Paul's Reviews > The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

4.5 stars rounded up
This is another one of those books I’ve been meaning to read for years; seen the film several times. Having also read The Ballad of Peckham Rye recently and been impressed by Spark, I thought it was time to finally read this. It is brief, but very cleverly put together, employing a flash forward technique, so Spark reveals the plot and the eventual ending bit by bit and in a varied order. Spark also makes good use of some neat aphorisms; “I am in my prime”, you are the crème de la crème”.
Miss Brodie is a primary school teacher of unorthodox method who takes certain pupils under her wing to influence them; they become her “set” and remain so, even after they leave her direct sphere of influence and start senior school. Miss Brodie reads them poetry, takes them to the theatre, points them away from Maths and Sciences and generally tries to direct their lives; identifying a “famous for” or notoriety for each of them. Early on we discover one of the six members of the set betrays Miss Brodie to her greatest enemy, the headmistress. About halfway we discover who, but the how is left to the very end. We follow the set from the end of primary school, through senior school and into glimpses of their later lives and sometimes deaths.
Despite the fluid language Spark limits what she gives the reader about Miss Brodie; we are never alone with her; her presence is mediated by someone else; one of the set usually. Spark is playing with the nature of knowledge, epistemology; as a Catholic convert Spark would have known about that. Here we see nothing of Miss Brodie’s interior life. The character is based on a teacher who inspired Spark, but there are some twists here. Miss Brodie is a great fan of Mussolini; there is also an element of living through others and an edge of cruelty. Spark doesn’t provide us with particularly attractive characters and all the set have obvious flaws; as for the men ... Miss Brodie (who lost her fiancé in the war; we are in the early 1930s) is attractive to the Arts and Music masters and has a relationship with one of them; both are rather insipid. Interestingly the author dispenses judgements and fates with godlike omniscience and Spark is making Brodie behave in an authorial way to explore the limits of authorial power. It’s good stuff and Spark has been compared with Christine Brookes-Rose for this reason.
The character of Sandy in the novel has been compared to Spark and she too moves to Catholicism. Given the events of the novel the name she has as a nun Sister Helena of the Transfiguration is an interesting choice given the novel’s consideration of knowledge and the nature of authorship.
It’s a great tragic-comic novel with some nicely sinister undertones. As forward thinking as she appears to be Miss Brodie is also at heart conservative and the parallels between Miss Brodie and her girls and Miss Brodie’s fascist hero and his followers are interesting. Spark is a great novelist.