Bibliography

Novels

The Comforters (1957)

Robinson (1958)
 Memento Mori (1959)

The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960)

The Bachelors (1960)

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)

The Girls of Slender Means (1963)

The Mandelbaum Gate (1965)

The Public Image (1968) - Shortlisted for Booker Prize

The Driver's Seat (1970)

Not to Disturb (1971)

The Hothouse by the East River (1973)

The Abbess of Crewe (1974)

The Takeover (1976)

Territorial Rights (1979)

Loitering with Intent (1981) - Shortlisted for Booker Prize

The Only Problem (1984)

A Far Cry From Kensington (1988)

Symposium (1990)

Reality and Dreams (1996)

Aiding and Abetting (2000)

The Finishing School (2004)

Other works

Tribute to Wordsworth (edited with Derek Stanford) (1950)

Child of Light (a study of Mary Shelley) (1951)
 The Fanfarlo and Other Verse (1952)

Selected Poems of Emily Bront (1952)

John Masefield (biography) (1953)

Emily Bront: Her Life and Work (with Derek Stanford) (1953)

My Best Mary (a selection of letters of Mary Shelley, edited with Derek

Stanford) (1953)

The Bront letters (1954)

Letters of John Henry Newman (edited with Derek Stanford) (1957)

The Go-away Bird (short stories) (1958)

Voices at Play (short stories and plays) (1961)

Doctors of Philosophy (play) (1963)

Collected Poems I (1967)

Collected Stories I (1967)

The Very Fine Clock (children's book, illustrations by Edward Gorey)

(1968)

Bang-bang You're Dead (short stories) (1982)

Mary Shelley (complete revision of Child of Light) (1987)

Going Up to Sotheby's and Other Poems (1982)

Curriculum Vitae (autobiography) (1992)

Complete Short Stories (2001)

All the Poems (2004)

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a short book by novelist Muriel Spark, by
far the best known of her works.[1] It first saw publication in The New Yorker
magazine and was published as a book by Macmillan in 1961. The
unforgettable character of Miss Jean Brodie, out of place at Marcia Blaine
School, brought Spark international fame and boosted her into the first rank
of contemporary Scottish literature. In 2005, the novel was chosen by TIME
magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels from 1923
to present.[2]

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie enjoyed multiple dramatic adaptations: a stage play in
1968, a film starring Maggie Smith in 1969, and a TV serial in 1978. The play and
the film reshuffled some of the correspondences between the characters and the
plot elements. The TV serial took even greater liberties with the original.

Plot summary

This summary tells the story of the novel mostly in chronological order, which
is not true of the original book.

In 1930s Edinburgh, six ten-year-old girls are assigned Miss Jean Brodie, self-
described as in her prime, as their teacher: Sandy, Rose, Mary, Jenny,
Monica, and Eunice (only the first two of them are major figures). Miss
Brodie, intent on their receiving an education in the original sense of the
Latin verb educere, "to lead out", gives her students lessons on art history or
her love life and travels. Under her mentorship, the girls begin to stand out
from the rest of the school as distinctively Brodie. However, in one of the
novel's typical flash-forwards, we learn that one of them will later betray Miss
Brodie, causing her to lose her teaching job, but that she never learned
which one. (This is typical of the novel's style: scenes from the future lives of
the characters are revealed, piece by piece, in flash-forwards throughout the
novel.)

In the Junior School, they meet the singing teacher, the short Mr Lowther;
and the art master, the handsome, one armed war veteran Mr Lloyd, a
married Roman Catholic man with six children. These two teachers form a
love triangle with Miss Brodie, each loving her, while she only loves Mr Lloyd.
Miss Brodie never, however, overtly acts on her love for Mr Lloyd except once
to exchange a kiss with him, which is witnessed by Monica. Miss Brodie and
Mr Lowther, however, have a sexual relationship.
Miss Brodie and Miss Mackay in the dramatic adaptation of The Prime of Miss
Jean Brodie.

