For every appealing remark in the realm of Literature and the Arts, there's the blind assuming in regards to Science, Math, Politics, Religion, etc. There's also that discombobulated aura of feminism of the hypocritical sort, something I wouldn't have known to look for in my youth and a key factor of why I have never had the desire to return to my childhood mentality.
The directness with which the author presents this miniature treatise on pedagogy never struck me as obtuse, as there's quite a bit more going on within the boundaries of this slim, sharp-shooting novel. I've heard of Spark excelling in the microenvironmental scope, and she doesn't fail in my first introduction to her fiction. The pointed way she captures that muddled feeling of school, that of one's time being filled with so much cramming of information while in reality knowing little of anything important, is especially impressive. I do like my literature that takes childhood seriously, and while this is no The Instructions, there's a cynical naïvety to it that I well recognize.
While I would better remember and hold my school years in more esteem had I encountered an incarnation of Miss Jean Brodie in her prime, I spend enough time as it is in deconstructing all that I thought I knew in those days of desks and paper and the persistent feeling of an invisible cage, otherwise known as bits and pieces solipsism. Looking at how the woman in her prime ended up, rattling on the same rails of so many years as little more than a broken tape recorder, I'd say I got the greener side for my own satisfaction of sensibilities. Besides, all that vicarious chess game living with a side of psychosomatic sexuality? Creepy.
Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.It wasn't until recently that I became aware of how teachers had viewed me during my high school years. To be frank, I was surprised that they had acknowledged me at all, let alone discussed me amongst themselves. This discussion extended out from time to time to parents associated with the school, one of whom is now a very good friend of mine and my reason for knowing about this at all. I was liked, apparently, for being a quiet and studious little girl, likely noticed despite said quietness due to being the lone white face in many of the advanced classes but that, of course, is only suspicion. In those days I excelled in the art of keeping myself to my self, especially in regards to those keepers of test scores and other belovedly loathed idols of my youth, so I had no inkling of this overarching benevolent gaze, to the point of being flabbergasted in senior year at finding many an enthusiastic response to my request for recommendation letters. Who knew.
Of course, this lack of major interaction between my younger self and academic personas was a double edged sword. Perhaps a little more insistence from one of my favorite English teachers would have saved me years of mistaken pursuit of a Bioengineering degree, putting me via influential measures on my current path and avoiding all that fumbling around with personal choice. However, when looking at a book like this, I see the time I spent finding myself as well worth the cost of years and money and all that jazz. My distrust for authority figures may be on the paranoid side, but my questioning of everyone and everything alongside painstakingly gained self-worth has, is, and will continue to serve me better than any other tool at my disposal.
Thus, I see this Miss Jean Brodie as a seductive force that would have easily bowled me over in my younger days. Those times are long past, and her sway has been reduced by time to a portion of her power, a slogan in essence of that aesthetically minded mob machination of Fascism so well known to history. For every appealing remark in the realm of Literature and the Arts, there's the blind assuming in regards to Science, Math, Politics, Religion, etc. There's also that discombobulated aura of feminism of the hypocritical sort, something I wouldn't have known to look for in my youth and a key factor of why I have never had the desire to return to my childhood mentality.
The directness with which the author presents this miniature treatise on pedagogy never struck me as obtuse, as there's quite a bit more going on within the boundaries of this slim, sharp-shooting novel. I've heard of Spark excelling in the microenvironmental scope, and she doesn't fail in my first introduction to her fiction. The pointed way she captures that muddled feeling of school, that of one's time being filled with so much cramming of information while in reality knowing little of anything important, is especially impressive. I do like my literature that takes childhood seriously, and while this is no The Instructions, there's a cynical naïvety to it that I well recognize.
While I would better remember and hold my school years in more esteem had I encountered an incarnation of Miss Jean Brodie in her prime, I spend enough time as it is in deconstructing all that I thought I knew in those days of desks and paper and the persistent feeling of an invisible cage, otherwise known as bits and pieces solipsism. Looking at how the woman in her prime ended up, rattling on the same rails of so many years as little more than a broken tape recorder, I'd say I got the greener side for my own satisfaction of sensibilities. Besides, all that vicarious chess game living with a side of psychosomatic sexuality? Creepy.
