Control Freak!

1. Control Freak Control Freak! The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Emily Muro & Xijun Zhu

2. Contents The Brodie Set A Class of its own Politics Within the book and history Marxist View Background Information Miss Brodie’s Ideology

3. Marxist View- Defined • HOW IT RELATES TO THIS BOOK • NEED HOME BUTTOn

4. Dialectical Materialism • Dialectical materialism - "the theory that history develops as a struggle between contradictions that ultimately find resolution in a synthesis of the two sides” • Miss Brodie’s powerful influence on the girls can be seen in the case of Mary Macgregor. Though Mary is in the Brodie set, she is blamed for everything • “Mary Macgregor must have chipped it. Mary was here last Sunday with Eunice and they washed up together” (86). • Brodie: “Sandy cannot talk to you if you are so stupid and disagreeable” (27). • Blaming Mary for everything leads the rest of the set to blame Mary and treat her with distaste • “Sandy said to Mary, ‘I wouldn’t be walking with you if Jenny was here.’” 29 • Miss Brodie’s overshadowing influence can be further validated through the girls’ application to Classical studies • “’Not everyone is capable of a Classical education. You must make your choice quite freely.’ So that the girls were left in no doubt as to Miss Brodie’s contempt for the Modern side” (59) • These overpowering influences lead the girls to want to grasp some fresh, new air • Sandy tries to escape her status, to be good to the “stupid” one in the set; she fails, however, because this action would leave her lonely, make her worse off than Mary • “[Sandy] was even more frightened then, by her temptation to be nice to Mary Macgregor, since by this action she would separate herself, and be lonely, and blameable in a more dreadful way than Mary” (28-29) • Miss Brodie’s overpowering influence on the girls and the girls’ inability to escape their status amounts to the betrayal of Miss Brodie, a “synthesis of the two sides,” relating back to one of the key ideas of Marxism: dialectical materialism

5. Politics/History • Book published in the 1960’s, postwar • Readers are familiar with the loss and entitlement • There is a generation of Britons who were able to look back at the class system before the war and understand only pieces of it without knowing its nuances (Kelly) • This book brings to light the nuances of the class systems and the injustices associated with it • Miss Brodie’s battle for Lowther parallels Hitler’s Third Reich (which Miss Brodie went to see in the book) • She, representing Hitler’s new reign, tries to outshine the Kerr sisters, which represent a previous, genteel generation (Kelly) • We see class struggle in that Miss Brodie acts as if she is better than the Kerr sisters; she tries to outdo them • “She decided to supervise the Kerr sisters…” (85). • She feeds Lowther and sleeps with him

6. Background Information • Spark was born in Edinburgh, the setting of the novel • Spark went to James Gillespie's High School for Girls where she was introduced to an “eccentric, charismatic teacher named Christina Kay • This teacher had a habit of speaking in non sequiturs and loved Mussolini • Such personality inspired her to form the fictional character, Miss Brodie • She always had disastrous taste in men, and at 19 she married Sydney Oswald Spark (or S.O.S., as she later referred to him), a math teacher and nonobservant Jew 13 years her senior, who promised her a new life in what was then Southern Rhodesia. • Miss Brodie’s character may have well been a synthesis of Spark’s eccentric teacher and herself • Her own marriage to a teacher may have inspired her to create the complicated love affairs between Miss Brodie, Mr. Lloyd, and Mr. Lowther • Her spouses’s promise for a new life may have inspired Miss Brodie’s fantasies • She keeps adding onto her stories and believe that she is a woman in her prime • “Miss Brodie’s old love story was newly embroidered, under the elm, with curious threads…” 69

7. Background Continued • The wedding night, Spark later said, was a ''botch-up,'' and so was the rest of the marriage. S.O.S, who was mentally unstable to begin with, became violent and abusive. • This could explain the complicated relationships in the story • Miss Brodie’s two love affairs lead to nothing • Miss Brodie is abusive in feeding Mr. Lowther so much food • Miss Brodie is manipulative of her students • “ Hierarchy causes underlings to vie for position and get in step; they in turn push away those below them. The elitism that enthralls Miss Brodie…requires vicitmization” (Monaghan) • Spark was a late bloomer and didn't publish her first novel until she was 39; It was based in part on a nervous breakdown she had suffered a few years earlier • “In the novel, the protagonist suffers delusions in which she appears to herself as a character in the very book we are reading” (McGrath) • “She was also a kind of exile, nowhere truly at home, bouncing from place to place and a little suspicious of others and their motives.” (McGrath) • In the novel, Miss Brodie never finds a place where she belongs • Her admirers married and went on honeymoons, but the book never mentions her having a family • Miss Brodie suspects each girl in her set to try to find out who betrayed her • “I think first of Mary Macgregor. Perhaps mary has nursed a grievance, in her stupidity of mind, against me…I think of Rose. It may be that Rose resented my coming first with Mr. L. I cannot think it could be Eunice…” (124).

8. The Brodie Class • A type of class struggle is that once you are involved in a class it is difficult to break out of it • “it was impossible for them to escape from the Brodie set because they were the Brodie set in the eyes of the school” (LOOK UP IN BOOK) • Even though they were placed in different houses within their school, they were not very involved in those houses because they were still The Brodie Set (FIND QUOTE • They were “famous” for something • Mary was known for her stupidity; she represents the lower class, the oppressed within the set • “Mary is guilty because she is perceived to be acting like a person from a lower class family and that assumption re-asserts the privileged status of the other students” (Monahan) • “The case of Mary Macgregor and Joyce Emily urge readers to consider…the destructiveness that results from elitism” (Monahan) • “Joyce Emily was trying very hard to get into the famous set…but there was no chance of it” (6). • This has become a class system in which nobody can get in or out • They are viewed as one, one class no matter how different they are • When Mr. Lloyd painted them they were “a different Jean Brodie under the forms of Rose, Sandy, Jenny, Mary, Monica and Eunice” (LOOK UP IN BOOK)

9. Ideology The taking of ideas and making them a reality • Because Miss. Brodie has spread her ideas to her “set” she has created a class within the school that is very different from the rest of the school • Class struggle between Miss. Brodie’s set and the rest of the school • Miss Brodie believed in living a significant life • Vocational way of life • Believed in taking advantage of ones prime • Forces her opinions onto her students • Gains psychological control over them