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nmcannon's review against another edition
dark
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I hadn’t heard of Muriel Spark’s novella before it was cited in the opening pages of Dr. Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran. Like many of Dr. Nafisi’s cited books, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie went on my To Read list. Later, when I was scrolling through Libby’s “dark academia” tag, I spotted Prime and it was only four hours long. I borrowed it.
Miss Jean Brodie is a vivacious schoolmistress at Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh, Scotland. The school urges its students to conform to patriarchal ideals under the guise of “team spirit.” Girls can expect a brief career as a nurse, teacher, or secretary before being condemned to a suffocating marriage. Miss Brodie alone is unmarried and middle-aged, and she fills her life with art and travel. As a teacher, she encourages her students to do the same: to think for themselves, resist conformity; to live passionately and ambitiously. She takes especial interest in six girls, and they’re privy to their teacher’s love affairs with two other staff members. While Brodie plays, one student plots, hoping to bring her down.
While not necessarily spooky, a feeling of unease permeates the novella. In an alternate version of this story, Brodie is the feminist heroine who defies ageism and sexism to live happily. I was pleased to hear, repeatedly, how middle-age is a woman’s prime. I rooted for Brodie and her students to find happiness, financial independence, and artistic fulfillment. I loved that girls got to be gooey and gross. In Spark’s actual work however, Brodie’s good points are overshadowed by her rotten core. The narrator is Brodie’s betrayer so she’s never put in absolutely good light, but some of her actions are undeniably evil. Brodie frequently praises Mussolini and Italian fascism. There’s like, actual grooming, as Brodie encourages and positions a student to fuck a man twenty years the student’s senior.
Brodie’s fall from grace left a bitter taste in my mouth. The betrayer’s actions seem rather random. She gains nothing and isn’t motivated by morals or a specific spite. She wants to bring her teacher down, so she does. Perhaps that was the point. Brodie taught ambition, and the betrayer’s ambition was to stab her where it hurt. Overall, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was an entertaining, knife-twist of a read. If you want darkness in an academic setting, pick it up.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, and Misogyny
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship
Minor: War and Infidelity
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