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The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

3.74 of 5 stars 3.74 · rating details · 12,497 ratings · 698 reviews

(Alternate-cover edition - ISBN 10: 0141181427)

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 ma

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Paperback, 144 pages

Published February 24th 2000 by Penguin Books, Limited (UK) (first published 1961)

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Nov 11, 2012 Maureen rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

this is the second muriel spark book i've read. the first was The Girls of Slender Means and i wasn't sold. i cared so little about any of the brittle bitches she wrote about. i was told by an excellent friend after my initial insouciance that i had chosen the wrong book to start with -- actually what he said was, "Stop asking me for reading suggestions. You'll vaguely recall the author's name and months later pick the wrong book by him/her and then grumble about it. :P" and trusting that it was...more this is the second muriel spark book i've read. the first was The Girls of Slender Means and i wasn't sold. i cared so little about any of the brittle bitches she wrote about. i was told by an excellent friend after my initial insouciance that i had chosen the wrong book to start with -- actually what he said was, "Stop asking me for reading suggestions. You'll vaguely recall the author's name and months later pick the wrong book by him/her and then grumble about it. :P" and trusting that it was once again my failing, and not of his wisdom, i thought i'd venture forth and try the most well-known of her novels instead, the one written immediately before the girls of slender means, and see where that got me. and here we are, with a two-star rating, and a book that struck just the same as the first -- except it might have had a bit more wit -- i remember some of sandy's fantasies being wonderfully piquant, and were easily my favourite parts of the novel. i want to be clear that i respect the writing -- in fact, this novel is marvellously constructed in its flashing forward and back through time, always maintaining a taut narrative progression. spark doesn't waste words and she wields them like a rapier. i'm glad i've read her because her aptitude was instructive.

the issue for me seems to be i don't care two jots about anybody muriel spark writes about. the closest i came to being interested was in the friendship between sandy, the nun/narrator of the novel and her friend jenny and then jenny disappears from the action. i am sure people will suggest that it is in the effect of such real characterization that i have founded an antipathy, and that may well be true. but i would argue that except for sandy and miss brodie, and perhaps lloyd, the art instructor who plays such a pivotal role, many of the characters are static stick figures, easily interchangeable -- surely, i thought jenny might well play the same part as rose in this novel? and at this point now, i can barely remember any of the rest of the brodie set, except that they were there to make up the set, one liked this and another liked that, and there was a maligned one who was their scapegoat (a similar pitiable character was also featured in the girls of slender means.) also, i grew tired of reading about sandy's tiny eyes -- must we hammer home ms. brodie's point about her insight? surely her eyes are turned inside out! not much really happens and i don't care enough about the characters to relish the journey. the writing that is this book's might be sharp but her eponymous spark did not turn into the bonfire i had hoped for.

i am trying one last time with spark, because my dear friend initially recommended that i read The Driver's Seat before i went off buying books that weren't his suggestion, and i've been told is quite different (hallelujah) and much more of a mystery, so perhaps more up my alley. so i will be back for one last dance, but not any time yet. this card's currently full. (less)

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Aug 05, 2010 Paul rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, whats-all-the-fuss-about

Yes, this was a very slightly cool novel with schoolgirls being taught "advanced" ideas by Miss Brodie. In other hands you might have got something along the lines of Emanuelle Goes To College but the glinty eyed Miss Spark keeps the whole thing perfectly respectable, if that can include being a fan of Italian fascism.

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Jul 24, 2008 Joanna rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001, 2008-read

Embarassingly for someone with a degree in women's studies, I'd never read this classic. Thanks to jury duty the past couple of days, I've now remedied this gap in my reading. I shall now need to see the classic film, which I've also missed. That background aside, I really enjoyed this book. Yes, not much happens in the novel. But the richness of the characters and the dialog make this very short book crackle with electricity and life. Miss Brodie "in her prime" becomes an idealized and nurturin...more

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Jan 31, 2011 rachel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, brit-lit, do-not-own, love-the-cover, my-brain-wants-to-marry-your-brain

Miss Jean Brodie is a magnetic minor fascist -- which surprised me, knowing little about the book beforehand except that a.) it was made into a movie starring Maggie Smith and b.) that this cover is cute and also very twee.

