The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Perennial Classics)

Author - Muriel Spark ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from Harper Perennial Modern Classics was reviewed on 12-Dec-2008.

Search ISBN:0060931736 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Perennial Classics) Reference Book. Classifications : Classics Literature & Fiction Book Clubs Custom Stores Specialty Stores Books General AAS Qualifying Textbooks Custom Stores Specialty Stores Books Spark, Muriel ( S ) Authors, A-Z Literature & Fictio . Click the following link to view the cover of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Perennial Classics).

Related topics: Classics. Book Clubs. Custom Stores. Specialty Stores. Books. General AAS. Custom Stores. Specialty Stores. Books. Spark, Muriel.

1) Paperback Book The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Perennial Classics) by Harper Perennial Modern Classics. Years ago I saw a TV production of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie." If memory serves, Geraldine McEwan played the title role. I don´t remember much about it. Time and again, I would encounter the book on lists like "1001 Books To Read Before You Die." Since this is one of the shorter ones on the those lists, I´m surprised it took me several years to read it. Correction: I waited several years to start it. Reading this book only takes one or two sittings.

I liked the overall Edinburgh setting, and the hints of feminism in Jean Brodie´s character. She fashions herself as a reformer, standing up to the staid conventions of the school she teaches for. While encouraging her students to break out of rigid roles the school wishes to indoctrinate them into, she also snaps them back into place by telling them they´ll never amount to much.

Jean Brodie is a bit of an enigma. She lives for her students but doesn´t seem to always think much of them. She speaks of her colorful continental love life, but when we see actual scenes in reality, Jean Brodie seems slightly desperate and maybe ambivalent to the men in her life. One student even speculates that she´s a lesbian.

There are some vivid scenes in this short novel, such as a love scene featuring a one-armed man and a nun speaking behind a grid. They all hint at the greater themes of the book. Also certain phrases are repeated over and over, I think to suggest that Jean Brodie and her girls are more indoctrinated than they realize. There are some vivid images of institutional power, and the ultimate hint that it will always win out.

I suspect one reason this book was groundbreaking is that it foretells deconstructionism. Jean Brodie is trying to buck convention by challenging traditional education and gender roles, something feminism would begin to do in education in the mid to late 1960s. These were still fairly new topics when Muriel Spark was writing in 1960.¤

2) Paperback Book The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Perennial Classics) by Harper Perennial Modern Classics. Don´t give up on this book if you don´t like it the first time you read it. It improves with age...your age.

At 14, I just didn´t "get" the book. Going to an English all-girls´ school I could absolutely identify with the opening passage relating to the dreaded Panama hat, and like many of the girls in the book, boys to us were pretty much a foreign country. However, apart from those aspects I felt the book was irrelevant and rather dated compared to my school days in the late 1970s.

Twenty plus years later, I came across the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie again, and understood its power.

For such a slim volume, this book has remarkable depth, and other reviewers have done a tremendous job of outlining the story. Jean Brodie was not a frustrated spinister in general terms, but she was frustrated and bound by the conventions of that era, however daring she appeared to be at times. Her passion was her girls; to shape their minds, broaden their horizons, and to be honest, share her view of the world.

This a book that works once you understand more about life. To learn that however passionately you may believe in something, in hindsight some things are not all we understood them to be, but to never lose that passion.

Most of all, to know that one´s prime is a state of mind, not an age.

I´ve read it several times now, and alongside Cold Comfort Farm (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition), it is my favourite book from that era.

There is also an excellent film, whilst not entirely true to the book, has Maggie Smith in probably her best performance, and definitely worth watching. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie¤

3) Paperback Book The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Perennial Classics) by Harper Perennial Modern Classics. Imaginatively asking and answering questions to and for her students, protagonist Miss Brodie leads her set of six young women from the ages of 10 to 18 -- a journey that they define to be the "main influence of their school days."

Each girl in the set is different. Like the seven dwarfs, you could nickname the six girls: Rose Stanley (Sexy); Monica Douglas (Brainy); Eunice Gardner (Splits); Sandy Stranger (Pscho); Jenny Gray (Actor) and Mary MacGregor (Sleepy). This eclectic group of naive minds are entranced by the nouveau concepts and manners of Miss Brodie - a uniquely gregarious and open character of the feminine gender in the 1930´s Scotland.

Chapter 3 starts with a definition of this woman and her peers. "It is not to be supposed that Miss Brodie was unique at this point of her prime. . . there were legions of her kind during the nineteen-thirties. . . who crowded their war-bereaved spinsterhood with voyages of discovery into new ideas and energetic practices in art or social welfare, education or religion." Such "normal women of the 1930´s", who otherwise would be anomalies in their society, were brain trusts which excited and engaged the minds of their students. The author had such a role model with a Christina Kay whose personality was the foundation of this fictional character.

Amid the book, as the girls mature in age and mind, the secret society of the "set" grows stronger with Miss Brodie. They behave - say little (Speaking is silvery, silence is golden.) and reticently defy all inquiries by the headmistress of the school who only suspects the worst of Miss Brodie. She has sexual discussions with the "set" and liaisons with men. She is a free sexual being.

Adding to the sexual revolution of Miss Brodie is her political endorsement of America´s and England´s worst enemies: Italy´s Fascism and Germany´s Nazism. She even feels empathy toward Franco´s socialist movement - Miss Brodie was not the common teacher at an upperclass girls´ school in England, then or even now.

The administration´s continual calumnious attack on Brodie´s character fails, until she is betrayed by one of the "set." Miss Brodie, thought to be omnipotent, and who felt "my prime has brought me instinct and insight" fails to see the betrayal.

Juxtaposing the eight years among the girls, and adding their later years as well, the story comes to and fro about the interpersonal relationships, the associations between half truths and lies, as well as explanations for some stories or anecdotes delivered by Brodie to the girls. This is not a chronological recitation of the witch hunt by the administration against Brodie. Instead, the writing is a mosaic which abstractly tells this detailed story in a minimalist manner. It is a delight to read, a story beautifully told.¤

4) Paperback Book The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Perennial Classics) by Harper Perennial Modern Classics. This book is definitely a unique read. It is not afraid to "tell it like it is," you may say. However, I found myself wanting to like the characters, especially Jean Brodie, much more than I actually did. I´m not saying that none of the characters were likeable, but I did have a difficult time feeling any sympathy or compassion for any of them.¤

5) Paperback Book The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Perennial Classics) by Harper Perennial Modern Classics. This is art. There is not one unnecessary word in this novel. Miss Brodie is a mystery throughout the story and you just go on pondering about the characters long after it is finished.

And, you: Watch the film starring Maggie Smith, too. It´s absolutely a masterpiece.¤

6) Paperback Book The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Perennial Classics) by Harper Perennial Modern Classics. The elegantly styled classic story of a young, unorthodox teacher and her special--and ultimately dangerous--relationship with six of her students.¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 9-Jan-2009, 00609317369780060931735, 360-130-400-940-660-8GB-8

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Perennial Classics), Book, Image © Harper Perennial Modern Classics

Search: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, Book Posters, Book Art