Or Conservatism. a Comparison of the Two Attitudes in the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark Bachelor’S Diploma Thesis
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Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Halina Burová All that glitters is not gold. “Progressiveness” or Conservatism. A comparison of the two attitudes in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc., M.A. 2017 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author’s signature Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor prof. Milada Franková for inspiring guidance and valuable advice provided during the process of writing. Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 5 1 Muriel Spark ........................................................................................................ 7 1.1 Life ..................................................................................................................... 7 1.2 Career ................................................................................................................. 8 1.3 Conversion to Catholicism ................................................................................. 9 2 The Novel ............................................................................................................ 12 3 The Film .............................................................................................................. 18 4 Miss Jean Brodie – The Prime Narcissist ........................................................ 23 4.1 Appearance ....................................................................................................... 23 4.2 “Teaching Methods” ........................................................................................ 26 4.3 Love Affairs ..................................................................................................... 30 4.4 The Dismissal ................................................................................................... 35 5 Other Characters in Relation to Miss Brodie ................................................. 40 5.1 Miss Mackay – A Nimble Old Liner ................................................................ 40 5.2 Sandy Stranger – An Assassin or an Ally ........................................................ 43 5.3 Mary Macgregor – A Scapegoat ...................................................................... 46 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 51 Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 53 Resumé (English) .......................................................................................................... 57 Resumé (Czech) ............................................................................................................. 58 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – further referred to as Miss Brodie Introduction The aim of the thesis is to show that no matter how overwhelming the first impression of a person, a thing or an idea is, one should never cease to penetrate deeper under the surface to explore the true origins of the motivations standing behind particular actions, as the topic of the thesis All that glitters is not gold says. I will attempt to demonstrate the validity of this old saying on the example of a character study of Miss Jean Brodie, the main heroine of Muriel Spark’s most famous novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie published in 1961. Miss Brodie was a teacher in a conservative Edinburgh primary school for girls. Her personality, lifestyle and teaching methods were considered progressive and therefore they were in a constant clash with the universally acknowledged conservative approach of the school. The thesis will focus on the subconscious motivations of Miss Brodie’s behaviour, which, although initially considered as progressive and revolutionary, eventually lead to disastrous outcomes as will be shown. This behaviour will be compared to the general conservative attitudes represented by the school of Marcia Blaine with its headmistress, Miss Mackay as the embodiment of this approach. The thesis will also attempt to show the divergent ways of the impact Miss Brodie’s methods had on the two of her students, Sandy Stranger and Mary Macgregor. The novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and the film of the same title will serve as the primary sources for the thesis. I do not, however, attempt to compare the two versions of Miss Brodie, rather I focus on the analysis of her personality both in the book and the film. I also include a separate chapter on the author’s out of the ordinary biography and her way to become a famous novelist; the influences that contributed to the overall 5 shape of the novel as it is known, one such great influence being her conversion to Catholicism in the 1950s. A chapter on the film version is also included, which discusses some peculiarities worth mentioning. 6 1 Muriel Spark 1.1 Life The Scottish novelist, Dame Muriel Sarah Spark was born on 1 February 1918 as Muriel Sarah Camberg to a Presbyterian-Jewish family in Edinburgh. She also wrote biographies and poems but it was her 1961 novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie that brought her the worldwide fame. She was made Dame of the British Empire in 1993 and in 2008 was listed No. 8 among the best fifty British writers since 1945 by The Times newspaper. She died aged 88 on 15 April 2006 in Florence, Italy (Spark, Curriculum 22; “Biography”; “The Telegraph”; “The Times”). Spark attended James Gillespie’s School for Girls between the years 1923-1935, which served her as an inspiration for her novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Spark, Curriculum 50). The figure of her teacher Christina Kay was later personified in the novel as the radical teacher Jean Brodie and the whole experience of James Gillespie’s School is reflected in the book. Between the years 1934-1935, she took a course in commercial correspondence and precise writing and taught for a brief period of time (Spark, Curriculum 105). In 1937, at the age of 19, she married Sidney Oswald Spark and travelled with him to Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) (Spark, Curriculum 116). They had a child together, a son named Robin, but not long afterwards she discovered her husband suffered from a mental illness. He was a manic depressive with violent tendencies. She left him and their son in 1940. In 1944, she returned to England and was desperate to find a job to support her son – at that time raised by nuns in Africa (“Biography”) – and to be able to publish her books. Spark was a knowledgeable and a very intelligent woman for her age and thanks to that was offered an exceptional position at the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office where she remained until the end of 7 World War II. Her tasks at the Department involved for example writing misleading and discouraging news reports for the Germans or other methods of psychological combat (Spark, Curriculum 146-59). After the war, she took a few secretarial jobs, to “keep alive until” she “got published” and she needed the money to be able to write; fortunately, that starting help was provided to her by Graham Greene (Smith, 205). At that time, Spark lived in the south-eastern part of London, Camberwell. She moved to New York in 1962 and some three years later she moved to Rome. There she met Penelope Jardine, an artist and sculptor. They became close friends and companions and settled a household together in a small village in Tuscany. They often had to face speculations of lesbian relationship which they denied (Franková 168; “Biography”). 1.2 Career Spark’s career as a writer began after the war. She started working for the Poetry Review in 1947 where she remained until 1949. She attempted to write poetry since she was a child of about nine or ten and considered herself mainly a poet all her life. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie together with two of her other works (The Girls of Slender Means and The Mandelbaum Gate) are described by Kemp as fine examples of Spark’s approach as a poet writing novels when he quotes her in his book: “I think my novels are the novels of a poet” (71). In fact, her turn from poetry to short stories to novels was a gradual process. At first she started writing narrative poems, then novels. “I was writing essays more and more on narrative poetry, and I can see I was working toward narrative” (Smith 201), claims the author. The milestone on her way to become a novelist was her winning of the first prize for the competition in The Observer in 1951 8 for her short story “The Seraph and the Zambesi” (Hosmer 135). Except for poems, Spark also wrote plays and biographies of such figures as John Masefield, Emily Brönte or Mary Shelly. She was influenced greatly by the French writers like Flaubert, Proust or Robbe-Grillet but also by the Belgian writer of detective stories and psychological novels, Georges Simenon, hence the frequent mysterious elements in her works, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie including, of which she states: “I believe that the supernatural gives depth” (Smith 210). Another source of inspiration for Spark were mediaeval morality plays (Hosmer 135, 151). Such a reading list speaks for Spark as a truly knowledgeable scholar, a fact which is even more remarkable if we consider