During a two week absence from school, Miss Brodie enters into an affair
with Mr Lowther on the grounds that a bachelor makes a more respectable
paramour: she had renounced Mr Lloyd as he was married. At one point
during these two years in the Junior School, Jenny is "accosted by a man
joyfully exposing himself beside the Water of Leith".[3] The police
investigation of the exposure leads Sandy to imagine herself as part of a
fictional police force seeking incriminating evidence in respect of Miss Brodie
and Mr Lowther.[4]

Once the girls are promoted to the Senior School (in the seventh year of
school, around age twelve) though now dispersed, they hold on to their
identity as the Brodie set. Miss Brodie keeps in touch with them after school
hours by inviting them over as she used to do when they were her pupils. All
the while, the headmistress Miss Mackay tries to break them up and compile
information gleaned from them into sufficient cause to fire Miss Brodie. Miss
Mackay, in the novel (but not in the 1969 film) younger than Miss Brodie, had
more than once suggested to Miss Brodie that the latter seek employment at
a 'progressive' school; Miss Brodie declined to move to what she describes as
a 'crank' school. When two other teachers at the school, the Kerr sisters, take
part-time employment as Mr Lowther's housekeepers, Miss Brodie tries to
take over their duties. She sets about fattening him up with extravagant
cooking. The girls, now thirteen, visit Miss Brodie in pairs over at Mr
Lowther's house, where all Miss Brodie does is ask about Mr Lloyd in Mr
Lowther's presence. It is at this point that Mr Lloyd asks Rose, and
occasionally the other girls, to pose for him as portrait subjects. Each face he
paints ultimately resembles Miss Brodie, as her girls report to her in detail,
and she thrills at the telling. One day when Sandy is over visiting Mr Lloyd,
he kisses her for peering at him with her little eyes.

Before the Brodie set turns sixteen, Miss Brodie tests her girls to discover
which of them she can really trust, ultimately settling upon Sandy as her
confidante. Miss Brodie, obsessed with the notion that Rose should have an
affair with Mr Lloyd in her place, begins to neglect Mr Lowther, who ends up
marrying Miss Lockhart, the science teacher. Another student, Joyce Emily,
steps briefly into the picture, trying unsuccessfully to join the Brodie set. Miss
Brodie takes her under her wing separately, however, encouraging her to run
away to fight in the Spanish Civil War on the Nationalist (pro-Franco) side,
which she does, only to be killed in an accident when the train she is
travelling in is attacked.[5]

The original Brodie set, now seventeen and in their final year of school, go
their separate ways. Mary and Jenny quit before graduating, Mary to become
a typist and Jenny to pursue a career in acting. Eunice becomes a nurse and
Monica a scientist. Rose lands a handsome husband. Sandy, with a keen
interest in psychology, is fascinated by Mr Lloyd's stubborn love, his painter's
mind and his religion. For five weeks during the summer, now eighteen and
alone with him in his house while his wife and children are on holiday, she
has an affair with him.

Over time, Sandy's interest in the man wanes while her interest in the mind
that loves Jean Brodie grows. In the end, she will leave him, adopt his Roman
Catholic religion, and become a nun. Beforehand, however, she meets with
the headmistress and blatantly confesses to wanting to put an end to Miss
Brodie. She suggests Miss Mackay try accusing her of fascism, and this tactic
succeeds. Not until her dying moment will Miss Brodie be able to imagine
that it was her confidante, Sandy, who betrayed her. After Brodie's death,
however, Sandy, now Sister Helena of the Transfiguration and the author of
"The Transfiguration of the Commonplace", maintains that "it's only possible
to betray where loyalty is due".[6] One day when an enquiring young man
visits Sandy at the convent because of her strange book on psychology to
ask what were the main influences of her school years, "Were they literary or
political or personal? Was it Calvinism?"

Sandy said: "There was a Miss Jean Brodie in her prime."[7]

With that the novel ends.

Characters

Main characters

Jean Brodie
"She thinks she is Providence, thought Sandy, she thinks she is the God of
Calvin."[8] In some ways she is: in her prime she draws her chosen few to
herself, much as Calvinists understand God to draw the elect to their
salvation. With regard to religion, Miss Brodie "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."[9] Feeling
herself fated one way or another, Miss Brodie acts as if she transcends
morality.

