Girls as individuals are mentioned, their characteristics defined – “Famous for sex”, “knows mathematics”, such statements coming from Miss Brodie, arguably becoming self fulfilling prophecies once known. It does run roughly with time spent by the girls at the school, but periodically refers to what happens after the girls’ school careers end, including their deaths in some cases. It is a different, non linear sort of book in many ways, telling the tale of schooldays interspersed with comments about the later lives of the girls and Miss Brodie herself, observations largely from the point of view of Sandy. She controls their lessons, fills their conversations, and inspires their imagingings about the facts of life. Although mainly written from the point of view of the girls, recording their adventures and their thoughts, this is Brodie’s story. She is remarkable because she knows it, she wants the girls which she influences from twelve years old to be a sort of extension of herself in her “Prime”. Yet this is a book of surprises even on a reread, a short novel which looks at a remarkable woman in an unusual time. The novel has been made into a stage play, and a film released in 1969 with the marvelous Maggie Smith in the lead role. This famous book is known for many reasons its portrait of Miss Jean Brodie herself, her schoolgirls who represented “her set”, and the Edinburgh of the interwar period.
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