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Loading... The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)by Muriel Spark
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Sharp and pitiless, a jewel with a razor's edge. Constant shifting perspectives under the deceptive appearance of an omniscient narrator make it impossible to fall into comfortable assumptions about the characters' motivations and their ethical stance. The story that takes shape is more the story of two jungle beasts devouring each other in turns, than anything else. Weeks after reading, the perfect economy of the style still stays with me - not one word too many, nothing left unsaid but what needed to be left unsaid. "Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life." The unconventional Miss Brodie teaches "her girls" things not in the standard curriculum of the Marcia Blaine School, with far-reaching, unforeseen consequences. Set in Edinburgh in the 1930's. Insightful, disturbing, very well done. Brilliantly dramatized by Maggie Smith and Gordon Jackson, among others, in 1969. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a well-known tale about a memorable boarding school instructress and her six young favorites, the "Brodie set." Miss Brodie, as she is almost always called, is devoted to her girls (her "crĆØme de la crĆØme"), but, as they must, they all grow up and leave her to embrace their own disparate fates. Author Muriel Spark's technique of flashing forward in time could have made this an especially intriguing short novel. However, as other readers have commented, I found this work more tedious than expected. The writing is clever, but the events and characterizations are perplexing. Perhaps this novel should be read as a fable concerning Scottish Calvinismās fixations on election and predestination. I have long wanted to read this short novel, and, on balance, I am glad that I did. I'm not sure that I could recommend it to others, however.
She writes with cool exactness, a firm voice (each tale has its own) and compassionate wit. In her new novel (originally published last fall, in shorter form, in The New Yorker), she deals with a violent woman whose romantic spirit is impatient with all but the Absolute. Belongs to Publisher SeriesIs contained inThe Prime of Miss Jean Brodie / The Girls of Slender Means / The Driver's Seat / The Only Problem by Muriel Spark Muriel Spark Omnibus 1 & 2 by Muriel Spark (indirect) Has the adaptationIs abridged inInspiredHas as a commentary on the textHas as a student's study guideDistinctionsNotable Lists
Fiction.
Literature.
HTML:"A perfect book"ā??and basis for the Maggie Smith filmā??about a teacher who makes a lasting impression on her female students in the years before World War II (Chicago Tribune). "Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life!" So asserts Jean Brodie, a magnetic, dubious, and sometimes comic teacher at the conservative Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh. Brodie selects six favorite pupils to moldā??and she doesn't stop with just their intellectual lives. She has a plan for them all, including how they will live, whom they will love, and what sacrifices they will make to uphold her ideals. When the girls reach adulthood and begin to find their own destinies, Jean Brodie's indelible imprint is a gift to some, and a curse to others. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is Spark's masterpiece, a novel that offers one of twentieth-century English literature's most iconic and complex charactersā??a woman at once admirable and sinister, benevolent and conniving. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Muriel Spark including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author's archive at the National Library of Sc No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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For those not familiar with the story, Miss Jean Brodie is what would have been considered a teacher with progressive ideas during the 1930s. She mentors a small group of elite students, taking them on field trips, inviting them to her house and confiding all types of details about her personal life. (I think presently, Miss Brodie's actions would be construed as a severe breach of personal/professional
boundaries.) As events unfold, Miss Brodie insists that she is in her prime and has chosen to dedicate her life to her students. In exchange, there is an unsaid expectation of loyalty from her curated "Brodie Group." Of course Miss Brodie's teaching tactics do not sit well with the other more conventional teachers and the headmistress.
The thing that struck me about Miss Brodie was she often employed the same tactics some of the other teachers used, which was telling students what to think, instead of teaching students critical thinking skills. At one point Miss Brodie states, "Who is the greatest Italian painter?" "Leonardo da Vinci, Miss Brodie." "That is incorrect. The answer is Giotto, he is my favourite." What a load of baloney thought I, as this is a completely subjective opinion not based on any fact or scientific methodology of assessment. Yes, Miss Brodie often introduced the students to unconventional subjects but she either filled in the blanks with her opinions (presented as facts) or she really didn't provide any deeper understanding of a subject, leaving the students to fill in the missing details with all sorts of conjecture. By the end of the book, I didn't really have much respect for Miss Brodie and I thought most of the students were a bunch of spoiled brats.
Mural Spark did present a thought provoking and well crafted story wrapped up in a short book. She lost me a few times with the random flash-forward scenes, until I figured out what was going on. Not a masterpiece in my opinion, but a classic worthy of reading. It does make one think, especially given how schools in certain states are currently trying to prevent teachers from addressing a whole host of subjects and are continuing to ban books that don't mesh with their warped myopic views based on some alternative reality.
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