The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Muriel Spark, 1961
HarperCollins
160 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061711299
Summary
At the staid Marcia Blaine School for Girls, in Edinburgh, Scotland, teacher extraordinaire Miss Jean Brodie is unmistakably, and outspokenly, in her prime. She is passionate in the application of her unorthodox teaching methods, in her attraction to the married art master, Teddy Lloyd, in her affair with the bachelor music master, Gordon Lowther, and—most important—in her dedication to "her girls," the students she selects to be her crème de la crème.
Fanatically devoted, each member of the Brodie set—Eunice, Jenny, Mary, Monica, Rose, and Sandy—is "famous for something," and Miss Brodie strives to bring out the best in each one. Determined to instill in them independence, passion, and ambition, Miss Brodie advises her girls, "Safety does not come first. Goodness, Truth, and Beauty come first. Follow me."
And they do. But one of them will betray her. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 1, 1918
• Where—Edinburg, Scotland, UK
• Death—April 13, 2006
• Where—Civitella della Chiana, Tuscany, Italy
• Education—James Gillespie's High School for Girls; Heriot-
Watt College (one course)
• Awards—James Tait Black Memorial Prize; US Ingersoll
Foundation TS Eliot Award; David Cohen Prize; Dame
Commander of the Order of the British Empire; Booker
Prize, short-listed twice.
Dame Muriel Spark, DBE, was an award-winning Scottish novelist. She was born Muriel Sarah Camberg in Edinburgh, to a Jewish father and an English (and Anglican) mother, and was educated at James Gillespie's High School for Girls. In 1934–35 she took a course in "Commercial correspondence and précis writing" at Heriot-Watt College. She taught English for a brief time and then worked as a secretary in a department store.
On 3 September 1937, she married Sidney Oswald Spark, and soon followed him to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Their son Robin was born in July 1938. Within months she discovered that her husband was a manic depressive prone to violent outbursts. In 1940 Muriel had left Sidney and Robin. She returned to the United Kingdom in 1944 and worked in intelligence during World War II. She provided money at regular intervals to support her son as he toiled unsuccessfully over the years. Spark maintained it was her intention for her family to set up home in England, but Robin returned to Britain with his father later to be brought up by his maternal grandparents in Scotland.
Spark began writing seriously after the war, under her married name, beginning with poetry and literary criticism. In 1947, she became editor of the Poetry Review. In 1954, she decided to join the Roman Catholic Church, which she considered crucial in her development toward becoming a novelist. Penelope Fitzgerald, a contemporary of Spark and a fellow novelist, remarked how Spark "had pointed out that it wasn't until she became a Roman Catholic...that she was able to see human existence as a whole, as a novelist needs to do." In an interview with John Tusa on BBC Radio 4, she said of her conversion and its effect on her writing:
I was just a little worried, tentative. Would it be right, would it not be right? Can I write a novel about that — would it be foolish, wouldn't it be? And somehow with my religion — whether one has anything to do with the other, I don't know — but it does seem so, that I just gained confidence.
Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh supported her in her decision.
Her first novel, The Comforters, was published in 1957. It featured several references to Catholicism and conversion to Catholicism, although its main theme revolved around a young woman who becomes aware that she is a character in a novel.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) was more successful. Spark displayed originality of subject and tone, making extensive use of flashforwards. It is clear that James Gillespie's High School was the model for the Marcia Blaine School in the novel.
After living in New York City for some years, she moved to Rome, where she met the artist and sculptor Penelope Jardine in 1968. In the early 1970s they settled in the Italian region of Tuscany and lived in the village of Civitella della Chiana, of which in 2005 Spark was made an honorary citizen. She was the subject of frequent rumours of lesbian relationships from her time in New York onwards, although Spark and her friends denied their validity. She left her entire estate to Jardine, taking measures to ensure her son received nothing.
