The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Carol

Rating: really liked it

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.

Dolors

Rating: really liked it
“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.

s.penkevich

Rating: really liked it
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:

‘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.’

Cecily

Rating: really liked it
“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.”

Lizzy

Rating: really liked it
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.

"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!
_____

Samadrita

Rating: really liked it
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.

"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.

Violet wells

Rating: really liked it
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!

Paula K (on hiatus)

Rating: really liked it
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

Jean-Luke

Rating: really liked it
Madeline in Scotland

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 would make of them
With a little hard work
The crème de la crème.

Lisa

Rating: really liked it
"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.

Jan-Maat

Rating: really liked it
A 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 (view spoiler)[ what horror! (hide spoiler)] by the author herself, which might be clever considering that she's dead (view spoiler)[ but that is what books and reading can do - they allow wicked scheming dead people to drop ideas into empty heads (hide spoiler)].

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.

Steven

Rating: really liked it
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

Gaurav

Rating: really liked it
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

Barry Pierce

Rating: really liked it
"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.

Susan's Reviews

Rating: really liked it


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.