But what Spark does here is let the reader see with the eyes of the "Brodie set," of six distinctive girls who follow their teacher in and out of the classroom from their pre-adolescent through their teenage years. We move with Sandy, Rose, Jenny, Monica, Eunice, and Mary from...more

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Apr 12, 2010 Tyler rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone

Recommended to Tyler by: Various Reviews

I read this to add to my female authors. I like this book, yet I see why some readers don't. The title implies some sort of in-depth psychological analysis to come, and that doesn't happen. Au contraire.

The fame of this novel comes from the strong authorial control over the narrative. Particularly interesting is Spark's manipulation of temporality -- she moves back and forth between present and future with unusual effectiveness.

The other remarkable thing is the broad brushstrokes with which sh...more

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Nov 12, 2012 Stela rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviews, modernism

It's in "Reading Lolita in Tehran" I first learnt about this book and it still surprises me I've never heard of it before, since it clearly is one of a kind.
Even if the novel did not really click with me, personally, I recognized the ingeniosity of the narrative design, especially in manipulating the timeline in an original way: all the important events are in the past, but instead of the flash-back techniques usually used to do the transition to the present, there is a so-called flash-forward...more

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May 27, 2010 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I can't believe I found this book. I didn't even know it was a book. I only vaguely remember the film adaptation, though I was profoundly affected by it. It's one of many such films that has haunted me in memory fragments. The themes of the movie were too-deep, too-unsettling for me at...whatever age I happened to be. Oddly enough, this touches on the main idea of the story.

Miss Jean Brodie is a pretty, young, and unorthodox teacher. She teaches poetry when she should be teaching math and scienc...more

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Aug 26, 2009 Evan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-library-top-100-list, 2009-reads, __in-my-collection, fucked-up-women, nazi

Might fascism have a whimsical element? Dictators have their reasons, often unreasonable ones not guided by the facts. Hitler and Mussolini were ready to tear down Europe and rebuild it in Greco-Roman splendor. Irrational, mad, whimsical. There's an excellent 1989 documentary titled, The Architecture of Doom, that offers the provocative argument that Hitler was largely driven by aesthetics - an architectural vision to raze and rebuild Europe, following his vengeful rage at being kicked out of ar...more Might fascism have a whimsical element? Dictators have their reasons, often unreasonable ones not guided by the facts. Hitler and Mussolini were ready to tear down Europe and rebuild it in Greco-Roman splendor. Irrational, mad, whimsical. There's an excellent 1989 documentary titled, The Architecture of Doom, that offers the provocative argument that Hitler was largely driven by aesthetics - an architectural vision to raze and rebuild Europe, following his vengeful rage at being kicked out of art/architecture school in Vienna.
In "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," the title character is an English teacher rapt in an egomaniacal world of her own, at a private English school in the 1930s before WWII; her charges schooled in a peculiar whimsical sort of artsy curricula all her own, but also geared toward suiting her own self-sustaining, survival-prone political agenda. They are sort of like Hitler Youth, unquestioning and clueless, always towing the party line and never saying a bad word publicly or to anyone outside their sacred circle against their idol. It's perhaps not surprising, then, that Brodie romanticizes Mussolini's Brown Shirt thugs and Hitler's "cultured" view of classical orderliness. Brodie's is a tight-knit group, but, inevitably, one of her charges begins to see the dangers of Brodie's self-centered agenda, and becomes the Judas of sorts.
The book is crisply written, wryly witty, subtly ironic in tone. It's a fast and fun read, very scintillating and brilliantly structured. Spark has a mastery over this material, even as she takes the narrative backward and forward in time, and even into the literary and whimsical daydreams of the girls, particularly her most promising student, Sandy. The fates of the girls and of Brodie are suggested in small snippets of fast-forward detail interspersed at intervals as the narrative progresses.
This is no scrubbed up "Dead Poet's Society" view of the unconventional teacher and enthusiastic charges, but something closer to the nutcase English eccentric teacher from Terence Rattigan's, "The Browning Version" (play and film).
Though Brodie is wont to constantly point out the deficiencies of the more "rational" science, math and fact-based, rote methods of conventional instruction offered by the others in her school, her own flighty set of teachings offer up a similarly impoverished and arbitrary knowledge set. Neither view is wholly right or wrong. Ironically, Brodie's admiration of the orderliness of fascism would seem to contradict her own ideas of beauty, and her class and herself would probably be the first on the train to the camps.
The book hurtles rather too quickly to its conclusion for my taste, a lot of narrative is dispatched quickly, and the idea that all of this was merely a setup for a surrogate romantic scenario seems a little hard to swallow. But at least the book is subtler at handling this than is the movie, where the final revelations are meted out by sledgehammer. In the film's end Brodie is an out-and-out raving histrionic fascist loony, and fortunately that's not the way the book handles it. In fact there's no such scene in the book. Part of the book's historical context is the fact that fascist sympathies were fairly common in England before the war. The famous book and film "The Remains of the Day" also addressed this. In all, I loved Spark's book, was compelled to read it in less than a day. It is fine literature.
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Feb 07, 2013 Kirsty rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-it-swap-it-2011, read-2011, world-book-night-editions, read-2013, tpobab-reads, best-of-2013

