Muririel Sparks The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie Character Analysis

What characterizes Muriel Sparks The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is the way time is used. Instead of telling the story chronologically the author writes in a non-sequential way, having paid a lot of attention to the order in which the events are told. This has an effect on the characterization of the character of Rose Stanley and of Miss Jean Brodie herself, as focalized through the girls of the Brodie Set. Instead of starting the novel with the first year of Miss Brodie teaching her six special girls, where the story begins, Muriel Sparks constantly switches between parts where the girls are Miss Brodie’s students, parts when they are in their last year and when they are grown up. It can be seen clearly that the author has not ordered the events arbitrarily. By telling the events in a conscientious order the reader’s view on the characters changes throughout the

When the headmistress is looking for evidence against Miss Brodie’s way of educating their devotion is obvious. The first time a change in this devotion is clearly noticeable happens when the girls are seventeen. It is Sandy who, all at once, begins to doubt about the woman who had been her true inspiration all those years. Suddenly Sandy realizes, for example, that the woman was obsessed by the need for Rose to sleep with the man she herself was in love with. She begins to wonder about her own conception of Miss Brodie. When being in a secret relationship with Teddy Lloyd, who is in love with Miss Brodie and she with him, she even talks about her using the words ‘ridiculous’ and ‘not to be taken seriously’. This and the fact that she has a relationship with Teddy Lloyd show that there is not much loyalty left. Moreover she betrays her teacher by telling the headmistress that Miss Brodie is a born Fascist and that she wants to stop her, which leads to Miss Brodie’s