The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie 

is a novel by Muriel Spark, the best known of her works.[1] It first

Plot summary[edit]
In 1930s Edinburgh, six ten-year-old girls, Sandy, Rose, Mary, Jenny, Monica, and Eunice are
assigned Miss Jean Brodie, who describes herself as being "in my prime," as their teacher. Miss
Brodie, determined that they shall receive an education in the original sense of the Latin
verb educere, "to lead out," gives her students lessons about her personal love life and travels,
promoting art history, classical studies, and fascism. Under her mentorship, these six girls whom
Brodie singles out as the elite group among her students—known as the "Brodie set"—begin to stand
out from the rest of the school. However, in one of the novel's typical flash-forwards we learn that one
of them will later betray Brodie, ruining her teaching career, but that she will never learn which one.
In the Junior School, they meet the singing teacher, the short Mr Gordon Lowther, and the art
master, the handsome, one-armed war veteran Mr Teddy Lloyd, a married Roman Catholic with six
children. These two teachers form a love triangle with Miss Brodie, each loving her, while she loves
only Mr Lloyd. However, Miss Brodie never overtly acts on her love for Mr Lloyd, except once to
exchange a kiss with him, witnessed by Monica. During a two-week absence from school, Miss
Brodie embarks on an affair with Mr Lowther on the grounds that a bachelor makes a more
respectable paramour: she has renounced Mr Lloyd as he is married. At one point during these two
years in the Junior School, Jenny is "accosted by a man joyfully exposing himself beside the Water of
Leith."[3] The police investigation of the exposure leads Sandy to imagine herself as part of a fictional
police force seeking incriminating evidence in respect of Brodie and Mr Lowther.[4]
Once the girls are promoted to the Senior School (around age twelve) though now dispersed, they
hold on to their identity as the Brodie set. Miss Brodie keeps in touch with them after school hours by
inviting them to her home as she did when they were her pupils. All the while, the headmistress Miss
Mackay tries to break them up and compile information gleaned from them into sufficient cause for
Brodie's dismissal. Miss Mackay has more than once suggested to Miss Brodie that she should seek
employment at a 'progressive' school; Miss Brodie declines to move to what she describes as a
'crank' school. When two other teachers at the school, the Kerr sisters, take part-time employment as
Mr Lowther's housekeepers, Miss Brodie tries to take over their duties. She sets about fattening him
up with extravagant cooking. The girls, now thirteen, visit Miss Brodie in pairs at Mr Lowther's house,
where Miss Brodie frequently asks about Mr Lloyd in Mr Lowther's presence. At this point Mr Lloyd
asks Rose and occasionally the other girls to pose for him as portrait subjects. Each face he paints
ultimately resembles Miss Brodie, as her girls report to her in detail, and she thrills at the telling. One
day when Sandy is visiting Mr Lloyd, he kisses her.
Before the Brodie set turns sixteen, Miss Brodie tests her girls to discover which of them she can
really trust, ultimately settling on Sandy as her confidante. Miss Brodie is obsessed with the notion
that Rose, as the most beautiful of the Brodie set, should have an affair with Mr Lloyd in her place.
She begins to neglect Mr Lowther, who ends up marrying Miss Lockhart, the science teacher.
Another student, Joyce Emily, steps briefly into the picture, trying unsuccessfully to join the Brodie
set. Miss Brodie takes her under her wing separately, encouraging her to run away to fight in
the Spanish Civil War on the Nationalist side, which she does, only to be killed in an accident when
the train she is travelling in is attacked.[5]
The original Brodie set, now seventeen and in their final year of school, begin to go their separate
ways. Mary and Jenny leave before taking their exams, Mary to become a typist and Jenny to pursue
a career in acting. Eunice becomes a nurse and Monica a scientist. Rose lands a handsome
husband. Sandy, with a keen interest in psychology, is fascinated by Mr Lloyd's stubborn love, his
painter's mind, and his religion. Sandy and Rose model for Mr Lloyd's paintings, Sandy knowing that
Miss Brodie expects Rose to become sexually involved with Lloyd. Rose, however, is oblivious to the
plan crafted for her and so it is Sandy, now eighteen and alone with Mr Lloyd in his house while his
wife and children are on holiday, who has exactly such an affair with him for five weeks during the
summer. Over time, Sandy's interest in the man wanes while her interest in the mind that still loves
Jean Brodie grows. In the end, Sandy leaves him, adopts his Roman Catholic religion, and becomes
a nun. Beforehand, however, she meets with Miss Mackay and blatantly confesses to wanting to
bring a stop to Miss Brodie. She suggests that the headmistress could accuse Brodie of encouraging
fascism, and this tactic succeeds. Not until her dying moment a year after the end of World War II is
Miss Brodie able to imagine that it was her confidante, Sandy, who betrayed her. After her death
however, Sandy, now called Sister Helena of the Transfiguration and author of The Transfiguration of
the Commonplace, maintains that "it's only possible to betray where loyalty is due."[6] One day, an
enquiring young man visits Sandy at the convent, because of her strange book on psychology. He
enquires about the main influences of her school years, asking her: "Were they literary or political or
personal? Was it Calvinism?" Sandy answers him, instead, by saying: "There was a Miss Jean
Brodie in her prime."[7]

