The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

The narrative flashes forward to describe the life of one member of the Brodie set, Mary McGregor, as a young adult. Mary is not even aware that she was part of a special set while at Blaine, but her adult life is full of failures and disappointments, and she eventually realizes that those early years with Miss Brodie were the happiest time of her life. She dies at 24 after becoming trapped in a fire in a hotel corridor, running up and down the hallway several times but being unable to find her way out.

At age 10, Sandy is aware that she is supposed to be experiencing the happiest days of her life. She has Jenny over for tea on her 10th birthday, and while they eat pineapple cubes with cream, Sandy imitates Miss Brodie, saying they are going to be the crème de la crème. They conclude that Miss Brodie is in her prime because she never got married or had sex like their parents did. Sandy points out that Mr. Lloyd, the school art teacher, has a new baby, and the two laugh at the idea of Mr. Lloyd and his wife having sex. The two have been conducting “research” on sex, piecing together clues from overheard conversations and passages from the dictionary (15). They agree that impulsive sex, which could theoretically be stopped before it happens, does not make sense.

Their mothers suddenly come in, offending Sandy by remarking on how much the girls have eaten. Sensing they have intruded upon their daughters, the two women leave, and Sandy and Jenny continue working on a story they are writing about Miss Brodie and her late fiancé, Hugh. In the story, which is titled “The Mountain Eyrie,” Hugh returns safely from the war only for Miss Brodie to tell him she is in love with another man (17). Heartbroken, Hugh goes to live in a mountain eyrie, where Sandy and Jenny find him. He takes Sandy hostage and Jenny escapes. As Hugh prepares to chase Jenny down the mountain, Sandy tells him Miss Brodie never actually loved another and promises to bring Miss Brodie to him if he will let Jenny get away. When he refuses, Sandy blocks the door, but Hugh tosses her into the snow and walks out of the hut.

Pausing in their composition, Sandy and Jenny agree to not publish the story until they are in their own respective primes and wonder aloud whether Miss Brodie and Hugh had sex. Sandy thinks that their love was above sex but guesses that they clung passionately to each other, fully clothed. Sandy and Jenny both say that they never want to have sex with anyone. They eat toffee and say witches’ spells in front of the fire. Sandy tells Jenny they should ask Miss Brodie to take them to the local art museum the following weekend so they can look at nude statues. Jenny speculates that Miss Brodie, being “above” nude statues, would not even notice their nakedness (19). Jenny’s mother takes her home while Sandy waves from the window, wondering if Jenny, like Sandy, sometimes feels as though she is living a double life.

In class, Miss Brodie recites “The Lady of Shalott,” a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Sandy imagines herself in the world of the poem, talking to the Lady of Shalott. Sandy asks the Lady how she wrote the words “the Lady of Shalott” on her boat, and the Lady says that a careless, unemployed person must have left some paint and a brush near the river (20). She then puts her hand on Sandy’s shoulder, gazes into space, and speaks prophetically about a young beauty who will be ill-fated in love. Miss Brodie asks Sandy if she is in pain, bringing her back to reality. Miss Brodie tells the girls they must cultivate composed expressions, using the Mona Lisa as an example. She says that it might be too late for them to become the crème de la crème and regrets not having control over them from the time they turned seven. Finally, she asks Sandy to read some stanzas from the poem out loud.

By this point in the girls’ lives, Rose is already known for being pretty and having a sweet singing voice. Mr. Lowther, the school’s choir teacher, looks at her admiringly while she sings and sometimes touches her hair, which Sandy knows is particularly bold because Miss Brodie comes to their singing lessons with them. Mr. Lowther seems interested in Miss Brodie’s reactions to this, almost as though he wants to see if she will behave inappropriately too. Mr. Lowther is small, with short legs and red-gold hair. One day, as she ushers them out of the music room, Miss Brodie tells the girls she is fully dedicated to them during her prime. She orders them to walk with single file, with their heads up, like stage actress Sybil Thorndike. Sandy tries to follow these instructions, but Miss Brodie scolds her for being “frivolous” and warns her that she will never be part of the crème de la crème (22).

