The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)

I found this book so well written. There is something “experimental” on the writing, but I never felt it overly done. The story is told like a psychological expose of the characters, more than driven by plot.

At the end, I realized that it was an ambiguous take on the “coming of age” genre. The girls coming into themselves as adults, and acquiring – some of them – a layer of contempt and spite. As if by becoming less shallow as persons, they – some of them – also become more malicious. The character of Miss Brodie, although central, at the end becomes more peripheral, but never the less an interesting character.
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Miss Jean Brodie, a teacher at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls, says of herself that she is in her prime, and has dedicated her prime to shaping the minds of “her” girls. Six of the girls in the junior school become the Brodie Set: absorbing her opinions and interests in art, history and politics, and learning perhaps far too much about love affairs. The school administrators consider Miss Brodie a bad influence and have tried to get rid of her. One day, one of the Brodie Set betrays her. She never finds out who, and the effects of her influence on the girls of the Set carries on through the rest of their lives.

This was an unsettling book. I think I liked it slightly more than Memento Mori, although maybe I have to read Memento Mori again to compare. It was a creepy book because of Mr. Lloyd having an affair with a teenage girl (and being basically pimped out by Miss Brodie, to boot). Not to mention Miss Brodie’s support for fascism, which made uncomfortable reading in these times. The flashing forward and backward added to the unease.

What I really enjoyed were the bits where the girls were writing what would amount to real person fic about Miss Brodie and her dead fiancé, Hugh. The writing samples in the book reminded me so much of my own overwrought teenage fiction, as did Sandy’s imaginings of trysts and conversations with the characters she read about in books.

I read this book essentially on the recommendation of Ian Rankin, who wrote a thesis about Muriel Spark’s work. ( )

Unusually for me, I preferred the film adaptation - http://www.susanhatedliterature.net/2020/08/the-prime-of-miss-jean-brodie/ ( )

I loved this book ( )

This is a book that I read years ago and have remembered vaguely since then. I suspect that my memories are mostly from the film that starred Maggie Smith as Miss Brodie. I read the book after seeing the movie but that memorable character as played by Maggie Smith still was pervasive. (As an aside I was lucky enough to see Maggie Smith in Noel Coward's play Private Lives at Ontario's Stratford Festival; she is even more impressive live than on film.) Even after this reread I am sure my mind will still picture the title character as Maggie Smith looked.

Miss Jean Brodie taught in a private school in Edinburgh in the years between the two World Wars. She is described as being in her 40s in her prime so she would have been born in the last part of the 19th century. Although women had achieved some gains in equality Miss Jean Brodie was unusually advanced in her thinking and in her personal life. Six young girls who were taught by her in lower grades continued to be influenced by her even when they went into the Senior School much to the alarm of the head mistress of the school. The head mistress wanted to get some evidence that would allow her to dismiss Miss Brodie and she repeatedly questioned these six girls about her. Since they all revered their former teacher they would never divulge anything that could endanger her position; until one of them did just that. Miss Brodie was an admirer of Mussolini and Hitler and she talked one young girl into going to the Spanish Civil War to fight on Franco's side. That was the straw that caused another of the Brodie set to give the head mistress ammunition to have her dismissed.

Looking back from this time period it is hard to understand how anyone could have supported the Fascists but I know this fictional character had real life counterparts such as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and the aviator Lindbergh. I suppose that the economic achievements of the Fascists were seen as admirable and I imagine that the racism was not unusual for the time. Still I personally have a hard time reconciling Miss Brodie's political stance with her liberated views on women's roles and relationships with men. ( )