Review from February 2013: I have nothing original whatsoever to say about this book. Its praises have been sung in harmony for so many years. Suffice to say that it's a wonderful piece of writing, filled with original characters and Spark's marvellous wit.

Review from 2011: This novella wasn’t quite as I’d imagined it to be, but it was rather a good read. Miss Jean Brodie was an intriguing character and Spark’s writing style was interesting. I liked the way in which she kept referring to the fut...more

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Jan 17, 2011 Jeanette rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: all-fiction, europe-and-british-isles

Very nearly four stars, but I can't go that high because the author doesn't provide a strong enough motivation for the girl who betrays Miss Brodie.
Miss Jean Brodie is a forty-something Scottish school teacher who never tires of reminding people that she is IN HER PRIME. Someday when I have nothing better to do, I may just go through and count how many times we are told by Miss Brodie (and her girls) that she is IN HER PRIME. Meanwhile, whenever I want an excuse for my eccentric behavior, I wil...more

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Feb 01, 2009 Alison rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: teachers, fascists

Shelves: alltime100novel, modernlibrary100best, guardians100greatest

"The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" is a short novel by Muriel Spark (Scottish) that tells the story of a teacher in an all-girl's school in Edinburgh and her "set"--the group of young girls that she teaches and sharply influences during a period of her life she refers to as her "prime." The story-telling method weaves back and forth from the time the girls are ten until they are adults, giving hints about their fate and their destinies.

Jean Brodie is eccentric and unconventional--the "artistic typ...more

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Apr 24, 2011 Jason rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Finally, a classic that is worthy of its status! Spark's beautiful and economical prose hooked me from the opening page and is a joy to savour. The feminist and anti-establishment leanings are not heavy handed; rather, the social, political and religious commentary is subtly layered which makes story more powerful and emotionally resonant. Miss Jean Brodie is a fascinating character and the way Spark plays with time, memory and perspective gives the narrative a rich tapestry of authenticity and...more

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May 17, 2013 Tony rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1930s, calvinism, girls, puritan, scotland, women

The setting is a conservative private girls' school in Scotland during the 1930s. In part this is a story of growing up, as the tale takes us through the teen years of six girls - Sandy, Rose, Jenny, Monica, Eunice, and Mary. But it revolves mainly around a primary teacher, Miss Jean Brodie, who cultivates these girls as her special favourites, welding them together and nurturing this collective over the following years.