After the group returns to their classroom, Rose tells Miss Brodie she has ink on her blouse, and Miss Brodie tells her to take it to Miss Lockhart, the science teacher. The girls regularly put tiny spots of ink on their blouses as a ruse so they can see Miss Lockhart in the senior science lab, a space they find intriguing, full of strange objects and smells. Sandy sees the science lab as evidence that their years in senior school are going to be wonderful. She says the older students can do whatever they want in science classes, and Jenny says that Miss Brodie allows them a lot of freedom already. Sandy says Miss Brodie is supposed to be giving them lessons, not freedom, but they agree that they enjoy being with Miss Brodie anyway.

By this point—early 1931—Miss Brodie has chosen her favorites, based partially on which students’ parents are unlikely to lodge complaints against her. She begins bringing the girls to her house for tea and orders them not to tell any other students about their conversations, saying that she is taking them into her confidence. Eunice sometimes performs cartwheels and somersaults for their amusement, but Miss Brodie does not allow this on Sundays, thus betraying her conservative streak. The narrative reveals that 28 years later, Eunice has become a nurse and has married a doctor. In a flash forward, Eunice tells her husband that when they go to Edinburgh for an upcoming festival, she wants to visit Miss Brodie’s grave. She explains who Miss Brodie was, and her husband says he knew she had had a strange upbringing; Eunice replies that Miss Brodie was entirely sane and knew exactly what she was doing. She tells him that Miss Brodie died just after the end of World War II, having been betrayed by a member of the Brodie set and forced into retirement by the headmistress. She says she never found out the identity of the betrayer.

Back in 1931, Miss Brodie takes the group for a walk through some older parts of Edinburgh for a lesson in local history. Sandy, who has been reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Kidnapped, imagines a conversation with the story’s hero, Alan Breck. Breck tells her to take an important message to the powerful Macpherson clan, and Sandy promises she will not fail. Meanwhile, Miss Brodie tells Mary she can talk to Sandy, but Mary tells her that Sandy will not respond. Miss Brodie calls Mary stupid and tells her to try to look agreeable. Mary tries to keep up with Sandy, who is walking quickly, driven by her imagined conversation. In Sandy’s head, Alan Breck sings her a song and tells her she is brave. When Mary asks Sandy not to walk so fast, Sandy feels an unexpected impulse to be kind to Mary.

Miss Brodie tells the girls they will all be heroines one day, and upon hearing this, Sandy’s sudden urge to be kind to Mary dissipates. She is acutely aware that all the girls are united in their devotion to Miss Brodie, as though destined for it from birth, and becomes frightened at the prospect of distinguishing herself from the group by being nice to Mary. She tells Mary that she would not be walking with her if Jenny were there, and Mary says she knows. Sandy imagines herself as a married woman and has a mental argument with her husband. The group then passes a company of Girl Guides. They question Miss Brodie about the Girl Guides, but she seems uninterested and disdainful. Sandy recalls Miss Brodie’s praise for Mussolini’s troops and remembers that Miss Brodie brought a photograph of the marching Blackshirts, whom she refers to as “fascisti,” back with her from a trip to Italy (31). That day, Miss Brodie told the girls that Mussolini had ended unemployment and fixed the problem of litter. As they walk through Edinburgh, Sandy thinks of their group as Miss Brodie’s fascisti and imagines the Girl Guides as rival fascisti. She continues her mental conversation with Alan Breck.

They arrive at Old Town, which none of the girls’ parents had ever allowed them to visit properly, although Eunice, Monica, and Sandy had been on its margins. To Sandy, being in the center of Old Town feels like being in a foreign country, particularly because of its poverty. They watch children playing in the snow, some without shoes, and boys shout obscenities at them. Sandy realizes she is holding Mary’s hand. Miss Brodie gives a history lesson, saying that Edinburgh’s residents owe a great deal of their cosmopolitanism to the influence of the French royal family. The group walks past a man and a woman standing in the center of a crowd; they are shouting at each other, and the man hits the woman repeatedly. Another woman comes out of the crowd and tells the man that she will be his man. Sandy does not understand this, and although she will ponder it in the future, she will never figure out what the woman meant.

