THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODY by Muriel Spark , Kimberly will show you why she's truly a GENIUS.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Listeners, readers, welcome to the Foxed Page, where we dive
deep into.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
The very best books. You'll come away with a.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Richer understanding of the text at hand, all well learning
to read everything a little better. I Kimberly Forward, one
time adjunct Professor of Berkeley, best selling author and PhD
in literature. Today, I could not be happier to dive
into Murial Sparks, the Prime of Miss gene Brody. It
says right on the cover of my book. Here at
the cover of my copy. It's a paperback, it says

(00:32):
right there, a perfect book. And honestly, I could not
agree more. I've read this book easily fifteen times, maybe more,
and my most recent reading of it it just absolutely
galvanized my sense that if we were ever on the
fox Page going to really just like devote ourselves to
one single text. I mean, it's almost like my Desert
Island book, that this, honestly might be the one. There

(00:54):
is so so much to this slim novella that we
could just talk for hours and hours and still feel
like we are scratching the surface. Because of that, today
we're going to take a slightly different approach. We are
going to look only at the first chapter. For those
of you who have not read The Prime of Miss
gen Brody, this will be an excellent primer because in
a mere eleven pages, I am going to help you

(01:15):
hopefully recognize the absolute genius of this woman and the
genius of this novel. For those of you who are
listening to this on a podcast, quick note that this
might be a great lecture to listen to or to watch,
I should say on YouTube. The YouTube lectures are exactly
the same as the audio version, but when I do them,
I feather on all sorts of images, and this is

(01:36):
one where I have lots of different pictures, mostly of
the movie versions and the theatrical versions of the Prime
of Miss gen Brody, but also images of Edinburgh and
images of Mirrorless Park, who had just an incredibly colorful life.
So if you're interested in visuals to go along with
the lecture, tune into the YouTube channel. Despite the fact
that we are only going to be looking at that

(01:57):
first chapter, I can give you an agenda for what
we will be up to today. Will be looking at
the narrative voice, will be looking at the incredible way
that she manipulates time, will be looking at the sense
of humor and then also what makes this pros unique.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
She is widely widely held.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
As one of the most original and most kind of
spectacular writers in English and it is just an absolute
delight to really dig in carefully to her work. So
Muriel Spark was born in nineteen eighteen in Edinburgh. If
you're someone who enjoys like a biography of authors, there
are incredible works about her. She also wrote Curriculum Vitai,
which is like her own memoir, all of which are fascinating.

(02:35):
Her work tends to be short. She writes a lot
of short stories, and even her novels tend to be
fairly short. Lots of them actually kind of traffic in
the supernatural, which is not really my cup of tea,
although she does it incredibly well. The Prime of Miss
Jane Brody is certainly the most famous of her works.
It was published in nineteen sixty one. I think it's
maybe like her third or fourth novel. She was fairly prolific,

(02:56):
and although the work is somewhat uneven, it's just shocking
to me. I went through it just like an absolutely
saturation kind of period with Muriel Spark. Of biographies on
her memoir and the short fiction and the longer pieces,
and all of it is just unbelievably good.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
She herself.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
In an interview, someone asked how she felt about the
Prime of Miss Jean Brody really being kind of the
standout novel or whether she had another favorite. She did
not mention a favorite, but she did say that the
reason she thinks the Prime of Miss Geen Brody is
so prominent in her works is because it was adapted
to film, to television, and also there are lots and
lots of adaptations for the stage.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Part of the.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Reason why the movie was so compelling and continues to
be kind of a favorite.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
It is really good.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
I mean, it obviously cannot compare to the book, but
it was an adaptation that I really loved. It's Maggie
Smith as a very young person who is playing the
star role of Miss Jean Brody, which makes it really
fun to watch. But her contention was that in fact,
it was all of these adaptations that led to the
popularity of the book. I would also argue that there
is a universality to the Prime of Miss Jean Brody

(04:03):
that makes it really relatable in some of the other
books where we have some of these supernatural elements, or
maybe a slightly more specific set of characters or a
more specific set of circumstances, those might not be quite
as relatable. And Spark herself has said in different interviews
that this is a very adaptable thing, in the sense
that she got letters from people in Japan saying that

(04:24):
they also had a Miss Brody. She really believes that
this is kind of this universal thing, the idea of
having a teacher who makes a gigantic impression on you.
I also think that her work is really widely read
and really widely revered, and this is a very good
example of this aspect. I think it is because of
her humor. She has this somewhat satirical, kind of biting,

(04:44):
unbelievably great, oblique way.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
To look at things.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
The humor is all sort of off kilter in a
way that is so compelling. I would also argue that
Miss Jean Brody is a real favorite because a lot
is happening in here. I mean, it is a book
that isn't for to ki like plot driven, but so
much happens. It has this unbelievably great structure that we're
going to look at that's evident even in the first chapter,

(05:08):
but that really gets going throughout the novel. But it
is a structure that is very solid. Spark is the
kind of writer where the reader never feels lost, and
it's not meant to be a particularly challenging text, but
it is so complex and so meticulously wrought that I
think all readers it feels very approachable in many ways.

(05:28):
But it's also incredibly satisfying because it's approachable and relatable.
And I actually must say that I spent a lot
of today thinking of my very own Miss Brodie. I'm
not going to name her, but this is a woman
who in fact is responsible for me pursuing APHD in
Spanish literature. I had studied French all through middle school
and the beginning of high school, but she led a

(05:49):
trip to Spain every summer, and I wanted to go
on the trip to Spain, so I switched to Spanish
in my final two years of high school, and I
entered into the orbit of this woman who really really
had all of us in thrall. Happily, she was not
a fascist and we did not suffer a bunch of
the things that she was talking about. But I will
say that there was a totally disproportionate number of young

(06:10):
women who graduated from my high school, cast A lay
A school in Palo Alto, and went on to pursue
advanced degrees in Spanish literature and Spanish language. And I think,
you know, these are different days, this is the middle
of the eighties. But in retrospect, there were quite a
few things we shouldn't have known. There was this one
very kind of romantic thing where in the throes literally
like in the throes of a fever, she was with

(06:32):
her fiance or something, but instead of speaking his name,
she spoke the name of her Spanish boyfriend, who was
truly the love of her life. And maybe that story
is a little bit embellished, but I, you know, I
totally believe that that may have happened. But what is
interesting to me is all we all knew this story,
presumably it came from our Miss Brody. We also learned
things that literally come up in this book, such as