Romantic and statuesque, Miss Brodie has intensity, colour and great self-a...more

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May 05, 2009 Bunnyhugger1 rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2009, reviews, contemporary-fiction

The 1968 movie, with Dame Maggie Smith's superb performance as Miss Brodie, is one of my all-time favorite films. I'd never felt the need to read the original novel until recently. Maybe my expectations were too high but I was disappointed. I was surprised by the writing style which is repetitive and at times confusing. The characters of the "Brodie Set" seem poorly sketched out. One girl is "known for sex", another has "small piggy eyes", another is "stupid", and so on for all 6 girls - and the...more

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Apr 08, 2013 Kamal rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My first instinct was to side with Miss Brodie's enemies. She is the type of woman--petty, selfish and bullying--that I would never want my daughter to meet, and I certainly wouldn't want her as my daughter's teacher/mentor. However, she does deserve some pathos since it becomes ever more clear with each page that Jean Brodie is past it, well beyond "her prime", and desperately trying to hold on to past triumphs, which are few and relatively insignificant. Spark creates an enduring character ske...more

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May 03, 2011 Simona rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Aceasta domnisoara Brodie este ca un papusar ce le invarte pe degete pe fete ca pe niste marionete, are o mandrie care este dusa pana la o ingamfare absoluta. Chiar m-am bucurat ca in final a fost tradata de una dintre fete. Este o carte interesanta care merita citita o singura data. Mi s-a parut putin fada si nu mi-a placut deloc de domnisoara Brodie si de aceea nu as mai reciti-o.

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Sep 28, 2012 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Laura by: Constant Reader

Shelves: 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, audio-books, british-literature, scotland, fiction-20th-century, read-2012

Read by Wanda McCaddon: 4.0 Hours • UNABRIDGED

This is the story Miss Jean Brodie, school teacher at the conservative Marsha Blaine School For Girls.

It portrays the costumes in Edinburgh in the 1930s when Miss Brodie tries to change the codes of behavior of the next generation girls, "the Brodie set".

This story has been dramatized into the movies The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) with Maggie Smith starring as Miss Brodie.

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Mar 01, 2009 Marigold rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: boarding-school-story, creepy-teachers, set-in-england, classic

Writing style - I didn't care for it. Omniscient narrator - ugh. Each character is defined by certain characteristics that are repeated over & over - Sandy has tiny eyes, Rose is "known for sex", etc. I GET it. Characters in this short novel are not well developed & mostly struck me with an overwhelming sense of sadness & futility. Jean Brodie stands out as a memorable character in the midst of them, no doubt that was the intent. Spark does a great job with her. But unlike many reade...more

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Apr 19, 2013 Jane Mackie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-century-fiction

In his book How Fiction Works, James Wood asks what it means to love a fictional character – what does it mean, for instance, to say one loves Miss Jean Brodie? Having finally read the book, and quite enjoyed it, I am a little confused by his question since it seems weird that anyone would ever say that. She is a vivid and fascinating character and even enjoys a kind of pathos at times, but I would be disturbed if anyone told me they “loved” Miss Jean Brodie. Even at the book’s beginning, in 193...more In his book How Fiction Works, James Wood asks what it means to love a fictional character – what does it mean, for instance, to say one loves Miss Jean Brodie? Having finally read the book, and quite enjoyed it, I am a little confused by his question since it seems weird that anyone would ever say that. She is a vivid and fascinating character and even enjoys a kind of pathos at times, but I would be disturbed if anyone told me they “loved” Miss Jean Brodie. Even at the book’s beginning, in 1933, the character’s Fascist sympathies make her seem either deluded (as many people were, admittedly) or very unlikable, but the fact that she tours Germany in 1938 out of enthusiasm for the brownshirts should put her beyond the reach of readers’ affection.* (spoiler below at asterix)

This is a book best read slowly, something I wish I had realized earlier on – I was reading it on the subway in little gulps and finding myself annoyed by certain phrases. Sandy Stranger’s eyes are really really small, we get it, it need not be repeated hundreds of times. This would have bothered me in any event, but I think that a slower reading may have helped me enjoy the book’s quirky rhythm a little bit better.

