The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: Muriel Spark

Image Credit: Birdy

I finally finished a book that had been puzzling me for the past one week. Muriel Spark’s “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” is hailed as a must read classic and I had entered it in my TBR list long ago. I was attracted by its plot line, which goes like this – from the book jacket:

Romantic, heroic, comic and tragic, unconventional schoolmistress Jean Brodie has become an iconic figure in post-war fiction. Her glamour, freethinking ideas and manipulative charm hold dangerous sway over her girls at the Marcia Blaine Academy –the ‘crème de la crème’ – who become the Brodie Set, introduced to a privileged world of adult games that they will never forget.

It started off well enough, introducing each of the girls in the Brodie Set and establishing the fact that she is in her prime. I liked the truly unconventional character of Miss Brodie. She famously claims at the beginning of the book, “Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.” Miss Brodie comes across as a free radical in the 1930s society, where people clung to traditions and anything out of the ordinary was looked askance with suspicion. So Miss Brodie selects her girls carefully, choosing the ones who can be molded well. They have the ‘privilege’ of listening to her stories that range from her lover’s death to thoughts about society.

I feel that Spark uses Miss Brodie as a vehicle for her view on education to a great extent. Miss Brodie’s way of teaching and the content of her lessons are poles apart from what is normally taught in schools. She tries to impart lessons from her life experiences, which are considered quite blasphemous by the school principal herself. And even the parents have their reservations,

“We do a lot of what we like in Miss Brodie’s class,’ Jenny said. ‘My mummy says Miss Brodie gives us too much freedom.’ ‘She’s not supposed to give us freedom, she’s supposed to give us lessons,’ said Sandy.”

I found Miss Brodie to possess quite a layered personality and yes, Spark has sketched her eccentric personality with well-drawn brushstrokes. On one hand, she appears to give the girls much freedom to express. On the other hand, I found her quite mean. She makes her own predictions about each of the girls in her set. For Mary she says, “I never had any hopes of Mary…She was a little pathetic. But she’s really a most irritating girl, I’d rather deal with a rogue than a fool.” And this she confides to Sandy, her chosen one from the set. I found her quite repetitive too. The fact that she is in her prime and that the girls are quite privileged to be with her is mentioned on every other page in this slim volume of 127 pages.

And what puzzled me about the book? Well, I couldn’t quite get the core of it. There were a few humorous lines here and there but nothing memorable. I couldn’t get a grip on the storyline, which moves back and forth, unraveling Miss Brodie’s past and the girls’ futures simultaneously. I admit the zigzagging storyline is not that jarring but the essence of the entire story was lost on me.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie has been quite a sensation over the years, being made into a movie and being featured on Broadway as a play. To me this book was a series of thoughts, expressions and experiences, strung together on an oscillating thread. The movement between tenses was not so haphazard as Miss Brodie’s thoughts themselves. Perhaps there is something that is eluding me, that is beyond my admittedly limited ken. If any of you have read this or plan to read this book, do enlighten me more. I welcome it wholeheartedly. Till then, I will stay lost in prime puzzlement.

PS: Had completely forgotten to add the 'Words Learnt' bit to my reviews. Doing so now.

Verdict: Please read and explain it to me

Rating: 2.5/5

Words Learnt: Dragoman