September 19, 2019
This is my second Muriel Spark; the first one, A Far Cry from Kensington, I read a few months ago. So, I am new to her writing and still trying to feel its pulse since I found both books very different in tone. This ought not to surprise me since almost three decades separate the two with 1961 for 'Miss Jean Brodie' and 1988 for 'Kensington'. This jump in time is echoed by the plots in a strange way, the earlier work is populated by schoolgirls and the latter dwells in the publishing world in London with all its sweet and sour aspects.
What I liked most in this earlier work is the sense of humour. Several times I burst out laughing. Sparks conjures humour through her language; with unexpected turns of phrases or changes in viewpoint that make the reader jump in her/his seat. Playful surprises.
I also enjoyed the way Spark handles the narrative, following mostly a linear chronological structure that she will also, unexpectedly, disrupt by jumping ahead with a spoiler that does not really reveal much, but which keeps the reader alert.
But veiling the humour there is a shadow. Fascism. And this dimness creeps in, in a most compelling way because it is not really through Miss Brodie’s overt praise of Mussolini or of the later new order in Germany, but through her attitude to her world – and to her chosen girls. But then Miss Jean Brodie is in her prime.
***
I am withholding the fifth star because I I found a couple of instances in which Sparks could have assumed her readers were more acute than she reckons. Some explanations were unnecessary.
October 1, 2020
I never had a teacher who took me under her wing, as Miss Jean Brodie did with her handpicked group of young girls. Her teaching methods were unorthodox, but her influence was all encompassing. She is formidable, and makes many of the other teachers on staff uncomfortable.
A frivolous nature is not to be endured. Indeed, this teacher is all about her students cultivating an "air of composure", ala the art of the Mona Lisa and the slight smile painted on her face. Serene, tranquil, full of goodness. Insight versus instinct. Small eyes that miss nothing, double ears that hear everything. She is in her prime and feels that she alone can ready these young girls for life.
A frivolous nature is not to be endured. Indeed, this teacher is all about her students cultivating an "air of composure", ala the art of the Mona Lisa and the slight smile painted on her face. Serene, tranquil, full of goodness. Insight versus instinct. Small eyes that miss nothing, double ears that hear everything. She is in her prime and feels that she alone can ready these young girls for life.
December 22, 2016
“It occurred to Sandy, there at the end of the Middle Meadow Walk, that the Brodie set was Miss Brodie's fascisti, not to the naked eye, marching along, but all knit together for her need and in another way, marching along. That was all right, but it seemed, too, that Miss Brodie's disapproval of the Girl Guides had jealousy in it, there was an inconsistency, a fault. Perhaps the Guides were too much a rival fascisti, and Miss Brodie could not bear it.”
One commonly featuring theme with all the governments of last century that have gone wrong (whether they were fascists, ultra-nationalists, communalists, communist, anti-communists) is that they all paid special focus on education of children. And it is only to be expected, children are highly impressionable and, a simple application of Butterfly effect or any of psychological theories (except Humanism), shows what an effect a small change early on can have on one’s life – those early stages are the perfect opportunity for anyone wanting to play God:
“Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.”
And Fascism basically means allowing one man to play God. But this book is not about politics, not unless you see it as an allegory. It is about education.
And so, the questions arises, what should children be taught and who should teach them? Ideally, I dare say that they should be taught how to live a life before they are taught how to earn a living – which might include teaching them about self-discovery, sex-education and how to be good parents, how not to let yourself be influenced by propaganda, how to check if you are prejudiced against some section of society, a habit of putting oneself in other’s shoes etc. The list is too long and as you can see literature can help with several of them. A well-written novel with racism or sexual violence, for example, can be used to teach how these tendencies work in society; how to put oneself in victim’s shoes, clothes and skin; and how one must be guard oneself in being cause of and suffering from such things.
What we really do though, is we play defensive, and don’t want anything too 'dangerous’ for children's stupid heads to be a part of their education. And so anything even remotely out of Disney world is excised out of books.