The stodgy establishment figures in Miss Brodie’s world, bent on taking her down not out of their own worthy political convictions but because of their stuffy conventionality and the threat to it that she represents, play an interesting role in this book. When I was growing up, favored students were gathered to certain beloved teachers for less pernicious purposes than Miss Brodie’s (in my milieu, the cool teachers were more likely to rhapsodize about the benefits of meditaton, for example, and were certainly not in the business of indoctrinating their students), but I still recognized what it meant to be part of the Brodie set – there were always certain students who bore the imprimatur of a teacher’s favor. This, and the odd forms that youthful obsession with sex take, made this book feel true in a really fundamental way.
There is something refreshing here too in the reminder that boring, stupid rules – all the times tables, and quorums, and everything that makes democracy woefully inefficient and slow to effect change – are a protection against the dangers of people who believe themselves outside the law. In 2013 I think it’s easy to caricature totalitarian governments as representing an excess of law, but state power is not synonymous with law. Miss Mackay might represent an excess of plodding conservatism, but it so happens that she was right to distrust Miss Brodie, and the opposite of law isn’t liberation: it’s the arbitrariness and self-appointment that Miss Brodie and her fascist heroes represent.

*Postwar, Miss Brodie says that Hitler was “naughty.” This happens later in the book and it's the point at which the reader knows she's monstrous, and not misguided, and it's sort of a throwaway sentence which is what makes it so chilling and masterful.(less)

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Feb 01, 2013 Bobby rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adultfiction

Don't let the size fool you. This delectable trifle of a book brims with satire, humor, and scandal.

At an all-girls school, Miss Brodie, a self-absorbed and somewhat delusional teacher, promises to open the eyes and expand the minds of a select group of students even if it means straying from the school's curriculum.

Dubbed the Brodie set and considered, at least in her eyes, to be the "creme de la creme" of the school, these girls are lucky to be receiving the best Miss Brodie has to offer, as...more

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Dec 21, 2012 Ruby rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classic, adult, should-read

Miss Jean Brodie has all the traits you hate in characters -- she's manipulative, a fascist, she's selfish... And yet, somehow, she's engaging. I've got to give credit to Muriel Spark for writing a thoroughly enjoyable book centering around a character I can't stand -- usually, I close a book if I don't like the protagonist... But I think the main reason I finished this book (and loved it) is because it is about who betrayed Miss Brodie...

When my mum (who's copy of this book I read) recommended...more
Miss Jean Brodie has all the traits you hate in characters -- she's manipulative, a fascist, she's selfish... And yet, somehow, she's engaging. I've got to give credit to Muriel Spark for writing a thoroughly enjoyable book centering around a character I can't stand -- usually, I close a book if I don't like the protagonist... But I think the main reason I finished this book (and loved it) is because it is about who betrayed Miss Brodie...

When my mum (who's copy of this book I read) recommended it to me, I was a bit skeptical. Not because it's a classic -- I love classics -- but because of the plot. It didn't really seem to be about much, well, the synopsis didn't give away much to say the least. However, when I started reading it, I was hooked -- I finished it in one sitting... Even if that meant staying up until midnight! Each girl in Miss Brodie's class is distinguishable, and it was entertaining to see what Miss Brodie thought of them and what they thought of Miss Brodie... It starts of in the present with Miss Brodie saying that one of her former pupils betrayed her (got her fired) and with her predicting which one it was, and then there are flash backs to the years where she taught the class. These time switches could be a bit confusing -- there's a flash-forward at one point -- but once you're used to them, you don't really notice all the changes.

“These years are still the years of my prime. It is important to recognise the years of one's prime, always remember that.”