The narrative reveals that Sandy will eventually become a nun, and when she reflects on her childhood, she will understand that other people did not live in the same Edinburgh that she did, nor did everyone experience the 1930s the same way she did. After joining a convent and taking the name Sister Helena of the Transfiguration, Sandy is given special permission to receive visitors because of an acclaimed treatise she wrote before taking her vows. One day, a man visits her and says they must have been in school at the same time; as they speak, Sandy realizes that the man’s upbringing in Edinburgh was entirely different from her own. He tells her that Old Town had been his favorite place to visit, but all the slums have now been cleared. She says she once walked through Old Town and was frightened by the squalor. He asks what her greatest influence was during her teenage years, telling her that he and his friends read the poems of Auden and wanted to fight on the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War. Sandy says she was not a Catholic back then, and when he asks if her biggest influence was Calvinism, she says it was Jean Brodie in her prime. She clutches the bars as they talk, something the other nuns have noticed and which they ascribe to the fact that she “had too much to bear from the world” because of the popularity of her treatise, which was an exploration of moral perception called “The Transfiguration of the Commonplace” (35). She receives many visitors, including journalists and academics, and often feels a desire to escape from the convent.

Back in 1931, the group arrives at St. Giles’ Cathedral. Miss Brodie tells them they will not go inside together but asks if they have all been inside at some point before. Only Sandy has not, and she finds the dark building frightening. Sandy, Monica, and Rose come from Christian families but do not to go to church; Jenny and Mary are Presbyterian and attend Sunday School; and Eunice is Episcopalian. Sandy also believes in ghosts, which makes the idea of the Holy Ghost seem reasonable to her. Miss Brodie has been asking them about religion more frequently; she herself, raised in the strict traditions of the Church of Scotland, has been attending comparative religion classes at a local university and passing her knowledge on to her students. However, all the girls in the Brodie set read the Bible for the sake of finding its truth, goodness, and beauty.

As they continue walking, Miss Brodie goes to the front of the group, between Rose and Sandy. She tells them she has been called to the headmistress’s office and is sure her methods will be questioned. She says she is giving the girls everything during her prime and always follows her own principles of education. She explains that the word “education” comes from the Latin for “leading out” and claims that she tries to lead out what already exists in her students’ souls (36). Miss Mackay, on the other hand, sees education as an intrusion and believes her job is to thrust information into students’ minds. Miss Brodie quizzes Sandy on the root of “education” while Sandy fantasizes about Alan Breck visiting her at an isolated seaside house. In her fantasy, she wonders if they will have sex, and when she tries to picture it, she becomes disgusted. She reminds herself that people always have time to stop themselves from having sex.

Miss Brodie continues, saying that she and Miss Mackay have radically different educational principles. She explains that the word “radical” is related to roots and says that she and Miss Mackay have argued about this subject before, but Miss Mackay is not a skilled logician. She quizzes Rose on the definition of logic, and Rose says it has to do with reasoning. The narrative reveals that in the future, Miss Brodie will become amazed and enthused at the idea that Rose is a great lover even though Rose is not having a love affair. Back in the present moment, Miss Brodie says that Miss Mackay cannot fire her unless her teaching methods are “improper or subversive,” and as long as the girls are minimally prepared for their exams, she has done her job (39). She trusts the girls to do well, even if they forget all the information the next day. She says it is an accident that Miss Mackay, who is younger than she is, makes more money; this happened because Miss Mackay had access to a better university education. Rose points out that Miss Mackay has a red, veiny face, and Miss Brodie tells her not to make disloyal remarks.

As the group prepares to board a tram to go to Miss Brodie’s flat, they pass a long line of men standing in the street. Miss Brodie says they are unemployed and tells the girls to pray for the men. She explains how government assistance works but adds that many men who receive assistance drink all the money away and still cannot support their families. She says that in Italy, the problem of unemployment has been solved. Sandy feels scared as she watches the men, who are talking loudly and frequently cough and spit. Miss Brodie says she rented a room on that street when she arrived in Edinburgh and tells a story about her overly frugal landlady, who refused to keep bread and butter in the house. The girls laugh, but Sandy feels scared again as the line of men begins moving into the labor bureau. She thinks about starving children, which makes her feel less scared, and wishes Jenny were there because Jenny always cries about poor children. When they board the tram, Sandy excuses herself from tea at Miss Brodie’s flat, deciding she wants to go home. Later, however, she wishes she had gone. She adds another chapter to “The Mountain Eyrie” instead.