The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

"It’s a fascinating book for lots of reasons. It is beautifully written and, like The Great Gatsby or The Catcher in the Rye , other slim novels, you can go back to it every year to refresh your memory and you’ll always find something new in it every time. For me, it has a fascination because you have to remember it is set – as Muriel always said – in 1930, when the girls would have been 10, 11, 12 or thereabouts. But more importantly, when Edinburgh was in 1930. So you have the core of it: Miss Jean Brodie, this kind of archetype Scottish womanhood in a way. Why is she called Jean? Most Scottish women were called Jean in those days. ‘Brodie,’ it was assumed, because of Deacon Brodie and the double life of Edinburgh, all that kind of stuff. Miss Brodie’s fascination with Italy and art was one of the fascinating sides of the book. The other fascinating side of Miss Brodie is her support for Mussolini and his Fascisti. Again, I’m intrigued that a schoolteacher in 1930 could get away with that – but you could. You’ve got to remember that this is very much a period novel. 1930s Edinburgh: what was it like? Well, it was like a lot of other places: it thought Mussolini was on the right track. It was only later that we found out otherwise. So that was fascinating as well – the way Miss Brodie is condemned for her support of Mussolini. Because at that point she wouldn’t really have been looked askance at. “She’s slippery. Just when you think you’ve pinned her down, off she goes” I remember hearing just by chance an interview Muriel gave with Jim Naughtie on one of those book programmes on Radio 4. She was there to talk about The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie with listeners. There was a lull in the conversation and Muriel interjected to say to Jim: ‘Would you like to know what I think of the character of Sandy Stranger?’ – Sandy Stranger is the character that betrays Miss Jean Brodie – and Jim blustered, ‘well, yes, it would be interesting to know.’ She said: ‘I think she was a little bitch.’ That just made me gasp. Well, you were wrong. And many other people were wrong. It’s true that many people thought that Sandy Stranger stood in for Muriel. I think Muriel’s a very difficult person to pin those kind of autobiographical musings on. As Allan Massie says, she’s slippery. Just when you think you’ve pinned her down, off she goes and she’s away. She’s like Bob Dylan, always changing tack. Not always in ways that her readers approve of. There was an element of that, and of course – this is what I mean – in the Sparkian universe, good and evil are not black and white. There are many, many shades of grey in there. She seems to be cruel and the next minute she’ll be sympathetic. She understood that human beings are complicated beings. Well it’s very churlish to think that about a book that has brought you such wealth, recognition and fame. There’s an element of people always wanting her to write another Jean Brodie. As Joseph Heller said when was asked why he had never written another book as good as Catch-22 : ‘who has?’ But she used to call The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie her ‘milch cow.’ By which she meant – from Hardy – it kept giving. It was like a fruit machine that cash kept pouring out of. I think she did feel that its ubiquity overshadowed others of the books that she wished had more attention. But in a sense, she was kind of above that. She wasn’t really like the authors of today who are continually on Amazon, seeing how many sales they’ve made and what book festivals they’re appearing at, and how they’re climbing the charts. Of course she wanted people to buy her book, and for them to be publicised properly. But she wasn’t obsessed with what her sales were or how one book was doing against another. All she could do, I think, is go onto the next book and write a better book than the one previously. She was always aspiring to do something different. I love that book, however I think there are others of her books that are as good as, if not better. And that’s saying something."