Sandy Stranger

Of the set, "Miss Brodie fixed on Sandy," taking her as her special confidante.
[10]
She is characterised as having "small, almost nonexistent, eyes" and a
peering gaze. Miss Brodie repeatedly reminds Sandy that she has insight but
no instinct. Sandy rejects Calvinism, reacting against its rigid predestination
in favor of Roman Catholicism.

Rose Stanley

In contrast to Sandy, Rose is a beautiful blonde with instinct but no insight.

Though somewhat undeservedly, Rose is "famous for sex," and the art
teacher Mr. Lloyd, taking an interest in her beauty, asks her to model for his
paintings. In every painting, however, Rose has the likeness of Miss Brodie,
whom Mr. Lloyd stubbornly loves. Rose and Sandy are the two girls in whom
Miss Brodie places the most hope of becoming the crme de la crme. Again
contrary to Sandy, Rose "shook off Miss Brodie's influence as a dog shakes
pond-water from its coat."[11]

Mary Macgregor

Dim-witted and slow, Mary is Miss Brodie's scapegoat. Mary meekly bears the
blame for everything that goes wrong. At the age of 23 she dies in a hotel
fire, killed by running away from and then back into the burning building.

Supporting characters

Monica Douglas...one of the set; famous for mathematics and her

anger
Jenny Gray...one of the set; famous for her beauty

Eunice Gardiner...one of the set; famous for her gymnastics and

glorious swimming

Teddy Lloyd...the art master

Gordon Lowther...the singing master

 Miss Mackay...the headmistress

Miss Alison Kerr...the sewing mistress of Marcia Blaine with her sister
Ellen

Miss Ellen Kerr...Miss Alison's elder sister

Miss Gaunt...a school mistress and a sister to the minister of Cramond

Miss Lockhart... a chemistry teacher, the nicest teacher in Marcia

Blaine

Structure

Spark unfolds her plots not sequentially, but piece by piece, making
extensive use of the narrative technique of prolepsis (flash-forward). For
example, the reader is aware early on that Miss Brodie is betrayed, though
sequentially this happens at the end of their school years. Gradually Spark
reveals the betrayer, and lastly all the details surrounding the event are told.
Spark develops her characters in this way, too: Joyce Emily is introduced
right away as the girl who is rejected from the Brodie set. With this
technique, the narrator of the story is omniscient and timeless, relating the
entire plot all at once.

Spark creates deep characterizations which are realistic in their human

imperfections. Hal Hager, in his commentary on the novel, writes of Sandy
and Miss Brodie:

The complexity of these two characters, especially Jean Brodie, mirrors the
complexity of human life. Jean Brodie is genuinely intent on opening up her
girls' lives, on heightening their awareness of themselves and their world,
and on breaking free of restrictive, conventional ways of thinking, feeling,
and being.[12]

Examine the character of Miss Jean Brodie as a symbol of non

conformity.

Miss Brodie is a spinster school teacher at an exclusive school for "young

ladies" in Scotland (The Marcia Blaine School for Girls). Her fiance has been
killed in World War I, so Miss Brodie has devoted herself to "her girls" - the
Brodie Set, as they are called. She is a non-conformist teacher who believes
the curriculum at Marcia Blaine is dull and boring, so she teaches her girls
much more exciting things - like theatre, poetry, history, art - all with a flair
for the dramatic. The girls learn to pretend to be doing "maths" or some dull
history lesson when the headmistress walks in, when in fact, they are
studying something much more avant garde and exciting.

She is also non-comformist in her personal relationships. As a single, female

teacher at a girls' school in post WWI Europe, she would be expected to be
prim, proper and chaste. Miss Brodie is none of these things. In fact, she has
sexual relations with two male teachers at the school, one of whom is
married. She is fond of telling her girls that she is "in her prime" which has
much more of a sexual meaning than the girls realize at first.

Miss Brodie is also somewhat nonconformist in her political views. She is very
naive. She admires the order that she sees in the fascist countries of Spain
(under Franco) and Italy (under Mussolini), but is apparently ignorant of the
oppressive nature of such governments. While the rest of Europe was looking
in fear at the rising powers in Spain, Germany and Italy prior to WWII, Miss
Brodie has just the opposite views of these regimes, which ultimately proves
her undoing as she is dismissed from her position because of her views.

