Eunice, come and do a somersault in order that we may have comic relief.” “Where there is no vision,” Miss Brodie had assured them, “the people perish. She resists our pity by her enthusiastic contempt for her middle-class environment, and some spectacularly withering assessments of the mere mortals in her orbit. From some angles, Miss Brodie could be a tragic Eleanor Rigby figure: terminally single and fatally misplaced in a hostile environment, wittering away about her “prime”, and eventually the victim of her own self-delusion. Miss Brodie is a singularly strange creation – part Fascist, part anarchist, the resident rebel teacher in a conservative school whose lessons are a strange mix of self-determination (she makes a memorably witty critique of “team spirit”) and narcissistic projections of her romantic fantasies. Though it’s now impossible to separate the fictional Jean Brodie from Maggie Smith’s magnificently over-the-top portrayal in the 1969 film, Spark’s text is still a thoroughly absorbing read. Why it’s a classic: Small but perfectly formed, Spark’s novella is a satirical masterpiece: a vivid portrait of an eccentric, funny and complicated woman, a deeply unsentimental female coming-of-age story, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked romanticism and malign influences on the young. Sandy becomes a nun, reflecting later that Miss Brodie’s influence, while dangerous, was instrumental in her own development as a free-thinking woman. Miss Brodie dies soon afterwards, never knowing which of her girls betrayed her. Sandy, the cleverest and most trusted of the set, puts a stop to Miss Brodie and tells the school headmistress of her Fascist leanings. As the Brodie Set reach adolescence, Miss Brodie encourages Rose to sleep with the school’s art teacher, and the hapless Mary McGregor to join the Spanish Revolution, with disastrous results. She ignores the prescribed syllabus, regaling her students with stories of her love affairs and her admiration for Fascism. Miss Jean Brodie, a charismatic and unconventional teacher at a girls’ school, forms a close bond with six girls in her junior class, whom she calls “ la crème de la crème“. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark (1961)
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