She refused to agree to the publication of a biography of her written by Martin Stannard. Penelope Jardine now has the right of approval to publication; and the book was published in July 2009. Stannard was interviewed in the week of the publication of the biography. According to A. S. Byatt, "She was very upset by the book and had to spend a lot of time going through it, line by line, to try to make it a little bit fairer".
She received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1965 for The Mandelbaum Gate, the US Ingersoll Foundation TS Eliot Award in 1992 and the David Cohen Prize in 1997. She became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1993, in recognition of her services to literature. She has been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, in 1969 for The Public Image and in 1981 for Loitering with Intent.
Spark and her son had a strained relationship. They had a falling out when Robin's Judaism prompted him to petition for his late grandmother to be recognized as Jewish. The devout Catholic Spark reacted by accusing him of seeking publicity to further his career as an artist. During one of her last book signings in Edinburgh she responded to an enquiry from a journalist asking if she would see her son by saying 'I think I know how best to avoid him by now'. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Muriel Spark is one of the few writers on either side of the Atlantic with enough resources, daring, and stamina to be altering, as well as feeding, the fiction machine.... We are never out of touch in a Spark novel with the happiness of creation; the sudden willful largesse of magic and wit, the cunning tautness of suspense.
John Updike - The New Yorker
One of our greatest living novelists.
The Times (London)
Spark’s powers of invention are apparently inexhaustible.
Commonwealth
[Spark is] one of this century’s finest creators of comic-metaphysical entertainment.
New York Times
[Spark] has written some things that seem likely to go on being read as long as fiction in English is read at all.
New York Times Book Review.
Book Club Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie:
1. What is Miss Brodie's "prime"? What does she mean by the term and why is it so significant—she announces it to her class and refers to it time and again? It also brought up in the last line of the book.
2. Do we ever learn why she selects the particular girls she does as her Brodie girls? Talk about the girls, their relationships with one another, and their relationship with the school. Are they individuals...or conformists?
3. What is Miss Brodie's purpose in creating the Brodie set? Is it purely educational...or something else? What does she want for (or from) them? In what ways, if at all, does the Brodie set change over the years? Do the girls alter their feelings for Miss Brodie by the time their schooling ends?
4. What do you think of Miss MacKay, the headmistress, who continually attempts to undermine Miss Brodie? At the end, she says to Sandy, "I'm afraid she put ideas into your young heads." Why has that bothered her for so many years? Is that not precisely what education is about, at least Miss MacKay's own philosophy of teaching? Is Miss MacKay a watchful headmistress doing her job? Or is she inhibiting a vibrant, creative teacher?
5. Speaking of the philosophy of education: according to Miss Brodie, she and Miss MacKay differ on the correct method of education. Discuss the following passage and decide whom you agree with:
To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul. To Miss MacKay it is a putting in of something that is not there.... I call that intrusion.... Miss Mackay's method is to thrust a lot of information into the pupil's head; mine is a leading out of knowledge, and that is true education as is proved by the root meaning [of the word].
6. We know Miss Brodie only through the eyes of the girls, primarily Sandy. How does their perception of her change by the time they are 17 years of age...and also when they are even older?
7. Muriel Spark wrote with a great deal of wit, and her humor is particularly evident in this novel because we view the adult world through the eyes of innocents. What are some of the sections you find particularly funny?
8. Is Miss Brodie a good person? Is she a good teacher? Try, in fact, to explain the enigma that is Miss Jean Brodie? What, for instance, is her background—do we ever find out?
9. What about Teddy Lloyd and Gordon Lowther, Miss Brodie's two love interests? What does she want with them? She refuses Lowther's entreaties to marry her—why? And more mysteriously, she encourages Rose to have an affair with Lloyd—why, again?
10. When she is finally betrayed, was the one who did so right or wrong? What prompted the girl tell Miss MacKay what she told her? Was it a betrayal?
11. In the final analysis, how do you come to think of Miss Brodie? Is she a noble figure? A tragic one? A visionary? Is she silly? Is she dangerous or well-meaning? What impact did she have on her girls, lasting or short-term?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
top of page (summary)