(06:54):
the best kind of cream we were told not hold.
But it was suggested to us that if we wanted
to keep our beautiful, youthful complexions on the airplane to
and from Spain, that it was best to use a
very heavy duty moisturizer. I mean, this woman was so
compelling and so deeply romantic and inspirational and honestly shaped
the lives of many young women in very positive ways,

(07:16):
but in ways that feel slightly out of the norm,
although I absolutely believe that many many people have this
kind of equivalent. And before we dive into the text,
I want to just speak briefly about the afterward that
I have in my book. It's by James Wood, who
is a literary critic who I love, and I was
very happy to read this sort of short essay that
he had at the back of my version. But it

(07:36):
was very interesting because his experience of the book, what
he brought up about it didn't exactly square with my
understanding and my experience of the book. And I want
to just highlight a couple of reasons why, because I
think they are illustrative of some important kind of qualities
in the text. One is that he calls her style
brilliantly reduced, and I honestly I am not sure what

(07:57):
he means by reduced. I mean it is boiled down
the sense that we have a short book. This copy,
my novella copy is one hundred and thirty seven pages,
and he might be reduced in the sense that we
have a lot of very sort of pithy statements about people.
We have an omniscient narrator, which we are going to
get to in a moment, and that omniscient narrator is
not afraid to make pronouncements that are really emphatic and

(08:20):
do feel very reduced in the sense of boiled down.
But the thing that I didn't quite resonate with is
this idea of the prose as being reduced, because in
my experience, one of the things that sparked us so
well is dilate these moments so there'll be a small
moment in the book, and with her prose and her
character development, and with her humor and her incredible selection

(08:40):
of details, not to mention diction and word choice, these
moments become these kind of virtuoso passages of prose that
really do feel unique to her and in many ways
feel very elaborate and very kind of embroidered and very
embellished in a way to me that does not feel reduced.
He quotes her in this idea of never apologize, never explain,
and that I think is interesting. We're going to talk

(09:02):
about the narrator of this novel, and we're going to
talk about the fact that in some ways it's a
slightly unreliable narrator. It is omniscient. It seems like it's
telling us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth, when in fact there is some wiggle room.
But I also hear like, kind of don't even know
what Muriel Spark is talking about. I mean, this is
prose that is thoroughly non apologetic, unapologetic. It's really forceful

(09:25):
in many ways, it's very biting. She's known for satire,
and she herself has spoken about really believing in satire.
So in those ways, I think, you know, I understand
that never apologize thing, The never explain thing, also is
kind of tricky for me. The couple of interviews that
I have heard and read, she's not explaining her prose,
but no writer should really have to explain their prose.
She might mean in some senses that that was like

(09:47):
an autobiographical thing. In one of the interviews, of course,
people were asking her about the different characters in the
book and whether or not they were shaped on certain
of her schoolmates, which seemed actually like kind of a
silly question. She did say that she writes, of course,
from her own experience, and it was so funny because
she said to the audience, do you want to know
what I think of Sandy? And of course the audience did,

(10:08):
and she said something about how she was a nasty little.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
Bitch, which really speaks to.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
This kind of unapologetic and somewhat satirical and kind of
aggressive energy and mirial spark that shows through in the
prose in a way that I find completely compelling. So
to carry on a little bit with this idea of
the brilliantly reduced prose, the idea that she herself so
she will never apologize and never explain, which to me
speaks about the force of the prose. James Wood goes

(10:34):
on to say, we turn the mere crescence of her
characters into round discs, which I mean, it's kind of
a beautiful image that he is pulling up there. And
in some ways we do have some distance from the
characters this incredible narrative, that the incredible narrator, who is
very deft, does enter into their consciousnesses and we do
hear their voices and we get a sense of their

(10:54):
thoughts that they do remain a little bit elusive, which
of course is on purpose. No one can be known completely.
But I found that there was such rich characterization with
an incredible amount of economy. Partly this is because of
the elastic way that we will be in the moment
of them being you know, young middle schoolers or that
equivalent in Scotland or high schoolers, and then we will

(11:16):
jump ahead into the future and hear from one of
them later in her life in a way that is
so revealing, with so again, so much economy. And perhaps
I'm actually agreeing with Wood here in that we in
that space from jumping from a you know, an eleven
year old to someone who is in her mid thirties
and is discussing Miss Jean Brody with her husband. Because

(11:39):
of what is said and because of the details that
we have accumulated, we fill in the whole entire thing.
But what's beautiful for me is that she's giving us,
in my opinion, much more than a mere crescent. Okay,
so now we're going to dive in it to the
pros itself. We always talk about the title first. If
you are someone who is here at the Fox page

(11:59):
time learned to read better. My simple advice is to
simply pay better attention. And one of the things that
you can do is pay attention to titles.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
In this case, we have this idea.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
Of someone in her prime. In one of the interviews,
Muriel Spark talks about how for her that that idea
of prime had to do with the sexuality, It had
to do with this kind of sense of blossoming. Those
were her words, and she had the contention. I think
this interview was from like two thousand and four. I
believe she died in two thousand and eight, but she
talked about how the idea of one's prime was an

(12:31):
idea that was much more prevalent back when she was
writing this book in the late fifties and early sixties.
One interesting note is that Muriel Spark herself became Catholic.
She converted to Catholicism in nineteen fifty six and wrote
this book soon there after, publishing in nineteen sixty one.
We're not going to dive too deeply into the idea
of religion in the book, but you could write an

(12:53):
entire doctoral thesis on the complexities of religion in this novel.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
Hopefully we'll have.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
Time today to talk about Sandy and the way that
her future ends up being deeply religious. I can't remember
if that's revealed in the first chapter or not. The
structure of the book is so complex that you honestly,
like I can't remember when different things happen, because things
happen in this very kaleidoscopic, very fragmented, in very non
linear way. But it is really interesting to think about
Spark as being someone who's not only Catholic, but someone

(13:21):
who really embraced Catholicism in much the same way that
Sandy embraces Catholicism. But she said this interesting thing about
how she became part of the church and has been
criticizing it ever since, which to me is somurial. Spark Again,
we have this idea of like somewhat kind of aggressive,
satirical comments that really speak to a woman who seems

