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fionnualalirsdottir 's review for:
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
by Muriel Spark
After reviewing several of Muriel Spark's less well-known books recently, I'm now attempting to review the one that made her famous. I imagined that it would be the easiest to write about, being the one with the most interesting structure (and the least absurd plot), but no, the opposite has been the case. In fact, I've had to scrap the review I wrote the other day because, for all its sensible words, it completely missed the point of the book. I knew what the point was but I somehow got sidetracked due to the cunning of the main character, and ended up focusing my review entirely on Miss Brodie.
But, I hear you say, Miss Jean Brodie is the main character.
Well, she gets top billing on the front cover and in readers' minds, but that's only because the main character allows her to. The main character is pulling all the strings in this book, even the reader's.
Let's be clear, you say. There's a third person narrator in this book, and therefore the narrator is the one who pulls the strings. The narrator/author gives the characters their roles, and controls their fates. That's just how it is.
The way I see it, the main character and the narrator are one and the same person: Miss Sandy Stranger, aged ten when we first meet her. Of course, Sandy lets us think there's a narrator, but in reality the entire story is being told by Sandy herself. It's a kind of double act. If you look closely, you'll see that there isn't a single episode she couldn't have witnessed or heard about. And there's a clue about her 'authorship' of the story early in the book: The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. That's the title of a book that we are told Sandy will write in later life. It's ostensibly a psychology textbook about the perception of moral issues and how to act on them, but here's the thing: I believe that Sandy's 'Transfiguration' book is really this book, the 'Miss Jean Brodie' book. It's a very economical method, you see, this double act, just as in the case of Teddy Lloyd's portraits of the Brodie set which simultaneously looked like the sitter and also like Miss Brodie. Two portraits for one, two books for one! Why not?
One day you will go too far, I hear you say.
But wait a moment. Isn't the crux of 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' the perception of a moral issue and the decision to act on it?
Well, of course, you say, everyone knows that, whether they've read the book or seen the film. Everyone knows about Miss Brodie's incitement of her pupils towards fascism, and her subsequent enforced retirement. But what about the 'Transfiguration of the Commonplace'? How do you make that fit with your crazy theory?
Take a moment to consider what Sandy tells us about herself as a child: Sandy was never bored, but she had to lead a double life of her own in order never to be bored. Her double life as I see it involved the constant transfiguration of the commonplace. You see, Sandy's vision of everybody and everything is very acute, in spite of the fact that she has 'tiny' eyes. And Sandy proves time and time again that her 'tiny' eyes are capable of transforming even the most humdrum aspects of the world into something out of the ordinary. Everything she can transfigure gets transfigured. As she reads 'The Lady of Shalott' aloud in the classroom, Sandy is transformed into the Lady's confidante, and the classroom into Camelot. A walk with her classmates through the reeking network of Edinburgh slums becomes a breath-taking adventure in the Highlands with Alan Breck, the hero of 'Kidnapped'. A line of unemployed men queuing to enter a dole office becomes a dragon's body, unslayable. Miss Brodie herself, her brown head held high becomes Joan of Arc. On another day, her nose arched and proud, she is Sybil Thorndyke. Even the way the Brodie set wore their school hats was a transformation of the ordinary when narrated by Sandy.
But the opposite can also happen in Sandy's world, as when the Mona Lisa with her famous smile becomes simply a woman with her lower jaw swollen from a visit to the dentist. And Miss Jean Brodie eventually becomes a rather tiresome woman well past her prime. However, the most remarkable example of transfiguration concerns a piece of tinned pineapple. Here we are verging on transubstantiation: To Sandy the unfamiliar pineapple had the authentic taste and appearance of happiness and she focussed her small eyes closely on the pale gold cubes before she scooped them up in her spoon, and she thought the sharp taste on her tongue was that of a special happiness, which was nothing to do with eating...
Well, you say, all that is in the text of course, and a reader can make whatever patterns out of the facts she chooses, but none of it proves that Sandy is the narrator of this book.
Hmm. One of Sandy's favourite transformations involves daydreaming that she is plain Jane Eyre having enigmatic conversations with romantic moody Mr Rochester.
So..
You might remember that in this book, Sandy and the very romantic and moody Mr Lloyd have some enigmatic conversations in which he teases her about not being beautiful. Eventually however, they become lovers. The interesting thing about Mr Lloyd, and which makes me think Sandy invented him, is that he only has one arm. After all, by the time Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester eventually became lovers, he too had only one arm.
