Notes on the Brodie Set

The Brodie Set: the crème de la crème of 
Marcia Blaine School 

Although reduced in number in Ronald Neame's film adaptation of Muriel Spark's novel, the composite characters who make up the cinematic version of the Brodie Set remain the crème de la crème ...

I. Jenny: the Sexy One

Jenny - played by Diane Grayson - is the natural beauty of the group; a Rose by any other name. She possesses instinct, but no insight and is, according to Miss Brodie, like a heroine in a novel by Mr. D. H. Lawrence, with a profile of deceptive purity and a willingness to cartwheel on command, primitive and free.

Thus it is that Jenny will one day be famous for sex; destined - in Miss Brodie's mind - to become Teddy Lloyd's lover and not merely his model. But Jenny is of no real interest to the randy art master and Miss Brodie's fantasy of her erotic value and Nietzschean potential to rise above the common moral code is woefully mistaken.

Jenny is, in fact, just an ordinary girl; more a pint of semi-skimmed milk than crème de la crème. She wants to be happy, like her parents; people who have sexual intercourse in the marital bed, lights off but nightclothes on, and don't have primes like Miss Brodie.    


II. Monica: the Plain One

Monica - played by Shirley Steedman - was good at maths and quick of temper. And although a rather histrionic child, easily moved to tears by poetry and tales of lost love, Miss Brodie ultimately thought her to possess very little soul. It is also Monica whom she initially suspects of betraying her.

Personally, however, I like Monica very much: she seems to me the sort of girl one might have a lot of fun with; always happy to go places and to do things. 


III. Mary McGregor: that Silly, Stupid Girl

Ah, Mary McGregor - played by Jane Carr - is the most malleable of the four girls, thus her attraction for Miss Brodie. Slow-witted and stuttering, she is bullied by one and all, meekly bearing the blame for everything that goes wrong. Sadly, as Sandy rather cruelly says: She died a fool.


IV. Sandy: the Clever Little Cat 

Sandy - played by Pamela Franklin (with such brilliance that she won a BAFTA for her performance) - is Miss Brodie's confidante. And thus, of course, best able to put a stop to her ... 

Miss Brodie thinks Sandy dependable, but far from her prime: it's a fatal misjudgement. For by the age of seventeen, Sandy has developed into a young woman of great insight and sexual precocity; something that Teddy Lloyd is quick to recognise and exploit, happily taking her as his mistress.

Miss Brodie also thinks Sandy would make a great spy. But Sandy is ultimately an assassin who regards her former mentor as a ridiculous woman. She also comes to understand the Brodie Set as an essentially micro-fascist formation; faithful to their leader and expected to serve, suffer and sacrifice.

Sandy clearly loves Miss Brodie and was closer to her than any of the other girls. But that's why she has to one day go too far and betray her; for we reward our great teachers not with loyalty, but by losing them so that we can at last become ourselves.

Judas was the greatest of disciples. And Sandy was the greatest member of the Brodie Set: the clever little cat that got the cream and learned how to kill without concern.   

Read: Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, (Macmillan, 1961).

Watch: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), dir. Ronald Neame, written by Jay Presson Allen, starring Maggie Smith in her Academy Award winning prime.

To view the original trailer for the above film, click here.

Cold Turkey and TV (How We're Betrayed by Tradition)

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Boy
(looking as bored then as I feel today)

There are many traditions associated with Christmas; singing carols, decorating a tree, hanging up a stocking, kissing under the mistletoe, exchanging presents, etc.

But, for many people, the big day itself is ultimately reduced to a plate of cold turkey leftovers and zoning out in front of the TV: sic semper erat, et sic semper erit. Is it any wonder that suicide rates spike at this time of year?

The fact is, whether we like to admit it or not, traditions can be fatal: the mindlessly repetitive transmission of customs that no one really cares about and beliefs that no one considers truthful, from one generation to the next, is at last soul-destroying.

Far from sustaining a people within a living faith or culture, tradition becomes a substitute for such; an empty form, devoid of significance, whose meaning has long been forgotten. Nietzsche warned of the way that history can, at a certain point, become disadvantageous; the past starts to enforce its claims on the present regardless of the cost, preventing the birth of new thoughts and feelings and any future unfolding.

Etymologically, the word tradition warns us of the threat that it contains; for tradere means not only that which is delivered as a gift across time, but also that which betrays. We are exposed to danger by our own inheritance, as soon as we allow it to automatically determine who we are and how we live.

This is why we must challenge convention and all forms of doxa; why we must not simply show unquestioning love and loyalty to the past; why we must let the dead bury the dead (so that they don't bury us beneath the accumulated filth of ages).

And this is why, if you really want to have a merry Christmas, it takes more than pulling a cracker and wearing a paper hat round the dinner table ... 

What I Believe

Paul Cadmus: What I Believe (1947-48)

I have always had a certain amount of respect and affection for E. M. Forster. Primarily because he had the decency and the courage to publicly say of Lawrence after the latter's death in 1930 that he was the greatest imaginative novelist of his generation. This contrasts starkly with the often sneering and hostile verdicts of other friends and contemporaries - let alone Lawrence's enemies, of whom there were many.      

Lately, however, I have found myself enjoying again Forster's fiction (with the exception of A Passage to India) and even, dare I say it, some of his essays; such as What I Believe (1938), which opens with the wonderful lines:

"I do not believe in Belief. But this is an Age of Faith and there are so many militant creeds that, in self-defence, one has to formulate a creed of one's own." 

This is pretty much the position I find myself in today. To paraphrase Forster, postmodern irony and cool indifference are no longer enough in a world of religious fundamentalism wherein ignorance and superstition thrive, evolutionary scientists are forced to debate with creationists about the school curriculum, and cosmologists still have to convince many that the earth travels round the sun and is not in fact the centre of the universe.      

It would be nice to remain transpositional and forever defer meaning, but, unfortunately, one is no longer afforded the luxury. Rather, one has today to take up some kind of position - however reluctantly and provisionally - and say clearly what one means (and even mean what one says). This doesn't come easily and it represents something of a philosophical retreat. Insouciance remains I think the great word of tomorrow, but it is for the moment rendered impossible. For we live in the time that we do: extremely unpleasant and bloody in every sense of the word.

Forster thinks the key to surviving such a time is the forging of relationships between people based not on race, nation, or creed, but on fondness and friendship. I tend to agree with him here too. Starting from queer relationships founded upon trust and kindness between strangers, we may be able to build something worth protecting and cherishing. 

But such bonds are often despised today: we are encouraged to rediscover our roots and identify ourselves as members of ethno-tribal communities, or as the chosen followers of a supreme deity. Like Forster, I find this idea repugnant and, like Forster, if I had to choose between betraying my country, race, or god and betraying a friend, I only hope that I would have the guts to stick by the latter.       

So imagine my disappointment when someone I held dear emailed to say that, even at the price of love and friendship, she would sooner kiss goodbye to me or to any other individual with whom she had established a happy alliance, than compromise or abandon her ideals (including her slightly ludicrous fantasy of belonging to and representing a universal underclass to which she owes her ultimate loyalty).   

I should surely not have to remind someone who calls herself Beatrice that Dante placed Brutus and Cassius in the lowest circle of Hell precisely because they chose to betray their friend Julius Caesar, rather than Rome.