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Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

by Muriel Spark

1961

Novella

Comedy

Set in the 1930's, this story of an eccentric Edinburgh school teacher is both an entertaining comedy filled with unforgettable characters and a penetrating study of the nature of moral judgment.

The novel focuses on Jean Brodie, a teacher at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls, who dedicates the years of her prime to six students: Sandy Stranger, Rose Stanley, Mary Macgregor, Eunice Gardiner, Jenny Gray, and Monica Douglas. She hopes to mold their lives into her own unique pattern, and her teaching includes comparative religion, Fascism, and the details of her love life.

This naturally causes friction between Miss Brodie and the more conventional faculty. The headmistress, Miss Mackay, continually searches for some grounds on which to dismiss Miss Brodie. Meanwhile, Miss Brodie's efforts to dominate the lives of her girls increase as when she tries to arrange an affair between Rose Stanley and the singing master Teddy Lloyd.

As the Brodie set grows older, Miss Mackay begins questioning them unsuccessfully, hoping that one girl will betray her friend and teacher. Finally, Sandy Stranger comes to realize that Miss Brodie's influence may ruin the lives of her students and must make a choice between her personal loyalty to Miss Brodie and her newly awakened moral perception.

Jean Brodie is a remarkable comic figure, by turns admirable, sinister, and ludicrous. As the story presents new sides of Miss Brodie, she is by turns a benevolent teacher, a calculating Fascist, and a silly, frustrated spinster. Each of these shifts in perception is presented from the viewpoint of Sandy Stranger, so that the reader goes through the same learning process as Sandy does. Finally, like Sandy, the reader recognizes the complexities of moral judgment.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Spark, Muriel. "The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie." Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed, edited by Editors of Salem Press, Salem Press, 2015. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=6CR_0439.
APA 7th
Spark, M. (2015). The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. In E. Salem Press (Ed.), Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Spark, Muriel. "The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie." Edited by Editors of Salem Press. Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2015. Accessed September 15, 2025. online.salempress.com.