The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a novel about a teachers dedication to her pupils. It is also about loyalty and betrayal. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a novel about a teachers dedication to her pupils. It is also about loyalty and betrayal. The novel emphasises the effects of dedication, loyalty and betrayal within a small group of people and the way in which they are all intertwined. It forces the reader to look at particular aspects of these themes. When has dedication gone too far? To what extent is loyalty due to another? Can betrayal be justified? These themes are joined when a teachers dedication becomes interference in her students life forcing that student to retract her loyalty and put a stop to the situation, an action branded by the teacher as betrayal.
The most obvious theme in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is that dedication to the young has a definite limit, it should stop at guidance. It becomes evil when it is extended to domination of their and direction of their lives. Miss Brodie is very protective of her class of 1931, she feels the are the crme de la crme and they attract her special dedication. Miss Brodie took them to the theatre, to galleries and museums where they were encouraged to emulate the dedication of powerful female figures such as Pavlova and Sybil Thorndike. However, her dedication is deep: These are the years of my prime. You are benefiting by my primeones prime is the moment one was born for. (P44) Miss Brodie believed that her great dedication was in the best interests of her girls.
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However, it is quite apparent that the girls do not receive a prime education. Miss Brodie felt that the knowledge the girls were meant to have for exams was unimportant: If there are any intruders, we are doing our history lesson our poetry English gramma The small girls held up their books with eyes not on them, but on Miss Brodie. (P11) It is impossible to deny that Miss Brodie had great dedication towards her girls. However, her motives for her dedication and the lengths she goes to are in her own interests rather than in the interests of her girls. Miss Brodies dedication to her girls went too far, she went beyond the stage of merely bringing out the best in the girls and began too meddle in their lives: It was plain that Miss Brodie wanted Rose with her instinct to start preparing to be Teddy Lloyds lover, and Sandy with her insight to act as informant on the affair. (P109) Miss Brodie went past the bounds of a teacher while she infiltrated the girls minds with stories about her trips to Europe and her private life rather than teaching them the proper curriculum. Miss Brodie felt she did this for the best: Im putting old heads on new shoulders.
(P8) Miss Brodie had no children of her own and therefore focused her dedication towards her set of schoolgirls. Miss Brodie knew that she was past her prime, though she continually insisted that she be in her prime, and so in a sense she felt the need to feed off the girls to gain her youth back. She wanted to vicariously relive her youth through her girls. Miss Brodie had a great influence over her set of girl and it was because of this that girls showed great loyalty to Miss Brodie, much to the dislike of the head mistress Miss Mackay who was desperate to find an excuse to dismiss Miss Brodie: I am happy to see you are devoted to Miss Brodie. Your loyalty is due to the school rather than to any one individual. (P66) Miss Brodie could be seen as an authoritarian fascist leader and her set as the loyal followers. This is emphasised through the continual mention of various dictators such as Hitler and Mussoline: the Brodie set was Miss Brodies Fascisti, not to the naked eye, marching along, but all knit together for her need and in another was marching along.
The Essay on The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie 3
Miss Jean has who is in her prime has an attraction to the married art master named Teddy Lloyd, in her affair with the single music master, Gordon Lowther she is still determined to make "The Brodie girls" the best they can be. This story is all about love and betrayel by none other than one her girls - Sandy. In this story one of the biggest flash backs is under the Elm tree, the novel begins 6 ...
(P31) The girls have such loyalty for Miss Brodie that although it seems she gives them an enormous amount of freedom, they are in truth trapped by her and held back in that they do whatever she tells them. In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the issue of betrayal is trivial. As said by Sandy to Miss Brodie: If you did not betray us it is impossible that you could have been betrayed by us. The word betrayed does not apply (P126) The inevitability of Miss Brodies betrayal becomes apparent with the many illusions to Rome, Miss Brodie is seen as Caesar and the one person she had most trust in betrays her. When dismissed from her job, Miss Brodie is told: It was one of your own girls who gave me the tip, one of your set, Miss Brodie. (P125) Now vulnerable, she fades into a sad feeble woman obsessed with discovering who betrayed her.
Miss Brodie thought so highly of herself that, to her, being betrayed by one her own was like treason. Ironically enough, it was Sandy who betrayed Miss Brodie: you had no reason whatsoever to betray me, indeed you have had the best part of me in my confidences and in the man I love (P125) Miss Brodie was entirely blind to the fact that Sandys betrayal was justified, her decision was regrettable but inevitable. The themes of dedication, loyalty and betrayal in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie are all quite closely connected. Miss Brodie is liked to a God figure: She thinks she is Providence, she thinks she is the God of Calvin, she sees the beginning and the end (P120) Her dedication is largely focused on her set, who can be seen as her disciples, and Sandy who would therefore be Judus. The difference being that Sandys betrayal is justified: Its only possible to betray where loyalty is due, said Sandy. Well, wasnt it due to Miss Brodie? Only up to a point, said Sandy (P127) The three themes of dedication, loyalty and betrayal are all closely knit and so they complement each other in the way they are woven into the story.
As Miss Brodies girls were being formed, Miss Brodies nature was also growing and the principals governing the end of her prime started with her dedication, climaxed with a breach of loyalty and finished with a betrayal. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie demonstrates clearly that dedication should stop at guidance, that loyalty is due only up to a point and that betrayal can be justifiable..
The Essay on what role does personal history and reminiscence play in the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
What role does personal history and reminiscence play in ?The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie?? An interesting narrative device of ?The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie? is the manipulation of the time line. The first 5 pages are set in 1936, after which, we are brought back 6 years into the past into 1930. The time periods shift frequently, so much so, that we are told of certain important events very early ...