And what about teachers? We can’t censor teachers but we have an ideal for them, which they must follow. Now, in my mind, the image of this ideal teacher is that of a sentinel of discipline and traditions, yearning for good old times - a strict and, if I may dare use the word, sexless old thing with no sense of humor … you remember prof McGonagall? Exactly. Now you can’t expect every teacher to be an old woman, and so, what we do is we socialize teachers to act in that way while their students are observing them.
And, so, you see in school/college corridors, young teachers pretending to be angry at a behavior in their students which they had enjoyed only a few years ago or might still enact back home (since most of them are terrible actors, I don’t know how come most students don’t see through them, I for one was never fooled. Thanks!), scorning at the very jokes they might themselves find funny, and asking students to follow rules they themselves see injustice in (In this one scene in the third book, McGonagall refuse to sign Harry’s permission to visit the Hogsmeade, though she felt sorry since he was the only in. whole class not allowed to, for no mistake of his).
Now Miss Jean Brodie is no fan of this McGonagallism school of play-acting, she is a rebel (the only good thing about her) and she does seem to believe in teaching children about lifestyle choices. Unfortunately, her syllabus is highly dependent on her whims and she happens to be in her prime.
“One’s prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur. You must then live it to the full.”
And since she isn’t wearing McGonagall masks, the personal life of this narcissist woman directly affects her students. She loses her initial idealism in a desperate effort to enjoy her life and ends up using her girls as pawns, causing a permanent damage in life of at least one, Sandy. You may make sure that the person teaching isn’t racist, communalist or have some undesirable political philosophy, but they will have much going in their personal life. And unless the teachers are maintaining so-called ‘respectable’ distances, you can’t save a student from their personal life. Now this might serve for the meek to want to argue in favor of sticking to safety of old-fashioned McGonagallism, but I don’t agree and my ex-career as class rebel and class-clown (obviously) has nothing to do with that.
One of the best and most humorous books I have read this year.
July 26, 2014
4.5 stars rounded up
This is another one of those books I’ve been meaning to read for years; seen the film several times. Having also read The Ballad of Peckham Rye recently and been impressed by Spark, I thought it was time to finally read this. It is brief, but very cleverly put together, employing a flash forward technique, so Spark reveals the plot and the eventual ending bit by bit and in a varied order. Spark also makes good use of some neat aphorisms; “I am in my prime”, you are the crème de la crème”.
Miss Brodie is a primary school teacher of unorthodox method who takes certain pupils under her wing to influence them; they become her “set” and remain so, even after they leave her direct sphere of influence and start senior school. Miss Brodie reads them poetry, takes them to the theatre, points them away from Maths and Sciences and generally tries to direct their lives; identifying a “famous for” or notoriety for each of them. Early on we discover one of the six members of the set betrays Miss Brodie to her greatest enemy, the headmistress. About halfway we discover who, but the how is left to the very end. We follow the set from the end of primary school, through senior school and into glimpses of their later lives and sometimes deaths.
Despite the fluid language Spark limits what she gives the reader about Miss Brodie; we are never alone with her; her presence is mediated by someone else; one of the set usually. Spark is playing with the nature of knowledge, epistemology; as a Catholic convert Spark would have known about that. Here we see nothing of Miss Brodie’s interior life. The character is based on a teacher who inspired Spark, but there are some twists here. Miss Brodie is a great fan of Mussolini; there is also an element of living through others and an edge of cruelty. Spark doesn’t provide us with particularly attractive characters and all the set have obvious flaws; as for the men ... Miss Brodie (who lost her fiancé in the war; we are in the early 1930s) is attractive to the Arts and Music masters and has a relationship with one of them; both are rather insipid. Interestingly the author dispenses judgements and fates with godlike omniscience and Spark is making Brodie behave in an authorial way to explore the limits of authorial power. It’s good stuff and Spark has been compared with Christine Brookes-Rose for this reason.
The character of Sandy in the novel has been compared to Spark and she too moves to Catholicism. Given the events of the novel the name she has as a nun Sister Helena of the Transfiguration is an interesting choice given the novel’s consideration of knowledge and the nature of authorship.
