BEWARE: SPOILERS.

For me, the book has the most poignant ending of any that I have ever read. When asked what were the major influences in her life, Sandy, now a nun, simply answers:

'There was a Miss Jean Brodie in her prime.' End. It sums up the whole thing. Makes me want to cry - it's poetry.

The book is much, much better than the film which, almost by definition since it must be put over in about 90 mins, is nowhere so subtle or so dense. Reading the book, I found I vacillated between feeling totally for the poetry that was Jean herself and, on the other hand, thinking she was a dangerous influence and should be put down! The two facets of her go hand in hand. To herself, Jean was, of course, totally right in her thinking and her attitudes. But to her girls...... Sandy in particular.... not necessarily so. She was a meddlar and a manipulator.

I love the humour of it: the letter that the girls write, for instance, purporting to come from the music master (excuse me, I haven't read it for some years), congratulating Jean on her 'sexual intercourse'. Spark gets inside the early teenage girl mentality brilliantly (I know because I was on once and I remember it)

And yes, I imined Maggie Smith as J.B. - though I read the book long before the film was released. You can't forget Maggie Smith.

That's all for now. Must get back to Madame Bovary.

Dido

SPOILERS!

What struck me in re-reading this after many years is that as a teenager I thought Jean Brodie was wonderful and Sandy was rotten; as an adult, I see JB as manipulative and dangerous, though also pitiful and self-deluded, and Sandy as the clear thinker -- though I have to admit I'm still not overly-fond of Sandy (perhaps it's those little piggy eyes that were noted over and over again).

The other aspect of the story that stood out to me this time (and I'm repeating myself from the other thread that includes TPOMJB) was that when Sandy rebelled against Brodie, the usual youth and adult roles were reversed. In my experience of books and movies, the youth are usually more freedom-seeking, sexually active, risk-taking and outside-the-box thinkers while the adult characters are usually more traditional, possibly religious, and socially conservative. To reverse the roles made the book much more interesting. The authority figure was the libertine, the child in her charge was the traditionalist.

IMO Brodie was definitely trying to live through "her" girls, and make the girls over in her own image. My strong impression was that she was very sure of herself and truly believed her POV was perfectly right and would benefit the girls. I don't think she was manipulating them just for the sake of manipulating them. Only Sandy seemed to be aware of the scope and danger of JB's influence. The others seemed to safely drift away into adulthood, for the most part unharmed by her influence.

Dido, I agree the letters were a riot. Very true to girls that age and very unintentionally funny.

The men in the book seemed rather vacant and easily led, particularly the music teacher. The art teacher had his own selfish idea of what was morally acceptable, as he was cheating on his wife without qualm. Not very likable, either of them.

I've never seen the movie, so I had no image of Jean Brodie in my mind. I must confess that when I think of Maggie Smith, I think of Professor McGonagall! I'll have to see if I can rent it.

I haven't re-read this, and it's a while since my original reading - but I remember not being overly taken with the novel because I found it difficult to like either of the main characters (one of my shortcomings; I need at least one character to identify or at least sympathise with/feel for in order to enjoy a piece of literature properly).

As far as I can recall, I had seen the movie first, and even before that had two Scottish friends who used to quote the 'in my prime' and 'creme de la creme' catchphrases, which makes it almost impossible to imagine Miss Jean B for oneself!

Here is a link that might be useful: Maggie Smith/Brodie quotes

I read the book twice at long intervals and enjoyed it very much, but it has been a long time since, so the details are fuzzy. I remember thinking the first time, while reading the first part of the book, what a great teacher Miss Brodie was.

Long after I read the book, dh and I came into close contact with a person who, though not a school teacher, was in a position to guide youths and was--to borrow the language of other members here, describing Miss Brodie--self-deluded, a meddler, manipulative and dangerous, but also utterly convinced of his/her own rightness. (Sorry for the use of his/her. I don't want anyone to recognize X, as I shall call this person.) In the first year or so of our friendship, we greatly admired all X was doing for young people.

X had an abnormal amount of energy, but every so often would overdo it and crash for a few weeks. We have our suspicion that bipolar disorder may have been involved, with a far longer manic phase than the depressive one. X accomplished a lot, but also caused a lot of trouble, due to the conviction that anyone who wouldn't go along with his/her advice was either wrong-headed or deluded. X took any disagreement as criticism, just couldn't bear it, and reacted by punishing the person in one way or another. Our friendship is now over.

Whenever I think of Miss Jean Brodie now, she is overlaid with the image of X. Have any of the rest of you known anyone like Miss Brodie? Do you think she owes anything to some experience in the author's youth?

To answer one of Martin's questions, my impression (from the distant past, and perhaps tainted by the experience with X) is that Miss Brodie *thought* that she wanted to do the best thing for the girls, but was really on an ego trip and trying to live through them. I don't care much for her or Sandy, but the book is a gem.

Thinking over my last post, I feel I should add that, while I attribute X's unusual energy and drive to a possible mental disorder, in X's case, the inability to take any disagreement had nothing to do with being bipolar and was most likely due to a difficult childhood of being constantly criticised and punished and very seldom praised. It's really sad. I had mentioned that in my post, then took it out as irrelevant, but now I see that it could seem that I am criticizing people who are bipolar, which is far from my intention, and I apologize if I inadvertently hurt anyone's feelings.

I've always been fascinated by Brodie's on-going and ever-changing stories about her fiance who died in the war. Did he really exist?

When my bookclub read this book, we were struck by the generational difference of parental involvement in their children's education. No teacher these days would get away with such blatant indocrination and favoritism-the parents would be down like a ton of bricks.
We have also, recently, here is the states, had a huge brouhaha in the Senate about "liberalism in the college classroom" and were conservative students being persecuted for voicing a view different from the profs. This "witchhunt", as it was called in the press, was led by a conservative senator who is fighting a tough re-election battle-he was accused of some skullduggery over the education of his children and this is a way to change the focus, I guess. the conclusion of the committee was there is no across-the-board leaning either way, but that there are a small number of professors, both liberal and conservative, who exercise a strong influence over their students-charismatic teachers-just like Brodie!