Dead Poets Society. To Sir with Love. Lean On Me. Stand & Deliver. Mona Lisa Smile --- Miss Jean Brodie tosses a floral scarf across her shoulders and scoffs at those narratives about teachers who inspire and want their students to succeed. Inspire students? Pish posh. Urge students to succeed? Sure you jest!
Jean Brodie uses the classroom as her own stage. She is the star of a show called "Miss Jean Brodie in Her Prime" and she wants everybody to understand that being in one’s prime is the "crème de la crème".
Miss Brodie is a teacher at a Scottish girls' school during the 1930s. She is charming, self-assured, well-read, well-traveled, and an arresting storyteller with a swell of opinions on just about, well, everything.
She's also full of shit. So full of it.
Sure, she's got wit and sass. Sure, she's a raconteur of an unconventional sort, but she's also manipulative and a narcissist. She's also a Fascist. Truly. She stans for Mussolini and Francisco Franco. If she was around today she’d follow them on Twitter, write annoying think pieces on her Tumblr, and set up a GoFundMe in order to gather donations to help Mussolini 'improve' Italy. Aside from her love of Fascist dictators, her self-absorbed foolishness makes her quite dangerous, unfit to even be an orator of any kind, but there she is, her Roman nose held high in the air, teaching at a girls' school, "putting old heads on young shoulders".
It's also a shame that she has her admirers. Six impressionable students named Sandy, Mary, Eunice, Rose, Monica, and Jenny who are dubbed "the Brodie set". The girls hang onto Brodie's every word, idolizing her to points of extreme influence. They eat, sleep, and live Brodie. Two of them even write fan fiction about Miss Brodie (and as a bonus Spark provides every cringing word of it!).
In the book we follow the girls as they age and Miss Brodie being ever present in their lives and never wavering in encouraging a cult of personality between her 'set'. Brodie is so invested in these girls that she goes so far as to spin fantasy lives for them, "predicting" how they will end up (one girl is to be known for her "sex", though at 13 she’s giggling about sex) Yet, Miss Brodie doesn't realize that her idea to put "old heads on young shoulders" is soon to backfire, because as the girls mature and become more fully-formed individuals, the glow around Brodie begins to dull, with one member of the Brodie brood falling into disdain for her once beloved mentor, betraying her in the end.
Muriel Spark wrote a piercing little story about warped hero-worshiping and how a teacher can in fact abuse their position, and borderline on being a con artist or a swindler of not monetary means, but of mental capacity. As colorful and independent-minded Miss Brodie makes herself appear to be as the story progresses you see Miss Brodie is only secure in her individuality as long as she has her 'Brodie set' to emulate and approve of her actions. She uses these girls in order to stroke her own fragile ego --- never is she doing it because she’s trying to flout the social convictions of her day. Far from it, she's irresponsible, or as her pupil Sandy so succinctly calls her later on: "a ridiculous woman".
Miss Brodie knows how to wield power and does it in such a sneaky, elusive way that you wonder how in hell she sleeps at night. Well, she probably sleeps very well, humming a little tune and believing everybody else is crazy but her, still she is a menace, an elegant and well-dressed menace, but still one nonetheless.
Spark isn't subtle in showing how Brodie is one-in-the-same of her Fascist "heroes". It's chilling how Brodie influences her girls to do things without indirectly doing so. Her tactics also reminded me of Charles Manson, because as we all know, Manson is in prison for conspiracy to commit murder --- he never actually killed anybody. Manson was powerful enough to influence others to forgo their own moral compass and kill for him. To put Brodie on par with dictators and serial killers is well, a little harsh, but when you have someone who pimps out their young pupil to an older man so they can vicariously live out a fantasy affair through her and who convinces a student to run away to war and fight for the Nationalist side, which leads to that student's death you've got a dangerous, destructive person who needs to be stopped.
I came into reading this book after viewing the 1969 film starring Dame Maggie Smith. The film is fantastic as is Smith who nails her performance of Miss Brodie, fully deserving her Oscar win (and I say this as someone who thought Jane Fonda should’ve won that year for her role in the downbeat They Shoot Horses Don’t They?). I knew nothing about the film going in, as I thought reading the title: "Oh this sounds like a sweet film about a teacher who inspires her students". WRONG! The dark twist this story takes drew me in. I was so blown away by it that I had to seek out the source material. I loved being taken off-guard like that and I wanted that feeling to never go away!
It's funny to say this but I actually prefer the film a wee bit better than the book. I really didn't like the flash-forward technique Spark uses where bit-by-bit the plot is revealed. There isn't a slow burn towards the truth like the film suggests as you are told about the "big betrayal" mid-way in, and I found that kind of lousy. Still it's just a nitpick and shouldn’t deter anyone from experiencing the taunt and darkly comical prose Spark fills the pages with. Spark is a superb writer as she really has you waffling in your feelings about each character and the situation at hand --- is Miss Brodie just a batty woman who is a victim of wicked little school girls or is she an actual vindictive manipulator? --- you are questioning this often even when you know the sinister truth.
Spark's genius is in how she keeps Miss Brodie in the grey. She is larger than life, and incredibly fascinating as she is frustrating. It’s also interesting is that we don’t get to really know Miss Brodie even though we're spending lots of time talking about her. Time is truly never spent with her in private. Everything is all second-hand information from the girls of her 'set' and from the disgruntled headmistress, Miss Mackay and other faculty members of the school. Oh, we do get to know about a 'gentler' side to Miss Brodie from the two men in her life --- the two art teachers, Mr. Lowther and Mr. Lloyd. They are two bumbling gnats whom Miss Brodie also charms and manipulates (and in Mr. Lowther's case --- overpowers), but even they have little to no insight as to why Miss Brodie captivates them so.
After reading this, I'm thankful I was never ever a teacher's pet...
....and I now want to read every single thing Muriel Spark wrote.
////
from the margins
- Rating: ****
- 150 pages
- Published February 3rd 1999 by Harper Perennial // First published 1961
This review was previously published on March 24, 2017. It was edited for format, spelling, and syntax errors --- because I'm a perfectionist like that.
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