THE Prime OF MISS JEAN Brodie Reading Group PDF

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Notes on The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark....

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THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE READING GROUP Biography: Born Edinburgh, Jewish father. She referred to Jean Brodie as her ‘milk cow’ as it brought her money/ fame/ repute, yet it was not her favourite of her novels. The ‘prime’ = early 40s; reclaims this time as time of sexual empowerment/ self-awareness. Pushes back against misogynistic discourses of menopause/ declining fertility equating the end of a woman’s allure. Tensions throughout between the spiritual and the material. Dualism. Jean Brodie is essentially idealistic; myth of perfection. taking the girls through the Old Town = disrupts her mythological discourse with grim reality. The concept of destiny/ vocation i.e. fighting for Germany; Attempts to use Rose for sex-by-proxy with Teddy Lloyd; living vicariously. Her interior is absent, as is her self-mythologizing ‘prime’; is she a pathetic figure or are we being asked to rethink what it is to be in one’s prime? Time of greatest vigour in life/ vitality/ vivaciousness. Possible narcissistic tendencies; allegory of her as the fascist dictator, cult of personality, her set = bound under her ideology. Edinburgh as a setting = the spinsters taking up new radical thought; parallel to The Scarlet Letter. They are spinsters because of the war, subtle backdrop to the novel. ‘She thought of the starving children. This was a relief to her fear’. Mythologises Scotland. The significance of the science room ‘I have enough gunpowder in this jar to blow up this school’ Miss Lockheart = she is eventually domesticated. Science room = home of empiricism, very different to the impromptu classroom setting of under the tree in love lessons. Miss Brodie = complicated feminist figure; how much is she an emancipated, vanguard figure and how much does she perpetuate sexism i.e. taking on the role of feeding the male in his domain. Calvinism vs. Catholicism. The elect = predestined to salvation [the Brodie Set]; Sandy = the Judas of the group and yet she is the one who becomes devout. Miss Brodie = Calvinistic; associated with Scottish religion, starker/ severe, Puritan. Sandy has English mother she is embarrassed of, she feels deprived of Calvinism as she is not fully Scottish. Turn to RC Church = rejection of her rejection/ the heritage she felt she wasn’t entitled to. Ending image of her clutching the bars = ambivalent. Sparks describes Sandy as a ‘little bitch’; she is rational, not romantic. Mary = runs around the science room, foreshadows/ premonition of what is to come for her. The narrator discloses plot points, yet this does not deduct from the suspense of reading. The sexuality of fascism = Miss Brodie has an attraction to the masculinity/ brown shirts/ classical Italian sculpture etc.; Plath, ‘every woman adores a fascist’...