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[personal profile] mothwing
Crocky and I are reading this book together:

46.


The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Sparks.
This is a riveting tale of a school teacher in her prime who is teaching the girls at her all girls school with her very own, unconventional means. She does this most often by disregarding any sort of given curriculum or even timetable, relating tales form her own youth instead, which are often populated with strange and erotic adventures. The girls, all of whom she considers as being able of being the "créme de la créme", love the unconventional teacher. They even have started writing second-rate real person fiction about the school teacher in her prime and her wayward, deceased soldier lover Hugh. The main characters include Sandy, who is famous for her accent, and her friends, one of whom is famous for sex, and all of whom are famous for something.

Their parents as well as the headmistress are rather sceptical of the school teachers methods and object to them. Miss Jean Brodie's students all have avery close bond to their teacher, who thinks that they all might have been the "créme de la créme" and who often reminds them that her students profit from her being in her prime. In the end, one of the student betrays Miss Brodie, though, with grave consequences for the school teacher.

Seriously, though - in spite of the many annoying, redundant repetitions of what has been said before twice a paragraph, like the fact that Miss Brodie is in her prime, or what the students will be famous for, this book is still charming. This is not only due to the frequent prolepses in the narration and analepses in the character narration, which make this otherwise sometimes quite dull narrative very poignant, but also due to the characterisation of the girls.

I saw the movie adaptation starring Dame Maggie Smith, of course, and even though I hate Miss Brodie with the passion of a thousand flaming suns, I loved Maggie Smith's performance.

Reading the book, I feel as though I lack the background to properly appreciate this novel. It seems to draw on other sources far more than on the tradition of school novels, even though Crocky is supposed to read it as one for a course. What baffles me most about this is the reception, or what I've read of it. It seems that Miss Brodie, who is an at best ambiguous and often extremely negative character in the novel is read as some kind of romantic model teacher, which she is decidedly not.

Like many literary paragons of education, Miss Brodie's education revolves entirely around their own person and which works only under her charismatic leadership which transcends the borders of schools and has a grave effect on her student's life. It is good for teachers to have an impact on the lives of their students, but I doubt that it is necessary for that to abandon all kinds of lessons and impart knowledge only in the form of private chit-chat, disregarding sciences and mathematics almost altogether. Miss Brodie's methods of selection are also highly self-centred, an attribute which can also be used to describe most of what this character does.
In the end, I am glad that Sandy betrays her, as her will to rule her students lives "forever" is megalomaniac and creepy in my eyes.

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Mothwing

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