The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Content Warning: This section of the guide refers to a scene involving sexual assault.

This chapter begins with a declaration that there are many women like Miss Brodie in Edinburgh in the 1930s, so while she may seem unusual, she is not out of place there. These women are generally over 30, unmarried, and interested in social change and new perspectives on education, religion, and feminism. They are witty, tough, have their own money, enjoy traveling, and are engaged with their communities. Many of them, like Miss Brodie, think of Edinburgh as a cosmopolitan, European city. However, while their personalities and lifestyles are similar to Miss Brodie’s, these women generally do not work as teachers. Miss Brodie’s choice to work at a traditional school rather than a progressive one also makes her stand out. In addition to being unique in the context of middle-aged, single Edinburgh women, Miss Brodie is unique in the context of the Marcia Blaine School: While the rest of the teachers made up their minds about ethical issues in their twenties, Miss Brodie is still learning and developing mentally. She attributes these fluctuations to the fact that she is in her prime.

By summer of 1931, Miss Brodie has been in her prime for one year and the girls in the Brodie set are obsessed with sex. At the beginning of the school year, Miss Brodie tells them about her summer holidays in Italy and London and shows them pictures of Mussolini’s fascisti, who she says are doing “splendid things” (45). She adds that she and some friends had an audience with the Pope and visited the writer A. A. Milne in London. She says Mussolini is one of the greatest men in the world—superior to British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald—and as she is preparing to say more about the fascisti, Miss Mackay walks into the classroom. Miss Mackay tells the students they must work hard that year and do well on their exams because they will be in senior school the following year. After she leaves, Miss Brodie is visibly annoyed and erases the long division problem she left on the blackboard to make it look like she was teaching arithmetic.

Miss Brodie praises Mussolini’s purported abolition of unemployment, then expounds her theory of education. She tells the class that she does not believe in condescending to them. Education means “leading out,” she says, “a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul” (47). Though none of the girls realize this at the time, the words are calculated to make them feel that they are being judged and found wanting. In the next moments, she calls Mary stupid for not knowing the definition of the word “nasally,” tells the girls they must begin speaking in complete sentences, and complains that someone has opened the window too wide. Anything more than six inches, she says, is “vulgar,” and, “One should have an innate sense of these things” (47). After taking attendance, she reveals four pounds of apples hidden in her desk, a gift from Mr. Lowther, and says they must eat them while no one is watching. She quizzes Sandy on an expression about discretion being “the better part of valour,” and although Sandy gets the expression right, she seems suspicious of Miss Brodie (49).

While the teachers at the senior school are indifferent to Miss Brodie, her fellow teachers at the junior school dislike her more as time goes on. Only two teachers like her: the music teacher for both junior and senior students, Mr. Lowther, and the senior art teacher, Mr. Lloyd. They are the only male teachers at the school, and they are soon competing for Miss Brodie’s affection. While the Brodie set sees immediately that both men are attracted to Miss Brodie, Miss Brodie sees them only as supporters of her agenda. Both men have red-gold hair and look similar on the surface, but they have very distinct personalities. Mr. Lloyd, who lost an arm in World War I, is more conventionally handsome and has sophisticated manners.

Miss Brodie accompanies them to their classes in the art room, where one day Mr. Lloyd shows them a slide show from an exhibition of Italian art in London. He does not tell them what the images represent but uses a pointer to isolate certain parts of the images, often women’s bodies. The girls finally start giggling, and Mr. Lloyd becomes offended. Miss Brodie says they are obviously uncultured, which shames the girls into silence. However, Sandy soon laughs again, followed by several other girls. Miss Brodie says she is surprised that Sandy would be so unsophisticated. She then grabs Mary, who is still laughing even though she does not understand what is funny, and pushes her out of the classroom. Mr. Lloyd then shows them a painting of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, and to their surprise, describes the painting in the same detached way he used while talking about secular images. Sandy notices that Mr. Lloyd looks at Miss Brodie as if seeking approval, and Miss Brodie smiles at him.

Soon thereafter, Monica claims to have seen Miss Brodie and Mr. Lloyd kissing in the art room. Sandy asks her a series of frantic questions, desperate to know for sure that it actually happened, and Monica insists that she saw the end of a “long and lingering kiss” during which Mr. Lloyd had his arm around Miss Brodie’s waist (53). When Sandy says Monica must have been dreaming, Monica becomes angry, pinches Sandy’s arm, and swings her attaché case around the hallway, hitting several girls. Rose says she believes Monica’s story because Mr. Lloyd is an artist and Miss Brodie has an artistic temperament. Jenny asks Monica if the two had not seen the door opening, and Monica says she got away before they saw her. Sandy recreates the scene several times, opening the door and pretending to be startled. On the fourth reenactment, Miss Brodie comes into the classroom, and Sandy says she is playing around.

