56 pages • 1 hour read
Muriel SparkThe Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1961A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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The Interplay of Imagination and Reality
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie includes several scenes in which characters interact playfully with imaginary characters or scenarios, from literary texts to their imagined ideas about what real, historical people might have been like. This interweaving of fiction and reality allows the text to question the nature of existence and perception as well as foreground the mechanics of the creative process: Miss Brodie is skillfully weaving a narrative world for her chosen students to inhabit—one in which they view themselves as characters in a drama, each with her own role to play.
An early example of this interplay between reality and fiction is Sandy’s imaginative engagement with “The Lady of Shalott,” a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. As the students read the poem in class, Sandy asks the Lady of Shalott how the Lady was able to write her name on her boat, as depicted in the poem. The Lady tells her that “some heedless member of the Unemployed” left a pot of paint by the riverbank; she then places her hand on Sandy’s shoulder and bemoans the fate of “one so young and beautiful,” who will be “so ill-fated in love” (20). Sandy reacts so strongly to her own imaginative interaction that Miss Brodie notices, asking Sandy if she is in pain (21). Sandy has another such experience later, when she enters into an imaginative conversation with Alan Breck, the protagonist of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Kidnapped. As the Brodie set walks through Edinburgh, following Miss Brodie to Old Town, Sandy imagines Alan Breck telling her she is “a brave lass” (29). The imagined conversation inspires her so deeply that she starts walking too quickly, and Mary asks her to slow down. In both of these examples, the boundaries between fiction and reality are portrayed as flimsy and unstable, so much so that Sandy loses track of whether she is in an imaginative world or the real one. The fictional world of Stevenson’s novel is placed on top of the real world like a transparency, giving shape and meaning to Sandy’s experience.
However, Sandy also creates imaginative worlds for real people to occupy, further breaking down the boundaries between reality and fantasy. After Jenny’s sexual assault and questioning by the policewoman, Sandy creates an entire fictional identity for the policewoman, naming her Sergeant Anne Grey and assigning herself the position of Sergeant Grey’s sidekick. Sandy never meets the actual policewoman, and yet she bases her personality on a series of persistent questions she asks Jenny about their encounter, so to an extent, fictional Sergeant Grey is rooted in reality. The novel’s inclusion of this figure—simultaneously real and imagined—further encourages the reader to question the nature of fictionality and where acts of creativity are ultimately rooted.
The Omnipotence of the Artist
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is full of conversations about art as well as scenes in which characters create works of art; Miss Brodie herself prioritized art above all other intellectual areas, even religion, and like many supporters of Italian fascism, she aestheticized politics (for example, bringing photographs of Mussolini’s fascisti marching through Rome for the class to admire). Throughout the novel, she expresses a fervent belief in her own powers of creation, whether she considers herself a muse for Mr. Lloyd or responsible for “creating” her special set at Marcia Blaine. In Miss Brodie’s worldview, artists are godlike figures, and beauty is inseparable from power and dominance.
In a rather innocent attempt to exercise artistic omnipotence, Sandy and Jenny rewrite Miss Brodie’s real-life love story with Hugh, adding themselves as characters whose job is to keep Miss Brodie and Hugh together. When they write the final installment, in which Miss Brodie has sex with Mr. Lowther, they think for a long time about “how to present Miss Brodie in both a favorable and an unfavorable light, for now [...] nothing less than this was demanded” (76). In other words, they see their responsibility to Miss Brodie’s love story as serious enough that they have to represent her accurately, as a flawed but essentially good person. In doing so, they take on what seem like godlike powers: Miss Brodie used her godlike powers to put together her special set, and they will use their godlike powers to render her love story as a work of art. They ultimately cast their powers aside, however, by leaving the story in a hole in a seaside cave.