(13:42):
to wield a lot of innate power. The book is
very concerned with sex. It's right from the very start.
We have boys and girls, we have all sorts of
sexual attension. They're sixteen years old at this point when
the book opens, and one of the questions, if you
step back a little bit, is to ask yourself what
is one's prime When does one enter in to one's prime,
which is a central question of the book as well.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
But it's very.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
Interesting also to think of people who do not, in fact,
you know, really blossom in their prime, people who like
Jane Brody, speak about being in their prime or wonder
if they are in their prime, when in fact there
are people, you could argue, who never attain the kind
of prime that she is talking about. One extremely important
note this book is set in the nineteen thirties. It

(14:26):
zips forward into the fifties, but really it is concerned
with the latter half of the nineteen thirties, and it
is really important. This is touched on in the novel
in very explicit ways and in very implicit ways, that
this is a book about the years between the First
World War and the Second World War. It's so interesting
to me to read books in the late thirties because

(14:47):
if an author is worth her salt, you will feel
the Second World War looming. I mean, obviously, as readers
in nineteen sixty one or in twenty twenty five, we
understand that the Spanish Civil War, which was thirty six
to thirty nine, was you know, sort of this addressed
rehearsal for the Second World War, which was going to
be the first half of the nineteen forties, and the

(15:10):
presence of the wars is everywhere. You know. We have,
of course, the art Master who only has the one arm,
and so much hilariousness is made of the fact that
he has only the one arm. It's one of the
best ways I think that she reflects this idea of
a small child's perspective. The girls are both kind of
like enchanted and fascinated and also slightly repelled. But because

(15:31):
he is so beautiful, mister Lloyd the art Master, they're
kind of like weirdly allured by the fact that he
has only one arm. But that should be a reminder
to everyone that this is a culture, this is a
city that would have been deeply affected by the First
World War, and that there would be legions of women
like miss Jean Brody and all of her peers in

(15:53):
the book who lost their sweethearts, which that is literally
I just took that verbatim from one of the interviews
where Spark said that this was a group of women
who had lost their sweethearts, but there was a real
dearth of marriageable men Spark herself made a comment that
was very autobiographical. She said that at the James Gillespie School,
which is exactly the same as the Marsha Blaine School

(16:15):
in Edinburgh, that she maybe had ten teachers who were
women and two who were men, and that there was
endless gossip and endless speculation about romances among these people.
And to me, honestly, like the idea of two male
teachers at an all girls' school didn't seem that surprising.
At my own all girls high school, we did not
have that many male teachers. It might not have been

(16:35):
ten to two, but actually probably pretty close to that.
And I have to say not a lot of speculation
on our part about the romances among the people. I
think we were more concerned about our own romances than
what the teachers were getting up to. But so the
title is really focusing us on the idea of women
in their prime, and certainly Miss gene Brody in her prime.
For those of you who have finished the book, it

(16:57):
is really interesting to sort of ask the question, and
does she ever really experience a prime? And what are
the sort of ramifications of the idea of this of
a woman who is in a real position of authority
and really making a large impact on these girls, to
be focusing so much on this idea of prime, of
someone being in her prime, which is a largely kind

(17:18):
of a romantic, un sexualized state. I mean, she may
be talking about other things too, about her job, or
her social class, or her ability to move around the
world or travel. There are all sorts of different ways
that you might interpret it, but in the book, my
sense is that it is very much involved with sex
and romance, and Spark herself in interviews has corroborated that. Okay,

(17:40):
and now the fund begins. We're going to dive into
the text itself, so without much ado. I mean, there's
no epigraph, there's no dedication. Muriel Spark just really dives
right into this very first image, and it is one
that is very deeply steeped in romance and in sexual attraction.
Here's the first paragraph. The boy, as they talked to

(18:01):
the girls from Marcia Blaine's school, stood on the far
side of their bicycles, holding the handlebars, which established a
protective fenceive bicycle between the sexes, and the impression that
at any moment the boys were likely to be away.
It's interesting to note how boys are just not I mean,
boys of these girls's age are simply not present in

(18:21):
the novel at all. So we have this idea of
these boys are about to disappear. And then the very
next word is the girls. The girls could not take
off their panama hats because this was not far from
the school gates, and hatlessness was an offence. So here
again hatlessness is not I mean, it's just such an
excellent word with all those sibilants, and then it's the sounds,

(18:44):
and then it's beautiful how they say hatlessness was an offence.
So we have this idea of offence as repeating the sibilant.
It also very neatly is repeating the idea of the fence.
So we have this echo of all of these things
that are being repeated, whether that is a sound or
whether it is an actual word. And the idea of
ending with a fence is also really exaggerating the idea

(19:06):
of hatlessness, which is already something that is kind of
exaggerated and unique. The prose is unbelievably great. So then
we go through a little thing about how all of
the different girls wear their hats in different ways, which
does this very important thing in the beginning of the novel,
which is speaking to the idea of individuality.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
Versus a group.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
Much is made of the fact that this is a
set of girls, this is a group, but there also
is a lot made of their individual characteristics. In fact,
they each have kind of a tagline. And those taglines,
those quick little descriptions you know that Rose is famous
for sex. They don't tend to be accurate necessarily, but
they do speak to individuality of the girls in the
midst of this set. What's interesting to me about that

(19:48):
is that in the book, miss Brodie, I mean part
of the problem, and I'm not going to speak to
how this impacts the end of the book, but she
is very plainly and very eerily a opponent of fascism.
She talks about Mussolini, she talks about the black Shirts,
she talks about how the problem of unemployment has been
solved in Italy. And she's telling all of these impressionable

(20:10):
young girls about how great fascism is, which ends up
culminating in the very end of the book in a
way that's pretty horrifying. So we have the initial paragraph,
that short little paragraph about the fensive bicycles, between the
boys and the girls. Then we have this idea of
hatlessness as being an a fence. We have a brief
description then of how all of the different girls wear

(20:31):
their hats, and then we have this these girls formed
the Brodie set. That was what they had been called
even before the head mistress had given them the name
in Scorn, when they had moved from the junior to
the senior school at the age of twelve. But something
very important is happening here. We have the idea of
them as identified as a set. But the other thing

(20:51):
that is happening, which is so skillful and it's so subtle,
is that we are shifting from the moment that these
girls are sixteen, which we find out on the very
next page they're sixteen when they're all gathering with the
boys and the bicycles. But then at the bottom of
the very first page, we are going back in time
to when they are twelve, and it is done in
this very deft way that not only makes clear that

(21:12):
we are moving back in time, but is giving us
a huge amount of information because that sentence I just
read speaks to the way that the school also recognized
them as a unique group and a group that is
predicated on their teacher. So we have there a real
sense that is the teacher, it is Miss Brodie who
makes the set what they are. So we're then given
a paragraph of all of the things that they know.

