The selfless and tireless new teacher who comes into a new school with unorthodox methods that challenge the old, ineffective ways of other educators and succeeds in inspiring underachieving students to find the potential within themselves to rise above their unpromising condition and grow into successful adulthood is, basically, the clichéd “teacher as hero” story. From Goodbye Mr. Chips through To Sir, With Love to Stand and Deliver, Lean on Me, Dangerous Minds, even Welcome Back Kotter, and Robin Williams’ archetypal martyred hero in Dead Poets’ Society, the hero-teacher who comes, like the Grail Knight, to restore to life the Wasteland of public education is a well-known figure in the lore of the classroom. Miss Jean Brodie may seem like one of them. But she’s not, as it turns out.
This atypical book about the influence of an atypical teacher is Dame Muriel Spark’s most famous novel. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was published in 1961 and was immediately popular and brought its author an international reputation. In 1966 a London stage production was mounted, starring Vanessa Redgrave. Redgrave turned down the role in the film version released in 1969, so Maggie Smith starred and won an Oscar for her performance. In 1998, Modern Library included The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie on its list of the 100 greatest English language books of the century at number 76. Time magazine included the book on its 2005 list of the 100 greatest English language novels since 1923. The Guardian named it one of its top 100 English language novels, and the Observer listed it among the 100 greatest novels worldwide. On the BBC list of the Greatest British Novels, as voted on by literary critics and reviewers from around the world, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was listed as number 63. In 2019, the BBC News included the book on its list of the 100 most influential novels in the English language. In 2008, Spark herself was named by the London Times as number eight on its list of “The 50 Greatest British Writers since 1945.” And of course her most acclaimed novel is ranked here as number 78 (alphabetically) on my own list of the “100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language.”
The story takes place at a girls’ school in Edinburgh, the “Marcia Blaine School for Girls,” chiefly in the 1930s. Six 10-year-old girls in the junior school are assigned to Miss Jean Bodie, an unconventional teacher who informs them she is “in her prime.” Miss Brodie proceeds to give them an education in the original Latin sense:
“The word ‘education’ comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead,” she says. “It means a leading out. To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul. To Miss Mackay [the school’s headmistress] it is a putting in of something that is not there, and that is not what I call education, I call it intrusion, from the Latin root prefix in meaning in and the stem trudo, I thrust.”
What this amounts to is that the girls under her tutelage learn a good deal about art history, Greek and Roman classics, the Italian Renaissance and Italian Fascism, as well as Miss Brodie’s personal travels and her love life. Her reasoning behind this is suggested on one occasion when her class is following her through the school and they come to a large poster declaiming “Safety First.” “Miss Mackay retains [the poster] on the wall because she believes in the slogan ‘Safety First,’” she says. “But Safety does not come first. Goodness, Truth and Beauty come first. Follow me.”
The six girls whom she chooses as those she calls her crème de la crème do follow her all the way to their final year at the school, well after she is no longer their teacher, become known to all the school at the “Brodie Set.” The novel gives us a detailed look at her influence on the different girls and, through Spark’s skillful use of “flash forwards,” at the consequences of her unorthodox teaching, including the betrayal by one of these girls that leads to Miss Brodie’s dismissal. Please note, this is not a spoiler. We are told this in a “flash forward” early in the novel. We just aren’t told the identity of the Judas. Yet.
The six members of “The Brodie Set” are introduced early in the book at the age of sixteen. We learn quite early that they do not like to take part in activities that make them one of the crowd. Miss Brodie has told them “Phrases like ‘the team spirit’ are always employed to cut across individualism, love and personal loyalties.” Those personal loyalties include, of course, Loyalty to Miss Brodie herself: “Give me a girl at an impressionable age,” she says, “and she is mine for life.” And being in some sense her creations, these girls display a somewhat eclectic span of knowledge as they move from her tutelage into the Senior School:
vastly informed on a lot of subjects irrelevant to the authorised curriculum, as the headmistress said, and useless to the school as a school. These girls were discovered to have heard of the Buchmanites and Mussolini, the Italian Renaissance painters, the advantages to the skin of cleansing cream and witch‐ hazel over honest soap and water, and the word “menarche”….the love lives of Charlotte Bronte and of Miss Brodie herself. They were aware of the existence of Einstein and the arguments of those who considered the Bible to be untrue. They knew the rudiments of astrology but not the date of the Battle of Flodden or the capital of Finland.