Miss Brodie is obsessed with the idea that she is in her 'prime'. Quite frankly, she doesn't shut up about it! Though it's quite funny to read what the girls (when they were at their youngest) thought of this 'prime' business -- the whole thing is quite funny to be honest! My favourite thing about this book is probably that it is a classic that teens can enjoy. In fact, I think that every teenager should give this book a go! It's funny, thoughtful and best of all has a huge range of characters (nice ones and bad ones). Miss Jean Brodie is my definition of a villain (she's definitely a fascist to say the least) -- but does that mean she isn't readable? No! She's one of the most interesting characters I've read in a while...
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Dec 17, 2012 Eyehavenofilter rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Having been involved with this piece on an intimate basis, having dissected it 6 ways from Sunday, having been in a production of the play, I must say that for its time it was quite revolutionary. The story is bound together by the "girls" of Miss Jean Brodie, a narcissist, who MUST be the center of attention, in a prim and proper school for girls.
Brodie is a talented teacher, she spins romantic tales of long lost lovers, she expounds on and on about, love, loss and the highlands, thereby manip...more

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Dec 16, 2012 Stuart rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-classics

“The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” is the story about an unconventional school teacher teaching at the staid Marcia Blaine School for Girls, and the six girls she selects from her class to be her girls, her "creme de la creme." Miss Jean Brodie is devoted to each of them and each "is famous for something." She is determined to instill in her girls the qualities of independence, passion, and ambition. Miss Brodie teaches in an unconventional way and is always at odds with the school leadership. The...more

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Oct 01, 2012 Angela Young rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I loved this book and am rather amazed at myself that I'd never read it before reading it with Cornflower's Book Group a while back: http://cornflower.typepad.com/domesti... Of course, like so many people, I've known the fundamental story for years (and couldn't help seeing Maggie Smith in my mind's eye as I read), but I'd never read the words before.

I loved Sandy's imagination and her conversations with Alan Breck and Rochester and Sergeant Anne Grey; I love Spark's economy of language and the...more

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Sep 03, 2012 Judy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Miss Jean Brodie is in the prime of her life and she is an eccentric teacher at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh, Scotland. Using unorthodox teaching methods, Miss Brodie has selected her "set of girls" feeling that if you get a girl by age 10, you have her for life. "Her girls"--Eunice, Jenny, Mary, Monica, Rose, and Sandy--are known as the Brodie set around school and they are made privy to Miss Brodie's intermost thoughts and actions. They are aware that she is an admirer of Fr...more

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Aug 11, 2012 Alicia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am a little shocked at the lower average 'star' score on Goodreads for this little marvel. It is sly, ironic, funny, clever and eventually triggers a little deeper thought than a light handed novel might be expected to produce. This is a book about our perceptions of ourselves and each other, and it is nearly perfectly done.

Quick synopsis [no spoiler]: Miss Brodie is a teacher in a private Edinburgh girls' school. The six girls that become her 'set' are about 10 or 12 when they become her aco...more I am a little shocked at the lower average 'star' score on Goodreads for this little marvel. It is sly, ironic, funny, clever and eventually triggers a little deeper thought than a light handed novel might be expected to produce. This is a book about our perceptions of ourselves and each other, and it is nearly perfectly done.

Quick synopsis [no spoiler]: Miss Brodie is a teacher in a private Edinburgh girls' school. The six girls that become her 'set' are about 10 or 12 when they become her acolytes, but we follow them through school, as they leave her classroom but not her circle. Miss Brodie believes herself to be extraordinary -- bohemian and free thinking -- and raises 'her' girls to share that opinion. [Modern readers have to keep in mind that standards of acceptable behavior have changed since 1933.] While uncertainly somewhat unconventional, the reader decides if Brodie's self assessment is anywhere near true. The primary point of view is from Sandy, who Miss Brodie defines as 'insightful' Others are deemed 'knowledgeable about sex' or 'stupid' or 'enjoying sports a bit too much.' Miss B never changes her assessments as the girls grow up: it is your call whether she is right-- or if by labeling the girls, she influenced the outcome. The book is layered into 'flash forwards' -- you know early how the girls will turn out, and you even know that Miss Brodie will betrayed. You are told who the betrayer is, but your chore is to figure out the motive. The book is full of beautifully turned out personality assessments --nearly all a little snarky--none of the characters comes out the book completely unscathed.