(21:34):
It's noted later in the book that certainly in the
high school these girls are very bright. Miss Brody has
these very unconventional ways. I mean every time, it just
kills me throughout. Part of the humor is that she always,
you know, she has some sort of you know, formula
written on the chalkboard in case someone comes into math class.
And all of the girls are in on this idea.
But in some ways she is teaching things that are

(21:54):
more important. So we have in that description these girls
were discovered to have heard of the buck and Mussolini,
the Italian Renaissance painters, the advantages to the skin of
cleansing cream and witch hazel over honest soap and water,
and the word monarchy. Now this is just such an
amazing accumulation here. The Buckman Knights are a religious group.

(22:16):
We have, of course Mussolini, but we have mixed here
together the Italian Renaissance but also skincare.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
It's important that at the end of this little list.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
It actually only ends with the semi colon, but then
we have the word monarchy.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
I think that's how you say it. I would have said.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
Menarchy, but I think I looked this up, which of
course is the onset of menstruation, which is a very
big deal, because what we are talking about is these
young girls who are ten and eleven when they're with
miss Brody, but then who are going to move up
just on the cusp of womanhood. What a weird way
I just said that, but it's true. So we go
back in time to when they're twelve at the bottom

(22:51):
of the first page, and then on the second page,
really deftly and very sort of obviously and clearly we
are led back into this this moment when they are sixteen.
By the time they were sixteen and had reached the
fourth form and loitered beyond the gates after school and
had adapted themselves to the Orthodox regime, they remained unmistakably

(23:11):
Brodie and we're all famous in the school, which is
to say, they were held in suspicion and not much liking.
So I love this so much. There is actually a
lot of cruelty in this book. In some ways, I
think cruelty is one of the best things that Spark does. Otherwise,
I think the book might feel like a little bit
of a trifle. But what she is talking about, you know,
things here have very high stakes.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
We have two of the.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
Young women dead by the end of the book. Not
going to tell you which ones, but much of what
Brody is demonstrating really does have a lot of cruelty.
She herself spoke in that interview. I didn't know I
was going to cite the interview so much, but she
talked about how back in the day before teachers were
more sensitive to this, they would often find someone to
kind of pick on, to single out and pick on
in many ways, to kind of make an example of

(23:56):
that person. Obviously, here it is Mary McGregor, but there
is actually a lot of betrayal and a lot of
backstabbing and a lot of like very mean behavior, which
doesn't sound appealing on the face of it, but obviously
it's important if you're going to have a complex story
that's speaking about human nature. And then we have this,
and we're still on page two. Here we have the
final part.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
Of this paragraph.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
They had no team spirit and very little in common
with each other outside their continuing friendship with Jean Brody.
She's still taught in the junior department. She was held
in great suspicion. So here again we have that repetition suspicion,
that the girls were held in suspicion and that Jean
Brody herself was also. The idea of team spirit is
something that is made much of, and again that has

(24:40):
to do with this idea of collectivity, of them being
a set versus being individuals.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
And right here on.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
Page two, Brody spark is telling us this very important thing,
which is they don't have much in common, which I
think is meant to clue us into the fact that
some of them are friends. But what unites them is
not a sense of collegiality. It's really just allegiance to
Jeene Brodie herself. I really love also the way that
this paragraph ends with the word suspicion. If you want

(25:08):
to be a better reader, you can recognize that the
last of things, even the last word in a sentence,
but certainly the last paragraph of a chapter, the last
chapter of a book, these have extra weight because, of course,
all of the momentum of what comes before is leading
us to them, and we also have a slight break,
even if it's just like a tiny little break between sentences,
to let that word sort of linger. And suspicion, of

(25:30):
course goes way beyond gene Brody. There's all sorts of
suspicion all throughout the whole entire book. So before we
move on to the third page of the book, which
is just again it's just a virtuoso masterclass in how
to develop character. But before we get to that, I
want to talk briefly about the narrator. So what we
have here is a really strong, very consistent, omniscient, sort

(25:53):
of omnipotent narrator. It is told in the third person,
and this is a narrator that is so all knowing
that there are times when the narrator will pull way
back and give us a pronouncement that is just just
like this incredibly pithy truth either about a person or
about a situation that's honestly just sort of stunning. So

(26:13):
here we have it in this. You know, when the
narrator is saying, these girls were discovered to have heard
of the Buckman Nights and Mussolini, we're pulled pretty far
back they you know, she's speaking. It's funny. I do
think of this narrator as being female. That is not
always the case. I think often and this is so,
you know, patriarchal. I think when we have an omniscient narrator,
the sort of godlike narrator, it often ends up feeling

(26:36):
like it is in kind of a male voice. And
maybe part of that is that one of the things
I will argue is that this narrator is not Miss
Jean Brodie. Obviously, Miss jen Brody is actually someone whose
mind we don't enter into. We always hear about her
from other people and from the outside, But she herself
has this idea of providence, and she has an idea

(26:57):
that she is so influential and that she knows so
many things, and that she has understandings, and that she
knows what's best for poor mister Lowther, the music teacher.
But we understand at the same time that what she's
doing is ridiculous in many different ways. At the end
of the book, someone makes a statement that she herself
believed that she was a kind of providence, that she

(27:20):
was going to that she was going to shape the
lives of these young women, and in some ways she does.
But one of the things that I think is so
amazing is we have this narrator who's even more godlike.
We have a narrator who is the true authority about
all of these characters. And it's not a totally neutral narrator.
This is a narrator that actually has a lot of
sass and has diction that is somewhat unusual. It is

(27:43):
someone who really does feel like another character because the
story is being told in very powerful ways, but also
in addiction that feels uniquely like this narrator. We will
see that soon. So now we're going to move on
to this idea of character development. As we're moving through
here and looking at the character development, another important thing
that's happening is it's a great example of the way

(28:04):
that spark can move us back in time in this
incredibly deft manner. So on page three we have this
the girls who loitered beneath the tree, shoulder to shoulder,
very close to each other because of the boys were
all famous for something. Now at sixteen, Monica Douglas was
a prefect, famous mostly for mathematics, which she could do
in her brain, and for her anger, which when it

(28:27):
was lively enough drove her to slap out right and left.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
This is amazing.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
So earlier it is it is noted that all of
the Brodies that do math on their fingers, and that
not always to the greatest effect, which really speaks to
the fact that whatever curriculum is Brodie is teaching them,
it is not standard. They are not even learning how
to do basic addition. But what we have here is
the introduction of each of them as being famous for something.

