The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie Essay

Narrating Modernity: The structural dynamics in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”

In this paper I intend to talk about Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie as an example of the modernist movement and how certain features of the modernist period were incorporated in this literary text. With inventive story-telling techniques and fascinating characters the novel becomes persuasive and engrossing. Therefore any modern day reader would find it to be “the crème de la crème.” Spark have used certain modernist techniques such as the text loses chronology and hence time is circular. There is little description as modernists like more to allude to things. The stream of character’s consciousness is represented, that’s why the works are often

As far as fragmentation of plot is concerned, Spark does not unfold the plot of the novel chronologically, but part by part clearly making large use of the narrative technique of prolepsis. The way Chapter One ends with Mary MacGregor making a fool out of herself at Miss Brodie’s lesson and how suddenly Chapter Two begins with Mary’s death some years later is an example of this. To add the narrative begins in 1936 and then goes back to 1930. This uses time shifts to portray the rise of the Brodie set and the downfall of Miss Brodie. Also, before the reader knows the reason for Jean’s downfall, the date of her death is given. Hence, sometimes it is difficult for a reader to deal with such a method, because one is uncertain when, or even where something has happened. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie make full use of the combination of time-shifts and the reader himself must make logic out of the