What delighted me was the irony, humor and finely controlled structure. Spark sparkles (sorry-couldn't resist) at developing character sketches, giving you a full enough (if not detailed) portrait of the sexy one armed art teacher (who may not love Miss Brodie as singlemindedly as she believes), the shy music teacher (who might have truly loved her), and even the cardboard but funny and fairly inept headmistress. Spark catches dead-on the elastic, romantic, changing perceptions of sheltered girls as they grow up. Reviews make much of Brodie's distant admiration for Mussolini and Hitler but as the UK was a little hotbed of pre-WWII fascism (see Remains of the Day, anything about the Mitfords and any number of pre-war histories), it is not as shocking as it first seems to 21st century eyes. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie will stay relevant as long as people size one another up, encounter charismatic teachers and read.

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Jul 23, 2012 Lex rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was not too bad. In the beginning, I had a really difficult time getting used to the style of writing, but I finally worked my way through the first two chapters and began to enjoy the book. And then it got scary...!!!
Miss Brodie is an unconventional teacher at an all-girls school in Scotland right before the outbreak of World War II. She believes Hitler and Mussolini are heroes, tells her girls repeatedly about her lost love that fell during the Great War, and fights for her job on a...more

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Jun 17, 2012 Jamilla Rice rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A very unassuming little book, one cover description gives it the daunting moniker of being "perfect". I don't know if I necessarily agree with such a high honor, Chicago Tribune, but I do believe that it's pretty darn good. In a recent tweet, before I finished this book, I said that it was a "must read" for anyone in a teacher education program. I rescind that and revise it to say that it is a "must read" for all teachers, new and old, who have yet to read it.

Set primarily in the 1930s, the bo...more

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May 22, 2012 Smcleish rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Originally published on my blog here in October 1999.

Unusually for a novel which has a schoolteacher as its principal character, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is not really about growing up. It is about being a non-conformist in a world which values conformity above almost everything else. It is about the influence we have on each other, and how some people try to live their lives vicariously through others.

Miss Brodie is a primary teacher in an Edinburgh girls' school in the thirties. She has u...more Originally published on my blog here in October 1999.

Unusually for a novel which has a schoolteacher as its principal character, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is not really about growing up. It is about being a non-conformist in a world which values conformity above almost everything else. It is about the influence we have on each other, and how some people try to live their lives vicariously through others.

Miss Brodie is a primary teacher in an Edinburgh girls' school in the thirties. She has unusual ideas about education, and isn't really interested in teaching her pupils the usual subjects. Instead, she tells stories which awaken an interest in the world, and she does not censor them to make them more "suitable" for children.

When Miss Brodie decides she is entering her "prime", she picks out a group of girls who seem to respond particularly well to her stories. These are the girls through whom she tries to live vicariously; her stories often now focusing on excelling as an individual. She talks a lot about vocation, how to recognise the one task in life for which she believes each person is destined. While the Brodie set, as they become known, pass on through the school, the keeps up contact with them, wanting to know what they are doing down to the smallest detail, yet always slightly distorting it to fit their lives into the mould she wants them to live in. (The most obvious example of this is her attempt to manipulate one of them, at seventeen, to have an affair with the art teacher with whom Miss Brodie herself refused to have an affair a few years earlier.)

The rest of the teachers at the school are constantly trying to find an excuse to get rid of Miss Brodie. This is a battle in which the Brodie set play an important part, for the headmistress is keen to get from them the information which will lead to her downfall, as they know more about Miss Brodie than any of her colleagues. In the end, one of them does betray her, and this not only loses her her job but brings her prime to an end. When the adult girls from the Brodie set return to Edinburgh after the war to visit, they have tea with Miss Brodie and find that she is reduced to obsessively taking up the question of which one of them it was who betrayed her.

