The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Sandy, a member of Miss Brodie’s set, is the novel’s protagonist. She, like the rest of the girls, is around 10 years old at the beginning of the story. She is known for her small eyes and often squints at people, prompting Miss Brodie to tell her at least once that she needs glasses. Sandy is not conventionally attractive, and when Mr. Lloyd kisses her forcefully and she tries to run away, he tells her she is “about the ugliest little thing” he has ever seen (109). She is known for her pronunciation of certain vowels, and Miss Brodie asks Sandy to read poetry out loud in class because she enjoys hearing her voice. Sandy has an active imagination and frequently has mental conversations with fictional characters from novels. While she comes from a Christian family, they do not attend church, although Sandy seems to have an innate spiritual sensibility and believes in ghosts. As she nears adulthood, she becomes more interested in religion, publishing a popular treatise called “The Transfiguration of the Commonplace” and eventually becomes a nun. She stays in touch with Miss Brodie until the latter’s death, sometimes meeting her for tea but frequently expressing boredom and disgust with Miss Brodie’s obsessive interest in the mystery of which girl betrayed her.

During their years at Marcia Blaine, Miss Brodie makes Sandy her special confidante within the group; she assumes that when Rose and Teddy Lloyd begin their affair, Sandy will serve as her informant. However, Sandy is the one who has an affair with Mr. Lloyd, a development that surprises Miss Brodie. Sandy also tells Miss Mackay about Miss Brodie’s admiration of fascism, although Miss Brodie never figures this out and repeatedly says that Sandy is the only one who had no reason to betray her. In this sense, Sandy is an unpredictable character and potentially the only one of her special set that Miss Brodie could not accurately read, despite their close relationship.

Teddy Lloyd is the art teacher at Marcia Blaine. He teaches in the senior school, working with older students. He has red-gold hair and is rumored to be half-Welsh, half-English. He also has only one arm, having lost the other in World War I. Mr. Lloyd is married to a woman named Deirdre, with whom he has six children. Miss Brodie somewhat derisively attributes their large family to the fact that the Lloyds are Catholic. Deirdre is a gregarious woman who dresses in bohemian attire and forms friendships with some of the girls in the Brodie set. Teddy has an attic studio in the family’s home, where he often has the girls come sit for their portraits.

Despite the fact that he is married, Teddy is in love with Jean Brodie, and all the portraits he paints ultimately resemble her. He and Miss Brodie reportedly kissed once in the art room at school, although this was only witnessed by Monica, and the other girls have a hard time believing it. She tells Sandy, much later, that Teddy was the great love of her prime, but she sacrificed the possibility of a relationship with him because she was too devoted to her girls. She does, however, use Mr. Lowther to make Mr. Lloyd jealous, and she tries (but fails) to engineer a sexual encounter between Mr. Lloyd and Rose, possibly in order to live vicariously through the latter. While Teddy is often bashful and quiet, he also has a temper; once, for example, he becomes so frustrated with a raucous class that he smashes a saucer on the floor. He is also predatory and cruel, forcibly kissing Sandy when she is 15 and then calling her ugly. He and Sandy have a brief fling after she turns 18, but she soon loses interest in him, finding his enduring obsession with Miss Brodie more interesting than any other facet of his personality.