At an Edinburgh all-girls school in the 1930s, Miss Jean Brodie teaches her young students in her own way. Flaunting the restrictive attitudes of her headmistress and defying social conventions for women of the time, Miss Jean Brodie is a force to be reckoned with. But is she a force for good?
Muriel Spark’s novel has been near the top of my TBR list for a long while, but I admit I had never looked into what it was about too closely. I heard that it was a book about a schoolteacher and I figured it was another example of that tried and true formula, where the teacher’s unconventional approach inspires her students to learn more than even they thought they were capable of. I pictured a Scottish version of Dead Poets Society, Stand and Deliver, and the like.
I was very, very wrong. Spark makes it very clear right from the start that Miss Jean Brodie isn’t an admirable woman. She has gone to great lengths to inculcate a cult of personality among her chose favorite students, a sextet without much in common except for their devotion to her. Miss Brodie wins them to her side by being overly familiar, entirely inappropriately. From the age of ten the girls are fairly well-informed on Miss Brodie’s opinions politics and world affairs, how she feels about the rest of the faculty at their school, and even her romantic history. Her favorite subject is herself.
Spark tells the story in an odd, looping manner, where the plot is clearly of secondary concern, at best. She will jump forward in time at unexpected moments to tell the reader what the future holds for a particular character, up to and including when they will die. It’s a device that helps accelerate the pace of this exceedingly brief novel, but it also robs some otherwise hefty revelations of their power.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a novel I admired a lot, without much enjoying. The title character is a indelible creation, horrifying and intriguing in equal measure, and Spark’s economy of words makes the novel a brisk read, but the novel lacks a center to hold onto, and everything is geared toward appreciating the character as opposed to enjoying the story. Spark takes her characters to some pretty dark places, but they remain distant to the reader because of her style.