(28:52):
And in some cases we have something like the mathematics,
but then we also have something that's kind of off kilter.
She's famous for her anger. What I love here is
the way that anger is treated in an unusual way.
So when Spark is saying that she's famous for her anger,
which when lively enough, so the idea of lively anger
is not standard. And this is the genius in my

(29:14):
mind of Muriel Spark, where we have this kind of oblique,
kind of off kilter way that she is describing things,
but they also reveal such like a truth about these things.
Anger can be very lively. But then she goes one
step further, and here we have some of this incredible
Spark humor, which is often a little bit dark, but
the description is so good that this lively anger drove

(29:36):
her to slap out to right and left, and then
we have quick descriptions of how each wears her hat.
The hats, in fact, are very symbolic also of this
idea that they all belong to a group. There's this
idea of being in the group and then also being
an individual. So Rose Stanley was famous for sex. Her
hat was placed quite unobtrusively on her blonde, short hair,
but she dented in the crown on either side. Eunice Gardner,

(29:59):
small neat and famous for her sprightly gymnastics and glamorous swimming,
had the brim of her hat turned up at the
front and down at the back Sandy Stranger, where it
turned up all around and as far back on her
head as it could possibly go. To assist this, she
had attached to her hat a strip of elastic which
went under the chin. She was merely notorious for her small,

(30:21):
almost non existent eyes, but she was famous for her
vowel sounds, which long ago, in the long past in
the junior school, had enraptured Miss Brody.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
So a couple of things here.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
The fact that Unice Gardner is famous for her sprightly
gymnastics and glamorous swimming. That shows us this unique way
that Spark has of describing I mean, glamorous swimming is
not usual. It's like an incredible and original way to
think about swimming. But it also is doing this really
unique thing where often this narrator will give us the

(30:53):
vision of things from the children's point of view. So
they all would have thought that her swimming was very glamorous.
This is not something that an adult necessarily would say.
In that interview this morning, one of the women was
talking about kind of the cruel nature of some of
the things that the girls were saying, and Spark made
this very interesting comment about how observations on the part
of the girls, which there are lots of them, that

(31:16):
are made kind of in the voice of this narrator,
who is this omniscient, authoritative kind of voice. It is
as if the narrator is in the minds of the girls,
and they're not necessarily cruel observations. They're simply observations by
young girls who find these things fascinating, much like the
way that they think about the missing arm of the
art master. So she's enraptured by the young girl's vowel sounds,

(31:41):
and so we hear her voice for the first time. Well,
come and recite for us, please, because it has been
a very tiring day. And then we have Sandy pops
up and read something. This poem is by Alfred Lord Tennyson,
which harkens back to the Romantic era, which is very important.
The Romantic era would have been in the middle of
the nineteenth century, sort of eighteen fifty. That's a time

(32:03):
when the word romantic, like the Romantic period, is slightly
broader than just like love and passion. It has a
lot to do with passion, but also with the shortness
of time and the idea of the sublime people being
in a sense of awe. So in many ways, the
Romantic period would have been a good one for miss
Brody instead of this like interwar period. So we have
Sandy reciting the thing, and then.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
We have this. It lifts one up.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
Miss Brodie usually said, passing her hand outward from her
breast towards the class of ten year old girls who
are listening for the bell which would release them, which
is unbelievable. When we have this idea of her theatricality
and the fact that the girls are actually very distracted
and wanting to be released. So we have this kind
of bomb bast toward the end of this brief paragraph.

(32:48):
But we are hearing the voice of miss Brody for
the first time, and what it ends with is this
kind of comic note that Miss Brodie herself is not recognizing,
but the reader absolutely feels she says this where there
is no vision. Miss Brodie had assured them that people perish,
which is such as like an odd and like kind
of sententious and like bold and like weird thing to say.

(33:12):
Also we don't really know what she means. She is
someone though with you know, she harkens back to the
classic era, the Greeks and the Romans, also of course fascism.
But what she's talking about here is very high stakes,
this idea of people perishing. And then right after the
idea of people perish, we have Unice come into a
summersault in order that we may have comic relief, which

(33:34):
is so funny. So this is linking back, of course
to this idea of Unice as being famous for her
sprightly gymnastics, and it's so odd but also so telling
and indicative of this unconventional sort of classroom setting where
we're having these bold, you know, very theatrical statements and
then having somersaults. So we have followed the girls into
the past, and here we have seen the way that

(33:55):
this narrator is able to give us like these very
you know, broad things about what the girls know they
know about Mussolnian skincare. That's going to be my touch
point for the narrator being very pulled back. But then
the narrator will focus in on a certain moment in
the classroom and give us lots of detail that is
super telling. So we have this idea, this first introduction

(34:16):
of miss Brody with this theatrical moment about vision and
the inclusion of a great romantic poet of Tennyson. But
then she very deftly is going to bring us back
to that first original moment. But now the boys with
their bicycles were cheerfully insulting Jenny Gray about her way
of speech, which she had got from her elocution classes.

