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How is the theme of religion explored in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie?
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The theme of religion in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is explored through the lens of Calvinism and its concept of predestination, as embodied by Miss Brodie. She sees herself and her select group of girls as the "elect." This theme is contrasted by Sandy's rebellion and conversion to Catholicism, challenging the rigid, exclusionary nature of Calvinism. The novel critiques the elitism in both religious and political ideologies, paralleling Calvinism with fascism.
In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, religion is presented as an aspect of social snobbery, something inherently exclusive. Far from being an expression of sincere spirituality, it is a tool of exclusion, a blunt instrument used to divide the sheep from the goats.
As an ardent Calvinist, Miss Brodie believes herself without question to be one of the elect, those destined by God from all eternity to be saved, while the rest of humanity, the sinners, are to be damned to hell. This firm belief in double predestination manifests itself in the exclusive little coterie of girls that Miss Brodie gathers about herself, which becomes almost a Calvinist sect in miniature.
But as Sandy becomes more mature, she instinctively rebels against such a black-and-white worldview. Her rebellion manifests itself in the betrayal of Miss Brodie and her subsequent conversion to Catholicism. Scotland at this time was a fiercely...
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Calvinist nation in which there was widespread prejudice against its minority Catholic population.
So, by knowingly joining the ranks of a despised minority, Sandy is taking upon herself the suffering of her coreligionists. To some extent, this can be seen as atonement for her betrayal of Miss Brodie. But at the same time it can also be seen as a rejection of the established order of Scottish society, shaped as it is by the Calvinist Church of Scotland.
Calvinism and Roman Catholicism both play a role in this novel. Miss Brodie is a Calvinist, but she sometimes speaks in language tinged with Catholicism. For example, she says:
Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.
This is a paraphrase of Jesuit Ignatius Loyola's statement that if he had a child until the age of seven, the child would be a Catholic forever. The statement also suggests that Miss Brodie has a religious view of her calling as teacher.
Miss Brodie's Calvinism is a form of Protestantism that embraced the idea of unconditional election or predestination. This theology insists that people's salvation or damnation is decided before they were born, and it comes out in Miss Brodie's choice of her "special girls," the "crème de la crème." Of course, she strays from Calvinism in taking on the role of God herself, deciding who will be "saved" by becoming part of her inner circle.
Her belief in an elite group of girls mirrors the fascist belief in the Aryans as a superior race. We can see how the elitism in fascism attracts her.
Sandy, who betrays Miss Brodie and converts to Catholicism, rejects Calvinism, just as Muriel Sparks did:
Later, when Sandy read John Calvin, she found that although popular conceptions of Calvinism were sometimes mistaken, in this particular there was no mistake, indeed it was but a mild understanding of the case, he having made it God's pleasure to implant in certain people an erroneous since of joy and salvation, so that their surprise at the end might be the nastier.
This could be interpreted as relating to the nasty outcome Miss Brodie endures when she is thrown out of the "paradise" of teaching at the school. All in all, Sparks questions the idea of the "election" of a superior group, both in religion and in politics.