For the next few months, the girls are obsessed with the question of whether Miss Brodie would indeed kiss Mr. Lloyd, finding the idea much less believable than her stories about Hugh. They decide not to tell anyone else at the school about it. However, they notice that Miss Brodie suddenly wears new clothes as well as a new amber necklace. When they compare her to their other teachers, it does seem possible that she would kiss someone. Jenny and Sandy wonder if Miss Brodie and Mr. Lloyd had had sex that day, but they see no signs that Miss Brodie is pregnant and agree that Monica probably made the whole story up. They also note that while the other teachers greet Miss Brodie every day, there is an undertone of derision in their greetings. Miss Brodie carries herself proudly through the hallways, and instead of going to the staff common room while her students are in their sewing or singing lessons, she accompanies them.

The sewing teachers are two sisters named Miss Ellen and Miss Alison Kerr. They are incompetent teachers who become easily flustered, and rather than teaching, simply do the students’ sewing for them. They do not believe the instructors who teach academic subjects can be criticized, so they get along with Miss Brodie. Miss Brodie reads Jane Eyre aloud while they sew, and some of the girls prick their fingers intentionally to create patterns of blood on their sewing.

Miss Brodie is noticeably agitated during Mr. Lowther’s singing lessons. Sandy asks Monica if she might have seen Miss Brodie kissing Mr. Lowther, but Monica, becoming angry, insists it was Mr. Lloyd. Monica says Rose is the only one who believes her, but the narrative reveals that this is because Rose was indifferent to the whole event and to sex in general. In a flash forward to the late 1950s, an adult Monica visits Sandy at the convent and insists that she saw Teddy Lloyd kissing Miss Brodie. Sandy says she believes her and has known she was telling the truth since a conversation she had had with Miss Brodie right after the end of World War II.

The narrative rewinds to a conversation between Sandy and Miss Brodie at the Braid Hills Hotel in Edinburgh. They eat sandwiches and drink tea; Miss Brodie says she is past her prime and Sandy says it was a good prime. Miss Brodie says she and Teddy were in love, but she renounced him because he was married. She looks older than her 56 years, largely because of the cancer with which she was recently diagnosed, and she will die later that year.

The narrative rewinds again, this time back to 1931. Miss Brodie goes on leave from teaching for two weeks, allegedly because of an illness, and her class is broken up and distributed among other teachers. The Brodie set stays together under a new teacher, Miss Gaunt, who is thin, strict, and insists on silence. She seems to specifically dislike the Brodie set. Their singing lesson is canceled the first week of Miss Brodie’s absence, but the girls do not notice. They do attend sewing class, where they learn that Miss Gaunt’s brother is the minister of the parish church that the Kerr sisters attend. During class, Sandy thinks about the next installment of Jane Eyre, and rather than fantasizing about Alan Breck, she fantasizes about Mr. Rochester. She suddenly hears Miss Gaunt say to the Kerr sisters that Mr. Lowther is away from the school because he is ill, and he might have the same ailment as Miss Brodie.

After class, Sandy and Jenny talk about whether Miss Brodie could be having an affair with Mr. Lowther. Jenny says Miss Brodie must be in love with Mr. Lloyd because she let him kiss her, but Sandy cannot forget Miss Gaunt’s remark about their shared ailment. The girls giggle as they imagine Miss Brodie and Mr. Lowther having sex, finding it funny because Mr. Lowther is shorter than Miss Brodie, but Sandy now believes the rumor is true. Eunice approaches briefly and they stop talking, as Eunice is in a religious phase and cannot be trusted in conversations about sex.

The narrative flashes forward again, to Sandy and Miss Brodie in the Braid Hills Hotel. Miss Brodie says that although Teddy was the great love of her prime, she started an affair with Gordon Lowther in 1931. It was more appropriate because he was unmarried. Miss Brodie says the girls must have known about it, but the affair was not the reason she was ultimately betrayed. She speculates that Mary or Rose might have betrayed her. Sandy feels bored with the conversation and reflects on the fact that it had been seven years since she betrayed Miss Brodie.

Back in 1931, Miss Brodie returns to school and says she had been taking a well-earned vacation. Mr. Lowther also returns, and singing classes resume. Miss Brodie now accompanies the singers on the piano and sometimes even sings. Mr. Lowther no longer plays with Jenny’s hair, and despite how hard it is to think of Miss Brodie in a sexual context, Sandy is sure the two teachers are in love.

