The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Jean Brodie is in her prime. At least that is what she says. She regularly informs her girls, her special set of students whom she is developing into the créme de la créme, that when one is in one’s prime, as she is, all manner of art and beauty is open to one. Mostly, however, her girls assume she is talking about sex. Maybe not when they were 10, when she first took them under her wing, but increasingly through the years in which they stay in close contact even after the two years she taught them directly. Her girls range from the bright to the dull, from the beautiful to the plain, but they all share an absolute devotion to Miss Brodie. Any act of betrayal on their part is almost inconceivable. And yet…

The writing here is show more marvellously subtle and playful as the narrator jumps between characters and over time-spans to reveal, early on, outcomes for the various girls. It is so light and knowing that you will be astounded at Spark’s reinvention of the school novel. If it is your first direct encounter with her writing, as it has been for me, you will immediately want to commit yourself to reading everything that Spark has written. But you’ll probably find yourself returning to Jean Brodie in her prime simply to admire the craft and sparkle of Muriel Spark’s prose.

Certainly recommended. show less

Talk about a book being more than the sum of its parts. Every sentence is like a freaking scalpel. Sad to say but it's so refreshing to read a book that refuses to spell things out for the reader and makes you form all the connections yourself—something about that is really powerful. The book operates on all these different levels—temporal, POV, emotional, moral—and was so rewarding.

Miss Brodie is a lower school teacher at a girls school in Edinburgh in the 1930s. The girls in her class idolize her, and she continues to dote on them as they grow up, bragging about how she is molding them into her own image. She is in love with the art teacher but he is married so she takes up with the music teacher, but later encourages her students to have an affair with the art teacher. Eventually she is removed from her teaching position, because one of her girls betrays her.

I originally read this book in 2009 but did not write a review and I don’t remember what I thought about it. I’ve grown a ton since then, and I think it’s unlikely I would have felt the same.
Miss Brodie sucks. Even aside from the obvious idolizing of show more Mussolini and pimping out her students, she’s a narcissist and a hypocrite. She only cares about herself and what she wants to do. She’s forever in her prime because she thinks she’s the greatest person on earth and has never done anything wrong. Anyone who disagrees must be against her. She doesn’t have any real coherent political beliefs except that she idolizes strongmen. (Not even racism, surprisingly) It’s obvious that the author knows that she sucks and is writing her that way on purpose, so that’s not necessarily a knock against the book. The writing is very interesting - there is lots of repetition and epithets and flipping back to a character’s backstory that feel Homeric. However, for me I don’t feel that the book accomplished what it set out to do. How terrible she is is definitely doled out gradually, but while the book told me that Miss Brodie was very charismatic, I didn’t feel it. The girls obviously felt that way, but they were pre-teens at the start, and it was apparent to me that no one else liked her and that’s a big red flag. I think it missed the mark, but I wouldn’t be opposed to reading more by Muriel Spark. show less

You've Got to Love Her, Warts and All!

Miss Jean Brodie, leader of the Brodie Set and a teacher at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls at the beginning of the 1930’s is popular, influential and an unabashed and unapologetic fascist. When we first encounter Jean Brodie she is already well into a fanciful state of protracted self-deception in which she feels at the height of her abilities as an educator, an influencer and as a woman. She attributes this to being a combination of age (she is in her forties), marital status (proudly single), worldview (fascist) and a superior sense of self that allows her the conviction to think that she is invincible, indispensable and powerful. She refers to this period as her prime. This fanciful show more illusion of being in her prime allows her to not only feel emboldened to teach her girls life lessons that fall well outside of the Marcia Blaine syllabus and ethos, but also treat her peers as she pleases. She is entirely lacking in self-doubt. So much so that she believes that the establishment of the Marcia Blaine School will always allow her to espouse her “progressive” philosophies and will embrace and maybe conform to her ideas despite its own conservative ideals. She also believes that she can and should manipulate the life decisions members of the Brodie Set and at least two of her fellow teachers.
As an educator of the crème de la crème, as she also refers to her girls, she is of the opinion that her teaching methodologies are “putting old heads on young shoulders” but is espousing controversial political beliefs and condoning and encouraging unorthodox behaviour among her girls. She is opinionated, fatally flawed and on the wrong side of European history. She is preoccupied with the notion that she, her girls and Edinburgh on the whole are more European than British or Scottish and would be best to align itself with Europe than the British Isles. Historically, she could not be more wrong and her philosophy could not be more flawed. In the course of the next eight or nine years Churchill will declare that Britain will have found itself in a state of war with Nazi Germany, and the historical outcomes will place Miss Brodie and her beliefs on the wrong side of history, having aligned herself with not one but three of Europe’s most notorious tyrants . Through thoughtful use of prolepses and conversation after the war and shortly before her untimely death, we find that Miss Brodie has passed her prime, lost her sense of self and ultimately the judgement of character that she previously valued in herself . Her influence has been harmful on some of her girls; poor Mary has run off to fight in the conflict in Spain but has in fact been killed pursuing the wrong side of the fighting. Sandy, perhaps one of the most prodigious of Miss Brodie’s set has been influenced to pose for the school’s art teacher and ultimately have sex with him.
The character has been so thoughtfully crafted and written that while she's a bit of a villain, Spark had her readers rooting for and empathizing with her. The reader cannot help but experience a pang of pity and sympathy for the defeated Miss Brodie who despite her intelligence and love of life who all through her prime in the early 1930s has been unable to foresee the tragic path that mainland Europe is about to experience and the role that she has played in the destruction of her career, self-sabotage of her own reputation and the ending of her prime. The end of the war sees her nearing the end of her life, a friendless and jobless spinster well past this prime. When we last meet her, she is sitting at a table, slowly succumbing to some growing internal illness, dwelling on the demise of her life as she knew it and wondering which of her girls has betrayed her. show less

The titular Miss Jean Brodie is a classic character, flawed, ingenious, devastating, and brimming with confidence bordering, and often crossing into arrogance.