It’s a great tragic-comic novel with some nicely sinister undertones. As forward thinking as she appears to be Miss Brodie is also at heart conservative and the parallels between Miss Brodie and her girls and Miss Brodie’s fascist hero and his followers are interesting. Spark is a great novelist.
This is another one of those books I’ve been meaning to read for years; seen the film several times. Having also read The Ballad of Peckham Rye recently and been impressed by Spark, I thought it was time to finally read this. It is brief, but very cleverly put together, employing a flash forward technique, so Spark reveals the plot and the eventual ending bit by bit and in a varied order. Spark also makes good use of some neat aphorisms; “I am in my prime”, you are the crème de la crème”.
Miss Brodie is a primary school teacher of unorthodox method who takes certain pupils under her wing to influence them; they become her “set” and remain so, even after they leave her direct sphere of influence and start senior school. Miss Brodie reads them poetry, takes them to the theatre, points them away from Maths and Sciences and generally tries to direct their lives; identifying a “famous for” or notoriety for each of them. Early on we discover one of the six members of the set betrays Miss Brodie to her greatest enemy, the headmistress. About halfway we discover who, but the how is left to the very end. We follow the set from the end of primary school, through senior school and into glimpses of their later lives and sometimes deaths.
Despite the fluid language Spark limits what she gives the reader about Miss Brodie; we are never alone with her; her presence is mediated by someone else; one of the set usually. Spark is playing with the nature of knowledge, epistemology; as a Catholic convert Spark would have known about that. Here we see nothing of Miss Brodie’s interior life. The character is based on a teacher who inspired Spark, but there are some twists here. Miss Brodie is a great fan of Mussolini; there is also an element of living through others and an edge of cruelty. Spark doesn’t provide us with particularly attractive characters and all the set have obvious flaws; as for the men ... Miss Brodie (who lost her fiancé in the war; we are in the early 1930s) is attractive to the Arts and Music masters and has a relationship with one of them; both are rather insipid. Interestingly the author dispenses judgements and fates with godlike omniscience and Spark is making Brodie behave in an authorial way to explore the limits of authorial power. It’s good stuff and Spark has been compared with Christine Brookes-Rose for this reason.
The character of Sandy in the novel has been compared to Spark and she too moves to Catholicism. Given the events of the novel the name she has as a nun Sister Helena of the Transfiguration is an interesting choice given the novel’s consideration of knowledge and the nature of authorship.
It’s a great tragic-comic novel with some nicely sinister undertones. As forward thinking as she appears to be Miss Brodie is also at heart conservative and the parallels between Miss Brodie and her girls and Miss Brodie’s fascist hero and his followers are interesting. Spark is a great novelist.
July 4, 2019
Novela corta pero genial ambientada en el Edimburgo de los años 30.
¡Me ha gustado mucho! Y ya no tanto por la trama en sí o sus personajes sino por el estilo de Muriel Spark, tan descriptivo y a la vez ágil.
La novela narra la vida del grupo de Brodie y de la propia Señorita Brodie, una maestra un tanto peculiar que decide tutelar a seis niñas tratando de influenciarlas y amoldarlas según sus intereses.
Me encanta cómo desde el principio la propia autora nos lleva adelante y atrás en la vida de estas niñas (y posteriormente mujeres) y su maestra, esa atmósfera que llega a ser enrarecida y extraña, la tensión sexual presente...
Es un libro muy particular, que más de uno encontrará insulso, pero a mi me ha parecido una genialidad hecha de pequeños matices.
¡Me ha gustado mucho! Y ya no tanto por la trama en sí o sus personajes sino por el estilo de Muriel Spark, tan descriptivo y a la vez ágil.
La novela narra la vida del grupo de Brodie y de la propia Señorita Brodie, una maestra un tanto peculiar que decide tutelar a seis niñas tratando de influenciarlas y amoldarlas según sus intereses.
Me encanta cómo desde el principio la propia autora nos lleva adelante y atrás en la vida de estas niñas (y posteriormente mujeres) y su maestra, esa atmósfera que llega a ser enrarecida y extraña, la tensión sexual presente...
Es un libro muy particular, que más de uno encontrará insulso, pero a mi me ha parecido una genialidad hecha de pequeños matices.
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