By spring, Miss Mackay has begun pulling the girls aside and asking if they plan to attend the Modern side of senior school or if they will apply for entry into the Classical side. Miss Brodie hints that the Classical side is superior. Eunice is the only member of the Brodie set who plans to attend the Modern side, as she wants to study domestic science and keep participating in gymnastics. Miss Brodie mocks Eunice for her pedestrian tastes and interests, suggesting that she will become a Girl Guide who lives in the suburbs. Eunice, however, secretly finds this trajectory appealing. That term, Miss Brodie frequently talks about the great Russian dancer Anna Pavlova. Sandy imagines conversations with the dancer in which Pavlova says that only Sandy understands her because Sandy is also an artist. In a flash forward, Miss Brodie learns on her death bed that Sandy has become a nun. She believes the vocation is a waste of Sandy’s talents.

Miss Mackay invites Sandy, Jenny, and Mary over for tea and asks which side of the school they want to join. Mary wants to join the Classical side and Miss Mackay asks why, pointing out that Mary does not have good enough grades. Mary says Miss Brodie prefers the Classical side, but Miss Mackay dismisses this. When Sandy and Jenny say they also want to join the Classical side, Miss Mackay asks what good Latin or Greek will be when it is time to get a job or get married, but they are insistent. From that point on, Miss Mackay begins flattering the girls in order to get them to trust her. She begins asking questions about Miss Brodie, like whether Miss Brodie always pays for the girls’ theater tickets and how often she invites them to her flat. They reveal that they take piano lessons from Mr. Lowther outside school hours, and Miss Mackay asks if Miss Brodie plays the accompaniment in Mr. Lowther’s classes. She then asks what kind of stories Miss Brodie tells them, and they say she tells stories about history. Miss Mackay can see they anticipated that question and had the response prepared. Finally, she tells them they are lucky to have Miss Brodie, who has done an excellent job preparing them for senior school, but she wishes they were more knowledgeable about ordinary subjects. She adds that while she admires their loyalty to Miss Brodie, they owe that loyalty to the school. The girls later share parts of the conversation with Miss Brodie.

During Easter holidays, Jenny is assaulted by a man who calls her over and exposes himself as she is walking along the Water of Leith. A policewoman questions her about the event, and although Sandy never sees the policewoman, she becomes obsessed with her. She asks Jenny repeatedly to describe the woman and recount their conversation in detail. When Jenny says that the policewoman pronounced the word “nasty” as “nesty,” Sandy is horrified. In her imagination, the officer is named Anne Grey, and she speaks with perfect diction and pronunciation. Sandy pictures herself as Sergeant Grey’s assistant. She and Grey discuss what happened to Jenny as well as the relationship between Miss Brodie and Mr. Lowther, using veiled language to talk about sex.

Sandy tells Jenny not to tell Miss Brodie about the assault, but she cannot figure out why. She tries to understand her own reasoning and remembers that earlier that morning, Miss Brodie intentionally ordered Rose rather than Monica to get some drawing books and charcoal from the art room; when Rose returned, Mr. Lloyd was following her, and Miss Brodie reveals to Mr. Lloyd that she had spent her Easter holiday in Cramond, the seaside town where Mr. Lowther lives. Miss Brodie puts her arm around Rose and thanks Mr. Lloyd for the supplies. Jenny whispers to Sandy that Rose changed during the holiday. Sandy sees that Rose’s hair is shorter and she is paler and thinner. Later that day, when Jenny wants to tell Miss Brodie about the assault, Sandy senses an “unfinished quality” about Miss Brodie’s time in Cramond and tells Jenny she should try to forget what happened (74).

The last few months of the girls’ time with Miss Brodie pass pleasantly. Class often meets outside, and Miss Brodie encourages them to listen to the senior girls who are singing a Latin folk song nearby. Miss Brodie adds new details to her stories about Hugh, including a time he apparently took her on holiday to a seaside town; she also claims he was gifted at both singing and painting. Sandy is fascinated by this form of storytelling, but she is also desperate to prove that Miss Brodie is doing something bad. Sandy and Jenny finish writing Miss Brodie’s love story, ending it with a scene in which Miss Brodie and Mr. Lowther have sex at Arthur’s Seat, an ancient volcano outside Edinburgh. They add a letter from Miss Brodie to Mr. Lowther in which Miss Brodie says she cannot marry him because Teddy Lloyd is her true love—although they did not have sex—and she is dedicated to teaching her girls. However, she is willing to occasionally have casual sex with Mr. Lowther as an outlet. She warns him that his housekeeper is ignorant, particularly about Italian culture, and congratulates him on his skills at both sexual intercourse and singing.

Sandy and Jenny hide the story in a hole at the back of a seaside cave and never see it again.