Characters[edit]
Main characters[edit]
Jean Brodie
"She thinks she is Providence, thought Sandy, she thinks she is the God of Calvin."[8] In some
ways she is: in her prime she draws her chosen few to herself, much as Calvinists understand
God to draw the elect to their salvation. With regard to religion, Miss Brodie "was not in any
doubt, she let everyone know she was in no doubt, that God was on her side whatever her
course, and so she experienced no difficulty or sense of hypocrisy in worship while at the same
time she went to bed with the singing master."[9] Feeling herself fated one way or another, Brodie
acts as if she transcends morality.
Sandy Stranger
Of the set, "Miss Brodie fixed on Sandy," taking her as her special confidante.[10] She is
characterised as having "small, almost nonexistent, eyes" and a peering gaze. Miss Brodie
repeatedly reminds Sandy that she has insight but no instinct. Sandy rejects Calvinism,
reacting against its rigid predestination in favour of Roman Catholicism.
Rose Stanley
In contrast to Sandy, Rose is an attractive blonde with (according to Miss Brodie) instinct
but no insight. Though somewhat undeservedly, Rose is "famous for sex", and the art
teacher Mr. Lloyd asks her to model for his paintings: it rapidly becomes clear that he
has no sexual interest in her and uses her simply because she is a good model. In every
painting, Rose has the likeness of Brodie, whom Mr. Lloyd stubbornly loves. Rose and
Sandy are the two girls in whom Miss Brodie places the most hope of becoming
the crème de la crème. Again unlike Sandy, Rose "shook off Miss Brodie's influence as a
dog shakes pond-water from its coat."[11]
Mary Macgregor
Dim-witted and slow, Mary is Brodie's scapegoat. Mary meekly bears the blame for
everything that goes wrong. At the age of 23 she dies in a hotel fire, killed running
back and forth through the hotel, unable to escape.

Supporting characters[edit]
 Monica Douglas – one of the set; famous for mathematics and her anger
 Jenny Gray – one of the set; famous for her beauty
 Eunice Gardiner – one of the set; famous for her gymnastics and glorious
swimming
 Teddy Lloyd – the art master
 Gordon Lowther – the singing master
 Miss Mackay – the headmistress
 Miss Alison Kerr – the sewing mistress of Marcia Blaine with her sister Ellen
 Miss Ellen Kerr – Miss Alison's elder sister
 Miss Gaunt – a school mistress and a sister to the minister of Cramond
 Miss Lockhart – a chemistry teacher, the nicest teacher in Marcia Blaine
 Joyce Emily Hammond – a girl who was sent to Marcia Blaine. She died in the
Spanish Civil War

Structure[edit]
Spark creates deep characterisations which are realistic in their human
imperfections. Hal Hager, in his commentary on the novel, writes of Sandy and Miss
Brodie: "The complexity of these two characters, especially Jean Brodie, mirrors the
complexity of human life. Jean Brodie is genuinely intent on opening up her girls'
lives, on heightening their awareness of themselves and their world, and on breaking
free of restrictive, conventional ways of thinking, feeling, and being".[12] Critic James
Wood noted that by "reducing Miss Brodie to no more than a collection of maxims,
Spark forces us to become Brodie's pupils. In the course of the novel we never leave
the school to go home, alone, with Miss Brodie. We surmise that there is something
unfulfilled and even desperate about her, but the novelist refuses us access to her
interior. Brodie talks a great deal about her prime, but we don't witness it, and the
nasty suspicion falls that perhaps to talk so much about one's prime is by definition
no longer to be in it."[13]

Autobiographical basis of the story[edit]

The character of Miss Jean Brodie was based in part on Christina Kay, a teacher of
Spark's for two years at James Gillespie's School for Girls. Spark later wrote of her:
"What filled our minds with wonder and made Christina Kay so memorable was the
personal drama and poetry within which everything in her classroom
happened."[12] Miss Kay was the basis for the good parts of Brodie's character, but
also some of the more bizarre; for example, Miss Kay did hang posters
of Renaissance paintings on the wall, but also of Benito Mussolini and Italian fascists
marching.[14] Spark grew up in heavily Presbyterian Edinburgh, while Franco's
supporters were almost unanimously Roman Catholic. Christina Kay looked after her
widowed mother, not the music teacher who was in love with her. She encouraged
the young Muriel Spark to become a writer. Spark, like Sandy, converted to Roman
Catholicism.

Adaptations[edit]
The novel has been adapted for stage, film and television.
The original 1966 London stage version starred Vanessa Redgrave and a
young Olivia Hussey. Redgrave turned down the Broadway production in 1968
which starred Zoe Caldwell who would go on to win the Tony Award. Redgrave also
turned down the film role. In 1969 the film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was
released. It starred Maggie Smith, and she won the Academy Award for Best
Actress for her performance. In 1978 Scottish Television produced the seven part
serial The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. It starred Geraldine McEwan. It was this
performance that the author preferred. [15]