Themes

Private School Education

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is set in a 1930s private school in Edinburgh.
The interaction between the small staff, the personality of the headmistress,
and the way teachers deal with students provide the framework for this
novels action. The kinds of social behavior and classroom decorum typical of
this privileged class and setting are dramatized. While Miss Brodie insists on
the girls walking with their heads up and keeping their sleeves neatly cuffed,
she colludes with them to circumvent the curriculum and subvert the
headmistresss authority. Pretending to teach the regular subjects of history
and math, Miss Brodie instead elaborates on various unrelated topics, all of
which are of great interest to herher World War I financ, her vacations in
Italy and Germany, her favorite Renaissance artists, along with information
about cold cream treatment for skin and details about puberty. Her
classroom is her stage, and Miss Brodie maintains that she is devoting her
prime to her girls and that her girls are the crme de la crme.

Sexual Maturation

At ten and eleven, the prepubescent girls are curious and shy about sexual
matters. They have a sketchy idea about sexual intercourse and make up
scenarios about how it occurs. They conclude that since Mr. Lloyds wife has
had another baby, Mr. Lloyd has committed sex with her. Sandy Stranger
sublimates her sexual interest into daydreams about fictional characters from
Kidnapped and Jane Eyre. A man exposes himself to Jenny. Rose goes
through puberty first and later becomes known among schoolboys for being
sexy.

In the following couple of years, the girls begin to intuit Miss Brodies sexual
attachment for the art teacher, Mr. Lloyd, and her pursuit of the music
teacher as a way of working it off on Mr. Lowther.

Flash-forward passages describe the women these girls become. For

example, Eunice speaks to her husband about her intention on their
upcoming trip back to Edinburgh to locate and decorate Miss Brodies grave,
and in another instance Jenny, now married many years, suddenly feels
erotic energy for a stranger in Italy.

Rose models nude for Mr. Lloyd and Sandy becomes his lover. In all, the
novel economically maps out the movement through adolescence to sexual
awareness and sexual roles.

Betrayal

Miss Brodie repeatedly affirms her commitment to her girls, the proof of
which is that she is devoting the prime of her life to their education. She
makes an impression on them, attaching them to her by taking them into her
confidence. She attaches personally and inappropriately to a chosen group of
six students, whom she treats to outings at the theater and invites to her
home for tea. Yet, Miss Brodie is verbally abusive to Mary Macgregor; every
time she berates Mary as a stupid lump, Miss Brodie both betrays her
responsibility as a teacher and denies Marys humanity.

While espousing loyalty to her students, Miss Brodie habitually sabotages

school policy and Miss Mackays authority. Miss Brodie is also quick to sense
plots to get her to resign. Thus she teaches betrayal and distrust. When her
chosen set of students are in their senior year, Miss Brodie is sufficiently
obsessed with her frustrated attachment to Mr. Lloyd that she attempts to
manipulate Rose into becoming his lover. That she is thus willing to treat a
student like a surrogate object of vicarious sexual expression constitutes a
serious breach of ethics. When Sandy betrays her teacher, she is only
acting out what she has observed for years in Miss Brodie herself.

Victimization

Mary Macgregor is victimized at the Blaine School. She is ridiculed and

scorned by Miss Brodie, and the other students follow suit, valuing their
status with their teacher over being kind to Mary. Miss Brodie pushes
innocent Mary out of art class, accusing her for instigating the misconduct
begun by others. Miss Brodie and the students see Mary as a stupid lump, a
thing to be kicked around with impunity. Only knowledge of her untimely
death at twenty-three causes her persecutors momentarily to regret the way
they treated her. Mary Macgregors victimization is a cue about the reality of
fascist and Nazi racism and oppression. She dies in a fire in 1943, at the
same time when millions of people are being reduced to ash in Nazi death
camps. Thus, Marys role and fate in the novel are poignant testimony to the
effects of domination and subjugation. In another way, Joyce Emily Hammond
is also a victim. A rebel seeking a cause, Joyce Emily takes up Miss Brodies
irresponsible recommendation that she go off to Spain and fight for Franco.
Joyce Emily dies in a train wreck en route.