Book Review: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Short book, long review
Short and sweet novel that follows the story of the title character, a charismatic teacher at an all girls school in Edinburgh in the 1930s, along with her six pet students, known as the Brodie set.
The writer gets immediately down to business with the story and lays out the major plot point of Miss Brodie’s betrayal at the beginning. The timespan starts from when the girls meet Miss Brodie and extends to adulthood and extends long after they have all gone their separate ways.
Miss Brodie is the glamorous central focus. I’m struck by how narcissistic she is, but it is easy to see why she would be attractive to her students. When she first meets her six, she stands out from the other teachers right away by both ignoring the standard curriculum. Instead of sticking to the memorization of “hard facts,” Brodie wants her students to know about culture, art, and life including talking about her own tragic first love.
Kids love rebels, and Miss Brodie encourages independent thought rather than conformity. She criticizes other adults from the school in front of the students. This is a huge taboo in situations where adults are expected to present a united front. She subverts the school rules, making her an exciting figure to the girls.
Despite her apparent defiance and flouting of the school’s expectations, she is highly concerned with what her students think of her, especially her “set.” Not because she respects their opinions (they are kids after all); she is mostly interested in the way their admiration makes her feel and how their performance and respective reputations in the school reflect back on her. If they do well, it shows how great she is. If they are devoted to her, same thing. (But enough about me, let’s talk about you. What do you think of me?)
Teachers are there to get students to think, not to care how the students think of them. Ideally, even if the student hated them, they would still learn from them. Although, I suppose learning is more likely with a teacher you like.
The view of Miss Brodie offered in the novel is mostly through Sandy, one of the “set,” and the actual main character of the story. All the girls romanticize her, but Sandy does this in particular, even writing (along with her friend Jenny) stories and letters starring Jean Brodie and "poor dead Hugh," and then later with two of the male teachers that have shown an interest in Jean.
**spoiler below**
There is a lot of (mostly humorous) discussion of sex and romance in the story. Yet, when the headmistress finally gets the troublesome Miss Brodie out of her hair, it is politics that nabs her, not a scandalous “unmarried sex life.”
For reasons I found unclear, Miss Brodie was quite fascinated with fascism. She mentions her admiration of Italian Fascists and Hitler. While her politics are not explained, I conjecture that it's the elitist element of fascism that appeals to her. Miss Brodie is in support of a social hierarchy with her and her kind at the top. She constantly talks about her "set" as the future “creme de la creme,” implying that they will be “better” than other people, mostly because of her influence of course.
One of her goals with her “girls” is for them to live up to their potential as she sees it, not turn out little carbon copies as per the school curriculum. "As she sees it," is the critical point here. If the students did what she expected, it would simply be letting a different authority figure control their future.
The tone is tragic/comedy. As clever as Miss Brodie thinks she is, she never sees her betrayal coming. The reader knows from the start and just watches it unfold. There is much humor in Miss Brodie’s constant self delusion and in the young girls and how they create their notion of adults and adult relationships.
Short book, but so much complexity and fascinating character work that I ended up writing a long review.
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