And the girls are convinced, under Miss Brodie’ mentorship, that they truly are the crème de la crème she tells them they are. In a sense, with their individualism and their air of superiority, Miss Brodie is making little Fascists of them. When we first see them, Spark brilliantly introduces them according to how they wear their hats. All the girls must be in uniform, and must wear Panama hats, but within the school’s rules, they express their individuality through their hats.
Rose Stanley was famous for sex. Her hat was placed quite unobtrusively on her blonde short hair, but she dented in the crown on either side….Eunice Gardiner, small, neat and famous for her spritely gymnastics and glamorous swimming, had the brim of her hat turned up at the front and down at the back.
And so on. We also meet Monica Douglas (“famous for mathematics”) and Jenny Gray (“famous for her beauty”), as well as Mary Macgregor—least intelligent of the Brodie set, Mary is often the scapegoat of the group, and we learn early through a “flash-forward” that Mary will die in a hotel fire at the age of 23. Finally, we meet Sandy Stranger, known for her small but peering eyes, whom Miss Brodie says “has insight but no instinct”” (in contrast with Rose, who is said to have “instinct but no insight”). Sandy ultimately becomes Miss Brodie’s trusted confidante, though she at one point reflects that Miss Brodie “thinks she is Providence…she thinks she is the God of Calvin.” Her “set” are like the Elect of a Calvinist God, and Miss Brodie herself is convinced of her own Elect status that she “let everyone know she was in no doubt, that God was on her side.” Sandy, however—our flash-forward tells us—will ultimately reject Scottish Calvinism in favor of Catholicism and become a nun, writing the famous psychological treatise The Transfiguration of the Commonplace.
For Miss Brodie’s influence is not necessarily always benevolent. There is one girl, Joyce Emily Hammond, who begins to attend Marcia Blaine in the senior school and tries (unsuccessfully) to join the Brodie Set. But Miss Brodie does begin to advise her separately, ultimately encouraging her to take part in the Spanish Civil War on the Nationalist (i.e., Franco’s) side—where she is killed.
Just what is this “Prime” Miss Brodie so often insists she is “in”? “These years are still the years of my prime,” she says at one point. “It is important to recognise the years of one’s prime, always remember that.” It suggests a kind of optimal vitality and confidence, which Miss Brodie exudes. But she does tell her class about her lover who died in the First World War, and is at present an unmarried schoolteacher in her 30s, so is the “prime” posturing and cosmopolitan face the façade of a lonely woman? That possibility opens up as we see Miss Brodie caught in a love triangle between the music teacher, Mr. Lowther, who seems lonely himself, and the art teacher, Mr. Lloyd, who is a one-armed veteran with a wife and children. Miss Brodie, after a small fling with Lloyd, settles on the bachelor Lowther instead as more socially acceptable. Mr. Lloyd, however, begins to paint some of the “Brodie Set” in their final year, and curiously paints them all to look a great deal like Miss Brodie herself. Lloyd has a special interest in painting the beautiful Rose, which Miss Brodie encourages. Is she using Rose as a puppet to entice Lloyd into an affair she can enjoy vicariously? Would she use her influence to that extent?
Well, it’s ambiguous, and I won’t say any more about this short but eventful novel for fear of perpetrating a spoiler or two. This ambiguity is, in fact, one of the great strengths of this novel. Spark’s heroine, if we can call Miss Brodie that, becomes known to us in the way we get to know real human beings: by what we see them do, by things that they say—in Miss Brodie’s case, by her many maxims and pronouncements in the classroom—and by what other people say about them.
We never get inside Miss Brodie’s mind to see how she actually feels about things. We read what the six girls in the Brodie Set (particularly Sandy) say and what they think about her, and this is where the ambiguity comes in. We suspect there is something in Miss Brodie’s life that is unfulfilled, but we can never be absolutely sure about it. We might, like Sandy, use our vivid imaginations to create lively scenarios involving Miss Brodie: Sandy imagines a letter Miss Brodie might write to the music teacher after a steamy encounter: “Allow me, in conclusion, to congratulate you warmly upon your sexual intercourse, as well as your singing.” But the fact is, whether in imitation or rebellion. Miss Brodie’s influence upon “her” girls is indelibly marked. Sandy, being interviewed in her convent after making a splash with her book, is asked what her chief influences were during her school years. “There was,” she answers, “a Miss Jean Brodie in her prime.”