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A review by wolfdan9
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
3.0
“‘Where there is no vision,’ Miss Brodie assured them, ‘the people perish.’”
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a novella about a narcissistic teacher and her impact on a small group of children. The thrust of the novel is seemingly a commentary on corrupted youth. Miss Brodie, while a charismatic oddball -- endearing to the reader even --turns her students against "the world" while deifying herself through her romantic stories and manipulation/grooming. Prime is a brisk story and therefore Spark moves quickly through the novel's events; the writing is indeed economical, but the narrative itself is stripped. There is a focus on the broader picture of Jean Brodie's influence over a number of years -- it's more of an overview than a story in the traditional sense. This compressed narrative style is not normally my preference, but it's done quite well here. You get the sense that each event is a building block for a bigger picture. Spark's prose is also stunning. Her dialogue and character writing (concerning Brodie particularly) is impeccable and she has a distinctively "British" writing style that contains its typical hallmarks: a certain sense of formality, irony/wit, and psychological nuance. She is able to do a lot with very little. There are some religious underpinnings whose significance I could only brush up against (e.g., Calvinism), but I nonetheless was able to take away something from the novel. Brodie represented a charismatic leader, in which it is always "us vs. them," and her set were her followers. Sandy is successfully groomed by Brodie to have sex with another teacher whom Brodie loves. She uses her position to have these inappropriate relationships and ruin her pupils' lives, but she is portrayed throughout the novel as benign and wacky. It's hard to know how much of Brodie is genuine. I assume all of it, although it of course doesn't excuse her predatory behavior.
As Sandy ages, she breaks free from Brodie's influence and "betrays" her, ruining her life. Brodie, while a role model who is placed on a pedestal by the girls in their early years, is a shell of a person who really has nothing except for her pupils and her affairs with her colleague teachers. The girls all break away and mainly reminisce on how amusing she was in their adult years, although more than one meet comically tragic deaths (the narrative jumps around quite a bit chronologically). I found the novel to be an effective portrayal of a charismatic leader in the natural world. It explores how individuality develops and how a single person can impact our lives and direction. It makes me wonder about the trust we place in ordinary, everyday people who wield so much influence over our children's lives. I do feel like I'm just missing some piece with this novel, though. It is, nonetheless, a marvel of economical writing that generates several laughs and brings a character to life from the page using so little that it is rather impressive.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a novella about a narcissistic teacher and her impact on a small group of children. The thrust of the novel is seemingly a commentary on corrupted youth. Miss Brodie, while a charismatic oddball -- endearing to the reader even --turns her students against "the world" while deifying herself through her romantic stories and manipulation/grooming. Prime is a brisk story and therefore Spark moves quickly through the novel's events; the writing is indeed economical, but the narrative itself is stripped. There is a focus on the broader picture of Jean Brodie's influence over a number of years -- it's more of an overview than a story in the traditional sense. This compressed narrative style is not normally my preference, but it's done quite well here. You get the sense that each event is a building block for a bigger picture. Spark's prose is also stunning. Her dialogue and character writing (concerning Brodie particularly) is impeccable and she has a distinctively "British" writing style that contains its typical hallmarks: a certain sense of formality, irony/wit, and psychological nuance. She is able to do a lot with very little. There are some religious underpinnings whose significance I could only brush up against (e.g., Calvinism), but I nonetheless was able to take away something from the novel. Brodie represented a charismatic leader, in which it is always "us vs. them," and her set were her followers. Sandy is successfully groomed by Brodie to have sex with another teacher whom Brodie loves. She uses her position to have these inappropriate relationships and ruin her pupils' lives, but she is portrayed throughout the novel as benign and wacky. It's hard to know how much of Brodie is genuine. I assume all of it, although it of course doesn't excuse her predatory behavior.
As Sandy ages, she breaks free from Brodie's influence and "betrays" her, ruining her life. Brodie, while a role model who is placed on a pedestal by the girls in their early years, is a shell of a person who really has nothing except for her pupils and her affairs with her colleague teachers. The girls all break away and mainly reminisce on how amusing she was in their adult years, although more than one meet comically tragic deaths (the narrative jumps around quite a bit chronologically). I found the novel to be an effective portrayal of a charismatic leader in the natural world. It explores how individuality develops and how a single person can impact our lives and direction. It makes me wonder about the trust we place in ordinary, everyday people who wield so much influence over our children's lives. I do feel like I'm just missing some piece with this novel, though. It is, nonetheless, a marvel of economical writing that generates several laughs and brings a character to life from the page using so little that it is rather impressive.