Miss Brodie’s own perspective on artistic omnipotence is significantly more sinister than that of the girls. Upon learning that Teddy Lloyd has been unable to create a portrait that does not look like her, she interprets this as incontrovertible proof of his love for her and believes that is simply how things should be. She takes control of the dynamics between Sandy, Rose, and Teddy Lloyd, deciding which role each will play in the grand tableau she is creating from a distance. Even though it does not work out as she planned, she still takes credit, and Sandy realizes that Miss Brodie “thinks she is Providence [...] she thinks she is the God of Calvin, she sees the beginning and the end” (129). Sandy’s decision to enter a convent and thus give up her part in worldly entanglements echoes her childhood decision to bury the story of Miss Brodie in the cave. However, Miss Brodie’s malevolent, godlike power over Sandy continues beyond the former’s death, with Sandy telling visitors that her primary influence was Miss Brodie. The text’s ultimate implication is that artistic omnipotence, when used to control or manipulate its subjects, can be a malignant, destructive force.
Innate Knowledge as Superior to Learned Knowledge
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie pays a great deal of attention to the processes of teaching and learning, both as they happen at the Marcia Blaine School and in the world of the novel more generally. Miss Brodie refers to her educational principles throughout the story, often in the context of defending them against critique from the administration, but she says very little of substance about what those principles are. The closest she gets to laying out her educational methodology is when she tells her students that “[safety] does not come first. Goodness, Truth, and Beauty come first” (7). This sticks with the girls, who will later read the Bible not for its spiritual wisdom but for its goodness, truth, and beauty (36). However, Miss Brodie does imply—and sometimes state outright—that there are certain things the students should simply know without an authority figure teaching them. These things are typically unrelated to the students’ actual education, and the girls often have a hard time discerning what they are expected to know innately. Miss Brodie uses this ambiguity to her advantage. Since there is no reference book in which to verify this innate knowledge, the girls are powerless to question Miss Brodie when she uses it to single them out for praise or derision.
In class one day, Miss Brodie asks who opened the window. When no one answers, Miss Brodie says, “Six inches is perfectly adequate. More is vulgar. One should have an innate sense of these things” (47). She does not explain how the students should know when an open window goes from being adequate to being vulgar: she believes they should simply know. She tells the girls they must learn to “cultivate an expression of composure” and uses the famously mysterious Mona Lisa as an example (21). Miss Brodie tells the girls to walk with their heads up, and when Sandy tries to adopt this posture, Miss Brodie asks her what she is doing and tells her that someday, she “will go too far” (22). Sandy’s walk, according to Miss Brodie, indicates a “frivolous nature.” She does not explain at what point Sandy lifted her head too far up; as with the window, this is something Sandy should have innately understood.
As with innate knowledge, Miss Brodie takes very little responsibility for her students’ learned knowledge either, telling them that she trusts them to prepare themselves for their examinations, even if they forget all the material immediately (39). The implication is clear: The material she’s supposed to be teaching them doesn’t matter. They are to prop their textbooks in their laps so they appear to be learning when an administrator walks by, and they are to do well on the exam so as not to make Miss Brodie look bad, but they needn’t actually learn anything. Innate knowledge is everything, and learned knowledge is nothing, but neither is Miss Brodie’s job. One is beyond her power to impart, the other beneath her dignity. She emphasizes the etymology of the word education, saying, “It means leading out. To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul” (36). In the context of Miss Brodie’s actual educational practices, this statement is both an abdication of responsibility and an arrogation of power. She appoints herself not a teacher but an arbiter—one who judges the content of the girls’ souls and determines their worthiness.
However, with the exception of Mary, the girls in the Brodie set innately understand Miss Brodie’s unspoken plans for them, and as they look back on their experiences with her, they perceive her much more accurately than she perceived them. Miss Brodie anticipated that Rose would become Teddy’s lover and Sandy would notify Miss Brodie, but in reality, the opposite happened. Sandy sees exactly what Miss Brodie’s plan is and interprets her actions accurately, while Miss Brodie cannot predict Sandy’s actions at all. All of the girls succeed academically—in different ways and to varying degrees—without Miss Brodie’s help and seemingly without using any lessons from her. Thus, while the novel is set at an educational institution and repeatedly articulates the distinction between innate and learned knowledge, Miss Brodie herself offers neither type of knowledge to her students in a substantive way. This, however, does not stop them from getting in touch with their own innate understanding of the world nor from taking charge of their own learning process.