(34:39):
She was going to be an actress. She was Sandy's
best friend. She wore her hat with the front brim
bent sharply down. She was the prettiest and most graceful
girl of the set, and this was her fame, which
I just absolutely love the way that we have this
kind of listing before about you know, each of them
was famous for sex, was famous for sp gymnastics, and

(35:01):
then here we have that she is the prettiest and
most graceful girl of the set, and this was her fame.
So we have this variety of prose that I think
those sometimes unnoticed, but the fact that we're not repeating
that same formula again is just it's very impactful, a
subtle on a very subtle level. So then Jenny, who
is being teased by the boys for her voice, there's

(35:23):
a lot. I mean, as we are picking this apart,
you're noticing I would imagine all of this emphasis on voice,
the fact that Sandy has these vowels, the fact that
Jenny has been at elocution classes. When we're talking about
changing voices. But these are girls who are finding their voice.
These are sixteen year olds who are beginning to use
their voices. So here we have Jenny say this don't

(35:43):
be allowed. Andrew, she said with her uppish tone. There
were three Andrews among the five boys, which is so funny.
This is this kind of unexpected and hilarious, Like there's
no reason for her to say that we aren't even
really focused on the boys at this point, where really
we're never really flcused on these boys. And in some
ways it's just funny that she's noting that the three

(36:04):
of the boys are named Andrew among the five of them,
but she's also speaking to the sameness of those boys.
These girls' names are very original. We have Monica, Douglas,
Rose Stanley, Eunice Gardner, Sandy Stranger. I mean, leave it
to Muriel Spark to come up with a last name
that is really significant. She's a stranger in the sense

(36:24):
that she's unknowable. She's someone who is always going to
remain somewhat apart from everyone else, which really does fit
her vocation, which she finds later. And then I just
want to briefly round out this part about the descriptions
of the girls with this final sentence. Along came Mary McGregor,
the last member of the set whose fame rested on

(36:45):
her being a silent lump, a nobody whom everybody could blame.
With her was an outsider Joyce Emily Hammond, the very
rich girl. They're delinquent, so good, unbelievable. So here we
have Mary MacGregor, who again is that young girl that
Muriel Spark says, there's always one that the teacher was

(37:05):
picking on. You could also argue here that everybody could
blame her for different things, that she becomes kind of
a scapegoat, that every group needs a scapegoat. But honestly,
Mary McGregor doesn't even have enough agency for them to
be blaming her for stuff. They're just constantly putting her
down again in a way that's very cruel. It's a
little bit Lord of the Flies in a way that
makes that I think gives the book a lot of gravitos.

(37:27):
What's important here also is that through Mary McGregor, we
have this introduction of Joyce Emily, and Joyce Emily is
someone who gets a little bit lost when we move
back into time because she's being introduced only in this
present moment, so the present moment here, and it is
signaled by the fact that up above when she says,
but now the boys with their bicycles, so now, in

(37:50):
throughout the novel, now is always that moment when the
girls are all sixteen and they're together with the boys.
We're seeing contact with their male peers, their potential romantic involvements.
In fact, they're much more appropriate involvements than what happens
in the novel. But at this point we also are
having the introduction of Joyce Emily. And what's really amazing
about the structure, I mean everything about it is really

(38:12):
intricate throughout the entire novel. But she also reappears in
the end in a very profound and important role. So
you have this real sort of book end feel, and
when she crops up at the end and has kind
of a large role, it's exactly that thing that a
reader should feel. You learn this in MFA programs that
they're surprised, the reader is surprised by something, but it

(38:33):
also feels inevitable. So you get to the end and
Joyce Emily is cropping back up and you're sort of like,
oh my gosh, wait, I forgot all about Joyce Emily.
But then she has a role that you're like, of course,
of course this is the way that this was going
to go. It's so artful. Okay, We're going to go
on to look at the way that tension is set
up at the very beginning of this book.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
This is on page six.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
We're going to look a little bit at the pros,
and then we're going to look at the last chunk
that the close of this first chapter. So one of
the things that happens throughout the book is in the
very beginning, we have this idea of the betrayal, and
the idea of this betrayal, the artful way that we
are beginning at this moment when the girls are all
sixteen years old, is so deft because she's setting up

(39:16):
this question at the beginning and you are eager to
know what is going to happen. You're also at some
point you sort of stop wondering, like who is going
to betray her? That is the question that is set
up here on page six, which we're going to look at.
But you stop wondering who is going to betray her?
And the reason you stop is because actually she tells you.
So there's this genius thing where the answer to your

(39:36):
burning question comes not too long into the book. But
then what happens is you have a whole new set
of questions, which is like, how how is this person
going to betray her? It's subtle and I think for
lots of readers, you don't even understand why. You know,
you're turning the pages, and I mean you're turning the
pages also because the prose is so so good. But
there are some burning questions here, and it is absolute

(39:59):
genius the way that once that question is answered, which
is not standard. I mean for a lot of people,
they would just have the whole question be like who
betrayed them and how that would be through the whole
entire thing. But we have here the question of who
is very important and then we find out and we
move on to this next question of why. So on
page six we have this. It has been suggested this

(40:20):
is miss Brodie's voice. It's important too that we hear
quite a bit of her voice, but she is a
shadowy figure. She is someone who is described largely in
terms of what she is saying, which are often these
kind of maxims that don't mean anything, like if there
is no vision, the people perish. I mean, these are
not things that are particularly revealing.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
So we hear her.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
Voice quite a bit, but we aren't really getting to
the inside of her.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
So we have this.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
It has been suggested again that I should apply for
a post at one of the progressive schools where my
methods would be more suited to the system than they
are at Blaine. But I shall not apply for a
post at a crank school.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
I shall.

Speaker 1 (40:57):
I shall remain at this education factory. Their needs must
be eleven in the lump. Give me a girl at
an impressionable age, and she is mine for life. So
a couple of things here, this idea of when she
says it has been suggested again that I should leave
the school that is so genius, just that little again,
even if you're not recognizing that on a very conscious level,

(41:20):
you are getting the sense that this is someone who
has been under suspicion for a long time. She was
already under suspicion when these girls were ten. It's now
six years later. But it's just so funny and economical
for her to say it has been suggested again. I mean,
this is this ongoing kind of campaign. The idea of
an education factory is very funny. And then we have
these two kind of maxims that she talks about, that

(41:42):
she mentions throughout in this kind of way that she
speaks in these aphorisms. Their needs must be eleven in
the lump, give me a girl at an impressionable age,
and she is mine for life. And what's interesting there
is that that is in fact the case. These women are,
for better and for worse, very much impressed upon her.
So then we move on. The Brodie set smiled in

(42:03):
understanding of various kinds. So here again we have the
tension between the group and the individuals. Miss Brodie forced
her brown eyes to flash as a meaningful accompaniment to
her quiet voice. She looked a mighty woman with her
dark Roman profile in the sun. The Brodie set did
not for a moment doubt that she would prevail. As
soon expect Julius Caesar to apply for a job at