As a teacher, she cultivates a close relationship with six of her female students, the infamous Brodie set. Principally there is Rose, who is famous for sex; Mary, the maligned and doomed scapegoat; and Sandy, the voracious reader and daydreamer. Miss Brodie ignores arithmetic and history in favor of tales of her torrid romances, high culture, and shapes their mind - "Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life", as she is apt to say.

Miss Brodie's own love life becomes inextricably linked to the girls' paths in life, and as they grow up, they begin to see show more how much their former teacher has marked their lives and shaped them. One of them betrays Miss Brodie to the headmistress, revealing her disastrous infatuation with fascism, and, forced to retire, Miss Brodie reaches the end of her prime.

The joy of this story is in the characters, who are sketched so simply but sharply, all the same, and the deft hand of Sparks, who never comes out and tells you how to feel. You both admire and pity Miss Jean Brodie. The deeper story, of course, revolves around Sandy and Miss Brodie, who are more alike than they would like to admit, but diametrically opposed. They are negatives of each other and their actions mimic, rejoin, and oppose each others' - Miss Brodie is Calvin's Providence put up against Sandy's Catholicism. She is the guiltless, whereas Sandy flinches from her actions.

In a lesser writer's hands, the story would seem trite and tired; in Sparks's, it is as sparkling and memorable as her creation of Miss Jean Brodie in her prime. show less

This was a grower for sure. I tried reading it awhile ago and gave up because its so boring. But I gave it another shot in audiobook format because I was hoping for some lesbian themes, and this book didn't disappoint. It's still fairly boring, there isn't much of a plot. But it does give you a lot to think about as you try to figure out what's going on with the three main characters. I think it may actually be worth a closer reread as well.

Miss Brodie is a bird. There's just not another way to describe her foolishness. She's a teacher who is completely unqualified for her job and doesn't care that she's unqualified because she's in her "prime." I love it, I love her. I wish for all women to be this unconcerned with their work and to show more view their entire 30s-60s as their prime. Miss Brodie is so self-obsessed that she views her students as an extension of herself. They are merely the props holding up her own ego. They don't have their own personalities or ambitions in her mind, they just have what she's assigned to them. And like many a bird, Miss Brodie is obsessed with an unattainable man. I usually don't encourage women sleeping with married men, but Miss Brodie is such a bird I don't think she could have gotten over him in any other way. She doesn't sleep with him and I feel like that's one of many social commentaries in the novel. The fact that someone as freewheeling as Miss Brodie doesn't feel free enough to take what is both wanted and on offer says a lot about how restrictive society is for women.

On that theme, throughout this entire book everyone is so incredibly critical of Miss Brodie. Yes, she's a vain ditz who has no business teaching, but the true villain of the story is Mr. Lloyd. Mr. Lloyd is a predator. He clearly has a lot of sex with his Catholic wife, who is forced to bear his children, yet it is not enough. He tries to lure Miss Brodie into a sexual affair even though he knows it would absolutely ruin her. He forces his lips onto a fifteen-year-old girl. And though it isn't explicitly stated, it seems pretty clear that Mr. Lloyd uses his passion for painting portraits as a way to lure young girls into his studio in the hopes of turning them into lovers. Yuck! The fact that almost no criticism lands at Mr. Lloyd's feet is a huge commentary in itself. Very typical of our society to blame a woman for possibly being loose and not a man for being a clear and obvious philanderer and predator.

Lastly, there is Sandy. My poor mess of a child. She is a hard character to understand because Spark doesn't give us a ton of info on her background. But halfway through this book, I figured Sandy must be in love with Miss Brodie and not understand or what to do with those feelings. Her obsession is weird. All of the other girls give Miss Brodie platonic friend energy, but Sandy holds back in weird ways. At one point she silently accuses Miss Brodie of being a lesbian and its like...girl, look in the mirror. She becomes so obsessed with Miss Brodie that she sleeps with the man Miss Brodie loves just to be closer to her in some sick way. She doesn't even like the man, she's just trying to understand why the man loves Miss Brodie so much...because maybe if she understands his obsession she'll understand her own. Eventually she retreats into Catholicism because she no longer wants to think for herself. Thinking for herself would mean sorting through all of her complicated feelings. It's so much easier to live by the strict rules of a nunnery. And of course, she turns Miss Brodie in because the woman stirred up so many feelings within her that she was upset with having to deal with. Like Miss Brodie, Sandy gives no indication of actually giving a shit about the kids that come after her.

Fun stuff. This also returned to me the concept of "being in my prime." I love that idea and will likely be saying it for years to come. show less

I have grown to become quite the fan of Ms Spark's writing style. As far as the modern novel goes, and as far as poetic writing goes, this is what I love and no more (and no less).

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is the perfect example, and perhaps the most celebrated of Spark's works. Brodie is a girls school teacher in 1930s Edinburgh; she is unorthodox in a time when unorthodox practices have their place in modern schools rather than traditional, and instead of teaching her young students the curriculum she instead educates them about life.

Though this sounds rather dry, Spark's wit and inventiveness keeps the tale of love and growing-up interesting and cool, by leaping around from one time to another almost in mid-sentence. The show more strangest, most surprising aspect is that it all works so well - I've read other authors who try such complicated maneuvres and fall flat on their face.

It's almost a shame that this is only a couple of hours' entertainment, but at the same time I can't imagine how making it longer could make it better. The story grows with the children brought up by and around Miss Brodie, and as they outgrow her we begin to feel ready to move on ourselves. show less