Now you really have gone too far! This entire review is completely absurd.
Is it really? Well, perhaps I have taken things to a bit of an extreme. Pity I deleted all those sensible words I wrote about Miss Brodie the other day...
But, I hear you say, Miss Jean Brodie is the main character.
Well, she gets top billing on the front cover and in readers' minds, but that's only because the main character allows her to. The main character is pulling all the strings in this book, even the reader's.
Let's be clear, you say. There's a third person narrator in this book, and therefore the narrator is the one who pulls the strings. The narrator/author gives the characters their roles, and controls their fates. That's just how it is.
The way I see it, the main character and the narrator are one and the same person: Miss Sandy Stranger, aged ten when we first meet her. Of course, Sandy lets us think there's a narrator, but in reality the entire story is being told by Sandy herself. It's a kind of double act. If you look closely, you'll see that there isn't a single episode she couldn't have witnessed or heard about. And there's a clue about her 'authorship' of the story early in the book: The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. That's the title of a book that we are told Sandy will write in later life. It's ostensibly a psychology textbook about the perception of moral issues and how to act on them, but here's the thing: I believe that Sandy's 'Transfiguration' book is really this book, the 'Miss Jean Brodie' book. It's a very economical method, you see, this double act, just as in the case of Teddy Lloyd's portraits of the Brodie set which simultaneously looked like the sitter and also like Miss Brodie. Two portraits for one, two books for one! Why not?
One day you will go too far, I hear you say.
But wait a moment. Isn't the crux of 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' the perception of a moral issue and the decision to act on it?
Well, of course, you say, everyone knows that, whether they've read the book or seen the film. Everyone knows about Miss Brodie's incitement of her pupils towards fascism, and her subsequent enforced retirement. But what about the 'Transfiguration of the Commonplace'? How do you make that fit with your crazy theory?
Take a moment to consider what Sandy tells us about herself as a child: Sandy was never bored, but she had to lead a double life of her own in order never to be bored. Her double life as I see it involved the constant transfiguration of the commonplace. You see, Sandy's vision of everybody and everything is very acute, in spite of the fact that she has 'tiny' eyes. And Sandy proves time and time again that her 'tiny' eyes are capable of transforming even the most humdrum aspects of the world into something out of the ordinary. Everything she can transfigure gets transfigured. As she reads 'The Lady of Shalott' aloud in the classroom, Sandy is transformed into the Lady's confidante, and the classroom into Camelot. A walk with her classmates through the reeking network of Edinburgh slums becomes a breath-taking adventure in the Highlands with Alan Breck, the hero of 'Kidnapped'. A line of unemployed men queuing to enter a dole office becomes a dragon's body, unslayable. Miss Brodie herself, her brown head held high becomes Joan of Arc. On another day, her nose arched and proud, she is Sybil Thorndyke. Even the way the Brodie set wore their school hats was a transformation of the ordinary when narrated by Sandy.
But the opposite can also happen in Sandy's world, as when the Mona Lisa with her famous smile becomes simply a woman with her lower jaw swollen from a visit to the dentist. And Miss Jean Brodie eventually becomes a rather tiresome woman well past her prime. However, the most remarkable example of transfiguration concerns a piece of tinned pineapple. Here we are verging on transubstantiation: To Sandy the unfamiliar pineapple had the authentic taste and appearance of happiness and she focussed her small eyes closely on the pale gold cubes before she scooped them up in her spoon, and she thought the sharp taste on her tongue was that of a special happiness, which was nothing to do with eating...
Well, you say, all that is in the text of course, and a reader can make whatever patterns out of the facts she chooses, but none of it proves that Sandy is the narrator of this book.
Hmm. One of Sandy's favourite transformations involves daydreaming that she is plain Jane Eyre having enigmatic conversations with romantic moody Mr Rochester.
So..
You might remember that in this book, Sandy and the very romantic and moody Mr Lloyd have some enigmatic conversations in which he teases her about not being beautiful. Eventually however, they become lovers. The interesting thing about Mr Lloyd, and which makes me think Sandy invented him, is that he only has one arm. After all, by the time Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester eventually became lovers, he too had only one arm.
Now you really have gone too far! This entire review is completely absurd.
Is it really? Well, perhaps I have taken things to a bit of an extreme. Pity I deleted all those sensible words I wrote about Miss Brodie the other day...