Chapter One
Chapter one of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" introduces readers to the world of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls, a Catholic school in Edinburgh, Scotland. The story begins with a group of sixteen-year-old Scottish girls known as the Brodie Set. The girls keep themselves distanced from the boys—as well as the other girls at Marcia Blaine—and have distinct personalities.
The six girls each have particular traits. Monica Douglas is an ugly Prefect with a bad attitude. Rose Stanley is highly sexual. Eunice Gardner is a petite gymnast and swimmer. Sandy Stranger is half-British, anxious with tiny eyes, and pronounces long vowels well. Mary Macgregor is lumpy, silent, and dumb. Jennifer Grey, Sandy’s best friend, is the prettiest of the set. But before the girls develop these attributes, they are ten years old and, for the first time, under the tutelage of Miss Brodie.
The story flashes back to 1931 to detail the girls’ two-year study under Miss Brodie’s watchful eyes, though it is preceded by a glimpse into the future, revealing Mary’s death in a hotel fire at the young age of 24. Throughout the novel, this non-chronological style remains characteristic.
Back in 1931, the story turns to Miss Brodie and the Brodie Set, neither of whom are well-liked by the teachers and students of Marcia Blain. It becomes evident that the Brodie Set are not friends due to common interests but instead because Miss Brodie took a special liking to each of them. Readers also learn that the headmistress of Marcia Blain, Miss Mackay, dislikes Miss Brodie and feels her method of teaching is "irrelevant to the authorized curriculum…and useless to the school."
Readers also learn that the founder of Marcia Blaine was a severe, deeply devout woman. A portrait of her hangs in the Great Hall; underneath it is a Bible with a single passage underlined: "Oh, where shall I find a virtuous woman, for her price is above rubies?" This sentiment is thematically important: At Marcia Blaine, virtue comes before all else, yet it is a trait that neither Miss Brodie nor the Brodie Set excel at, setting them up for conflict.
Miss Brodie is neither virtuous nor orthodox enough for Miss Mackay and the other faculty members, and her peculiarities mean she is always on the brink of getting fired. She teaches about fascists like Stalin and Mussolini; she also teaches art, love, and worst of all, that there is more to religion than Catholicism. Of all her lessons, she makes clear that one is of singular importance: "One's prime is the moment one was born for." This elusive prime becomes a tantalizing entity that her girls hope to discover for themselves.
The concept of a prime is, as Miss Brodie explains, synonymous with being the "crème de la crème," something she promises to make all her girls. This promise—that each girl has a “prime” and that there is something more to life than propriety and virtue—intrigues the girls, drawing them ever closer to their unconventional teacher, who teaches them all sorts of interesting things that proper ten-year-old girls living in the 1930s would never have been taught.
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