(42:26):
a crank school. As Miss Brodie, she would never resign.
If the authorities wanted to get rid of her, she
would have to be assassinated.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
Which is so funny to me.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
So there's this really cool slippage here, which is that
we have this idea of her Roman profile, and then
we have the slippage where she essentially becomes Julius Caesar,
and there's this kind of sassy voice, the narrators taking
on the voice of these young girls. As soon expect
Julius Caesar to apply for a job at a crank
school as Miss Brodie, which is so you know, it

(42:55):
has both kind of their belief in her, their allegiance,
but also this kind of indignation and the way that
they are recognizing that there's a gap between Miss Brody
and the rest of the school the normal kind of
authority figures, and that they are very much aligned, they're
very much on her side. And then she goes this
one step further. If the authorities wanted to get rid
of her, she would have to be assassinated. It's just

(43:18):
so funny. Again, we're ending this whole long paragraph where
she's really trying to drum up their allegiance, and sure
enough we're ending with this idea of assassination. Assassination also,
of course, is some it's for people who are only
like a famous but you know, lots of people are murdered,
but I think it's only famous people who are assassinated.
And then we have some discussion on the part of
the girls about this campaign to get rid of Miss Brody.

(43:41):
Who are they gang this time? Said Rose, who is
famous for sex appeal. We shall discuss tomorrow night. The
persons who opposed me, said Miss Brody. But rest assured
they shall not succeed. No, said everyone. No, of course
they won't. Not while I'm in my prime, she said,
These years are still the years of my prime. It's
important to recognize the years of one's prime. Always remember that.

(44:04):
So then not even you know. Two pages later, we
have this beautiful description when Miss Brodie's actually teaching the
young girls. And this is one of those examples of
this really lyrical, really beautiful prose that adds so much texture.
So on page nine, this is when she's doing one
of these kind of unconventional classes where she is taking
all of her little girls they're ten and eleven years old,

(44:25):
out to teach them under the elm. If anyone comes along,
said Miss Brodie. In the course of the following lesson,
remember it that it is the hour for English grammar. Meantime,
I will tell you a little of my life when
I was younger than I am now, those six years
older than the man himself. I mean again, we have
this incredible slippage there she's talking about how she was younger,

(44:48):
and then suddenly we have the idea of this man.
And even in this case it's very unconventional. We have
this idea of her being significantly older, which probably speaks
to the fact, I mean this is nineteen thirty one.
It's well after the end of the First World War.
I mean not too long after, but you can certainly
imagine that there would be very few men for mus
Brodie in her prime. So we have this somewhat unlikely relationship.

(45:09):
And then before she's going to tell us more about this,
we have this interjection of this gorgeous paragraph, she leaned
against the elm. It was one of the last autumn
days when the leaves were falling in little gusts. They
fell on the children, who were thankful for this excuse
to wriggle and for the allowable movements in brushing the
leaves from their hair and laps. So we have this

(45:31):
idea of wriggling and brushing. Those are words that really
very much speak to the sound and this idea of
the last autumn days when the leaves were falling in
little gusts. The idea of gusts there is unique and
really gives us a sense of autumn. And the word
autumn itself is really evocative of that kind of time,
not only because of what it means, but just that
word itself as opposed to fall. I think autumn in

(45:53):
many ways is much more evocative. We also have just
this beautiful idea of childhood, this idea of how of
wriggly these children are. And then we have Miss Brody
almost sort of picking up on this really beautiful moment.
She says, this season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. I
was engaged to a young man at the beginning of

(46:15):
the war, but he fell on flanders Field, said Miss Brody.
So we have this idea of her as being capable
of this real kind of lyricism. I mean, it's a
little silly the way she sang it in a little
high flown seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness, but we
do have a sense that she can wax lyrical and
that she does have this kind of very romantic disposition.

(46:37):
And one of the things that is so genius is
as we are going through this kind of beautiful fall moment,
we're seeing the children as a group very clearly. It's
interesting that it's children there and not girls. That the
narrator pulling back a little further, we have Miss Brodie's voice.
We have this idea of evoking this fallen soldier who
was her fiancee, and then she immediately shifts gears in

(46:57):
a way that I find so compelling. So we have
I was engaged to a young man at the beginning
of the war, but he fell on flanders Field, said
Miss Brody, are you thinking, Sandy of doing a day's washing?
Which you're like, wait what? And Sandy, And in many
ways what that is is called nemesis. So it's this
idea that the reader is experiencing the same thing as

(47:19):
the characters in the book. So she's talking about Hugh
and how he has fallen on flanders Field, and then
suddenly are you thinking, Sandy of doing a day's washing?
And you can imagine the way that the girls who
might have been in some kind of reverie are like,
oh my gosh, wait what we're switching gears here. Sandy says, no,
miss Brody, and then Miss Brody says, because you have

(47:40):
got your sleeves rolled up, I won't have to do
with girls who roll up sleeves of their blouses, however,
find the weather roll them down at once. We are
civilized beings. So also, of course this is significant because
Muriel Spark would never write anything that is not significant.
So Sandy here we find out very soon that she is,
in fact the betrayer. Sandy has her sleeves rolled up,

(48:02):
you know, she's really like ready to get down to work,
and in many ways she is going to do some
washing because she's going to sort of clean them of
the stain that is Miss Brody. But what's tremendous here
is this kind of beautiful diction and this beautiful evocation
of the fall and the gusts of the leaves in
contrast to this very kind of earthly idea of a
teacher chastising her student for having your sleeves rolled up.

(48:24):
And we're now going to look at the at the
end of the chapter. It's actually a continuation of this scene,
and it is so beautiful. It's kind of a further
evocation of this beautiful fall and the way that everything
that Spark is providing us, whether it is description or
whether it is dialogue, it's doing so much work on
so many different levels. So here on page ten we

(48:45):
have this and just for context, Miss McKay. Miss McKay
is the head mistress. Importantly, Muriel Spark spoke about her,
Miss Jean Brody, and it was a woman named miss Kay.
I think that's right. I'm fairly certain that's correct. Okay,
on page ten, you did well, said miss Brodie to
the class, when miss McKay had gone not to answer
the question put to you. It is well when in

(49:07):
difficulties to say never a word, neither black nor white.
Speech is silver, but silence is golden. So this idea
of not saying anything and always kind of staying in
a gray area neither black nor white, also shows us
that miss Brodie is really teaching them some sort of
renegade ideas. I mean, we see very clearly that she
is a renegade, and she's certainly not hiding that from

(49:28):
the girls, but she's also actively promoting this kind of
insolence in many ways. So we have the idea of
speech is silver, but silence is golden.