The clever part of Spark's writing in her best known novel is the way that she makes it clear that Miss Brodie is not as wonderful a teacher as either she or the Brodie set think the is, even in her prime. Different from those around her, an inspiration to those she taught, a lifelong influence probably not (though that is what she clearly hoped to be). It is difficult to be a teacher without seeking to influence your pupils, but in many ways Miss Brodie was an influence which at its best was unsettling, bringing questioning of the accepted certainties around the girls, at its worst unhealthy. (This last is made most clear by the admiration for Hitler and Mussolini she sought to pass on to the girls.)

The action a teacher, or indeed any adult, should never perform is to attempt to live vicariously through children. Parents are most likely to do this - pressure to take up opportunities denied to or turned down by the previous generation - and it can be extremely harmful.(less)

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May 09, 2012 David Clark rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, spring-2012

"The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," a short novel written by Scottish author Muriel Spark, was published in 1961. Although the book was subsequently listed by Time magazine as one of the "100 best English language novels of the 20th. Century, Spark's narrative about a peculiar Edinburgh school teacher achieved more popular notice as a film adaptation after Dame Maggie Smith won the 1969 Academy Award for Best Actress in her role as Jean Brodie. However, what brought this book to my attention was a...more "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," a short novel written by Scottish author Muriel Spark, was published in 1961. Although the book was subsequently listed by Time magazine as one of the "100 best English language novels of the 20th. Century, Spark's narrative about a peculiar Edinburgh school teacher achieved more popular notice as a film adaptation after Dame Maggie Smith won the 1969 Academy Award for Best Actress in her role as Jean Brodie. However, what brought this book to my attention was a detailed discussion of Spark's approach to character writing by noted critic James Wood in his book, "How Fiction Works."

In his discussion, Wood notes Spark's skilled and these days a somewhat ignored use of the "flash forward." This motif emphasizes the author's "power of ultimate control" over her creations--a type of tyrannical power that the fictional Brodie exerted over her students. The readers come to know Miss Brodie in much the same way her students do--through her public persona made manifest by a series of maxims We are not, as with many modern novels, given the protagonist's "stream of consciousness" or endless musings. Rather, it is the sayings that stick with her students and how we would describe Miss Jean Brodie to others. She is a woman who claims, although we may ultimately have our doubts, to be "in her prime," she is also a teacher who cares for her students because she continually avers her "Brodie girls" are, "the creme de la creme" and is--as I suppose all teachers are-- "misunderstood" by administrators: "The Philistines are upon us, Mr. Lloyd."

We are left to wonder and judge what was Miss Brodie's teaching legacy? As we have learned with No Child Left Behind, simple "outcomes" may not be the most accurate measure of teacher competence. Her students, even Sandy who engineered Miss Brodie's downfall, considered themselves fortunate and blessed to have been taught by Miss Brodie despite not overtly achieving many of their teacher's expectations. However, Sparks would have us believe Brodie is a success as a teacher but this success is in part due to her being a fascist sympathizer and worse, a practitioner of an amoral Calvinistic determinism. Brodie appears to determine everything about her student's future from their course of study to initial sexual partner.

Yet, in the end, we are left to wonder about this control. Did Sandy break free of Miss Brodie's control by becoming a nun and her duplicitous denouncement or were these behaviors reactions that simply proved the strength of the teacher's hold over her students. Although, as a writer, Sparks affirms a deterministic control over her characters, I remain unconvinced how well the reader or the writer really can "know" a literary character--how well I can know, despite endless introspection and interrogation, another person or even myself. Perhaps, Spark was unsure as well. (less)

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About Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark (1918–2006) was a prolific Scottish novelist, short story writer, and poet whose darkly comedic voice made her one of the most distinctive writers of the twentieth century. Spark grew up in Edinburgh and worked as a department store secretary, writer for trade magazines, and literary editor before publishing her first novel in 1957. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), considered her...more

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The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Girls of Slender Means, The Driver's Seat, The Only Problem (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics)

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“To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul.” — 889 people liked it

“The word "education" comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul.” — 36 people liked it

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