The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark is a modern classic and one of the most celebrated novels of the 20th century. Published in 1961, it tells the story of an unconventional Scottish schoolteacher, Miss Jean Brodie, who, despite her best intentions, has a profound and often detrimental effect on her female students.
The novel is narrated retrospectively by one of Miss Brodie’s students, Sandy Stranger, who reflects on the time when, as a twelve-year-old, she and her school friends were selected by Miss Brodie to become her ‘crème de la crème’: her ‘set’. Alongside the other five girls, Sandy comes under Miss Brodie’s spell and is drawn into her teacher's retrograde world of art, politics, religion, and philosophy.
Miss Brodie is an unconventional figure. She is a romantic and an aesthete; a self-styled ‘exasperation’ to the school establishment. She has an unbounded confidence in her intellectual superiority and she expounds theories and opinions with conviction and aplomb. She is witty, sophisticated, and thinks nothing of engaging her young pupils in discussions of religion, fascism, and sexuality.
Advocating a life governed by passion, she repeatedly encourages the girls to wholly embrace art and romance, while simultaneously discouraging other areas of study such as mathematics. Miss Brodie is a passionate believer in classical education, extolling the virtues of Molière, Keats, and other dead poets. Even when the girls in her set conspire against her, Miss Brodie never wavers in her convictions. Unfortunately, her singular focus on her ‘prime’ leads her to neglect two of the girls, Rose and Jenny.
The novel eventually shifts from Edinburgh to Italy and then back to Scotland, as the world outside Miss Brodie’s inner circle begins to intrude upon her idyllic existence. Sandy, her former admirer, finally turns against her, and it is only then that Miss Brodie’s flaws — her vanity, delusions of grandeur, and neglect of other children — begin to fully reveal themselves.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a fascinating exploration of relationships, loyalty, and the danger of fanaticism. Through Sandy’s captivating narrative, Spark has crafted an unforgettable portrait of a complex woman who remains devoted to her principles despite the fact that they eventually lead to her downfall.
Though the novel ends on a sad note, the eponymous character of Miss Jean Brodie — a woman whose fiery determined charm is a product of both greatness and danger — remains an icon of literature. In the end, the reader is left with the haunting question: what is the ‘prime’ of an individual life?