Speaker 2 (49:41):
Mary, are you listening? What was I saying?

Speaker 1 (49:43):
Mary McGregor, lumpy with merely two eyes, a nose, and
a mouth like a snowman. Again, we have this kind
of disruption where we're moving along and we're listening, and
then suddenly we have her calling out the girls in
a very concrete and very present way that brings us
right back to being under the elm when she says, Mary,
are you listening?

Speaker 2 (50:03):
What was I saying?

Speaker 1 (50:05):
Then we have Mary McGregor Lumpy, which is so funny.
And throughout we have this idea that there needs be
eleven in the lump, and Mary McGregor really is just
like lumpy, she like is the lump. And then we
have this Mary McGregor lumpy with merely two eyes, a nose,
and a mouth like a snowman. I mean merely two

(50:25):
eyes and a nose. That's like everybody has that, but
they're really minimized because everyone else has these kind of
exciting things. And then a mouth like a snowman. It's
so funny because for some reason I pictured like a
mouth like a like a weirdly like a piece of coal,
which is what for the eyes, but I picture kind
of like a sad round mouth. In my experience of
snowman making, it was often a stick or something, or

(50:47):
like a bunch of like small things made into the
shape of a smile, like pushed into the snow. So
maybe this isn't super evocative, but it is unexpected and
in my reading, even though I'm not deciphering it very clearly,
now I really like this, there is the idea of
a snowman, of course, being mute and cold and kind
of lumpy and certainly not having any agency. But then

(51:07):
we move on and have this really important revelation. So
we have Mary McGregor, lumpy with merely two eyes, a nose,
and a mouth like a snowman, who was later famous
for being stupid and always to blame, and who at
the age of twenty three, lost her life in a
hotel fire ventured golden. So we at this point in

(51:28):
the lecture very much like Mary might have lost track
of what she is answering. Miss Brodie had just said.
Miss Brodie had just said speech is silver, but silence
is golden. And then we have this really important description
where we learn the fate of Mary McGregor, that she
is going to die in actually not that many years,
there's sixteen. Now she's going to die at twenty three

(51:48):
in a hotel fire. It's so fascinating. We have this
kind of sad scapegoaty kind of character who's lumpy and
who everyone is blaming for everything, and who we often
have so much sympathy for, because even and the narrator
is pretty cruel to this person, and then we find
out that she's going to have this tragic end. What's
fascinating here is we have heard before that she's famous

(52:08):
for being stupid and to blame, but now we're hearing
stupid and to blame, and then this tragedy is tacked
onto it. So lots of times when Spark is repeating
things verbatim, she's taking them one step further in a
way that both reminds us and reinforces these ideas, really
drives them home, but also adds on something new to

(52:29):
deepen our understanding. And here what she is doing, and
she continues to do throughout, is she'll zip us, like
literally in the middle of a moment of dialogue, when
these girls are ten years old, she'll zip us forward
into their future and tell us their fate. And it's
one of the most important things I would argue that
the book does so deftly. It adds to the idea

(52:49):
of this omniscient, omnipotent narrator who knows everything. This is
a narrator who knows what is going to happen in
the future to these people, which is about as close
to godlike as you can get. There's a lot of
study and a lot of thinking about the omniscient narrator
as being godlike. And when you have a narrator who
is speaking to what is going to happen to these

(53:10):
people in the future, it really underscores the idea that
we do not know, none of us knows, and that
is really thrown into relief by this kind of very assured,
factual statement on the part of the narrator. It also
just adds a real tinge of sadness and reminds us
that all of these young girls are faded to die,
some in more horrible ways than others. So when miss

(53:32):
Birdie says, what was I saying to Mary McGregor, she
ventures this guest golden.

Speaker 2 (53:37):
What did I say? Was golden?

Speaker 1 (53:40):
Mary cast her eyes around her, and up above Sandy whispered,
the falling leaves, the falling leaves. Said Mary plainly said,
Miss Brodie, you were not listening to me. If only
you small girls would listen to me, I would make
of you the creme de la creme. This is so beautiful,
it's incredible. So this is only the ending of the

(54:01):
first chapter of the book, but it is the end
of this virtuoso eleven pages where we have seen Spark
establish this incredible narrator also put into place a structure
where the reader is very deftly moving back and forward
in time. She's introduced the idea of fate and the
idea of providence, and the idea of these people not
knowing what's going to happen even when the narrator does,

(54:23):
which opens a lot of possibility of speaking about religion,
which is one of the things that certainly happens throughout
the novel. We see this kind of unexpected prose. We
see the way that we're going to get to know
all of these people in these oblique and kind of
interesting and kind of fragmented ways. It's also very fitting
to end with this idea of the Creme de la Creme,
so that speaks to this idea of Edinburgh as kind

(54:45):
of this European capital, and the idea that Miss Brodie
sees herself as very worldly. She goes to Italy, she's
using this French phrase, and her goal is to transfer
all of this kind of worldliness to these young girls,
and all the while she is protesting a bit too
much that she is in fact in her prime, which
makes us suspect that she is not in her prime,

(55:06):
and it is very fitting that we end the chapter
with this idea of how she wants to shape these girls.
And it's also fitting that it's kind of a silly phrase.
It's I mean, of course, the creme de la creme
is like the very best at something, but it isn't
really very meaningful. Miss Brodie herself does not invest a
lot of value in the social hierarchy. She has kind
of her own structures for everything and her own way

(55:27):
of thinking about things, so her idea of creme de
la creme is unique, as it is for everyone. But
I love the fact that here at the end of
the first chapter, we are hearing her voice and we
are really ending with this idea of the ways that
this one woman is going to shape the lives of
all of these people. So that is obviously a good
place to end. We're at the end of the first chapter.

(55:49):
I hope that this discussion has just brought you a
little bit more of a sence of why Muriel Spark
is such a genius and why this book in particular
is an absolute masterclass and so many different important aspects
of fiction writing. So thank you so much for tuning
in happy reading,