Sylvia, had you read Spark before? What made you choose her and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie?

Dorothy W. - 30 June 2006 12:05 PM

she ran from Brodie because she saw moral disorder in her. 

Of course, there is no moral disorder in the Catholic church.

None whatsoever

What do we think of Miss Brodie, on a basic level?  I’m running into very different interpretations of her.  Is she to be pitied?  Loathed?  Sympathized with?  Admired?

No, I’d never read Spark before. In fact I’d never heard of her, though I had see Brodie with Maggie Smith many years ago. Kate nominated her I went with her as a foil to the Americanismo of The Virginian. A breath of cool, civilized, Northern air. I think I got more intensity than I bargained for!

I’d have to say I thoroughly disliked Miss Brodie and her manipulative ways. I think it was Sandy who noticed Brodie’s habit of “self-absolution,” which is of course makes her as dangerous, on a smaller scale, as the dictators she admired. Birds of a feather…

(Incidentally, Maggie Smith played another self-absolving superior woman in A Room With A View--"I shall never forgive myself!” “You always say that, Charlotte, but you always do forgive yourself!")

I am not sure how exactly I feel about Miss Brodie.  I am not sure how sympathetic I really feel towards her.  She lost any sympathy from me when that girl left for Spain and died.  She just seemed irresponsible.  I am planning on watching the movie this weekend, and I am wondering how she comes off in it.  I get the feeling from the blurb on the DVD that she does not come off as an evil person.

Danielle

On a basic level, the character of Miss Brodie gave me the creeps. What teacher describes her love life to her students? What teacher suggests to her students that one of them have an affair with a married man? But I also felt sorry for her too. She seems a little desperate, wanting what she can’t have--a lover, power, an exalted position, undying loyalty. It made me feel a little sad for her.

Yeah, I think she’s really messed up, crossing all kinds of ethical boundaries, very manipulative.  But I do think Spark gives us hints as to why she is some of the things she is, not to make us like her exactly, but to make her less one-sided?  She has a lot of energy and intelligence, and not enough ways to use it:

“It is not to be supposed that Miss Brodie was unique at this point in her prime; or that (since such things are relative) she was in any way off her head.  She was alone, merely, in that she taught at a school like Marcia Blaine’s.  There were legions of her kind during the nineteen-thirties, women from the age of thirty and upward, who crowded their war-bereaved spinsterhood with voyages of discovery into new ideas and energetic practices in art or social welfare, education or religion.”

I’m beginning to think that the important part is “this point in her prime”—she started off not so bad and got much worse, so that it makes sense for Sandy to betray her.

Yes, doesn’t Sandy at some point say she has gone too far now?  So perhaps some behavior is acceptable, but Brodie pushed it beyond the limits.

Danielle

I had a thought--was Mr. Lloyd just a replacement for Miss Brodie’s lost soldier? Did she have any authentic emotional life after that loss?

I think Miss Brodie tamps down all her emotions, she lives in her head too much. Mr. Loyd can definitely be seen as a substitute for Hugh the lost soldier. I wonder though, given the extent to which Miss Brodie embellishes her stories, was her love affair with Hugh as passionate and romantic as she claims?

I agree that Mr. Lloyd is a replacement—since she won’t actually have an affair with him, she can keep him off at a distance—keep him as a fantasy, like her memories of Hugh are fantasies too.  Mr. Lowther is just someone who can keep her busy and interested, while she thinks about something else.  The more I think about her, the weirder she gets.  And I agree, Stefanie, she it’s likely she’s embellishing the Hugh story—and who knows what other stories as well.  It’s so bizarre that she wants Rose to have an affair with Mr. Lloyd—that she tries to manipulate her into doing it.  Again, I guess, she’s living in a fantasy world. 

Why do you think Sandy has the affair?

Also, just thinking of random things, I like how Mr. Lloyd keeps painting Miss Brodie’s face—he’s just as obsessed with her as she is with him.  Is Sandy trying to fight Miss Brodie by sleeping with Mr. Lloyd?

I think Brodie is a bit of a fixation for Sandy really.  Maybe it is a love hate sort of thing.  Brodie is too much for her, but she can’t quite walk away entirely.  Maybe she wants what Brodie can’t have?  But since she had the affair with the music teacher, why not with Mr. Lloyd?  Or maybe he was a substitute as mentioned for her lost soldier and she wanted to keep the fantasy pure?  I didn’t understand why she was pushing Rose into doing it.  There is a lot of psychological manuevering going on here, isn’t there. 
Danielle

I think Sandy was trying to fight Brodie through Lloyd (and perhaps save Lloyd at the same time), but when that failed she went the “economical” route and went to the headmistress. I find it interesting that she discarded the man but took his religion, which was no doubt the best part of him.

And what about Miss Brodie’s relationship with Mr. Lowther? She was only interested in feeding him and sleeping with him, and he just wanted someone to play golf with and sing to. Was she just acting out her idea of the wife she might once have been instead of relating to him as a real human being? It seems he did well to marry the science teacher, even if he didn’t love her. At least she was real.

There is a lot of psychological manuevering Danielle. It makes my head spin!

I wonder, Dorothy, if Sandy had the affair with Mr. Loyd in order to prove to herself and Miss Brodie that Miss Brodie didn’t have the power and control she thought she did?

Danielle—I wondered too why Brodie didn’t just have an affair with Mr. Lloyd.  I think part of it is that he’s married, while Mr. Lowther is not, but somehow I think the affair with Lloyd would destroy the fantasy she has of him when what she really wants is to keep the fantasy alive and to keep Lloyd at a distance.  I guess that’s exactly what you said I like your point Sylvia, that Sandy was getting at Brodie through Lloyd—it was all part of an effort to take down Brodie and she later went for the more “economical” route.  Her use of the word “economical” is interesting, because the novel mentions “economy” in art too—the way Lloyd kept painting Brodie over and over is economical, and Brodie’s adaptations of her life story to fit her current needs is economical, and, of course, Spark’s own writing style is very economical.  She’s obsessed with economy—in action and in art.