Bring out the differences between the major characters in The prime of Miss Jean Brodie

The sinister Jean Brodie continues to bewitch: decades after the publication of the novel that bears her name, the myth of her humanism persists; she has long been shorthand for a strain of idealism and independent thought that she never represented in the first place. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, about a controversial teacher and the rebellious pupils in her charge, is often categorized alongside more conventional novels and films set in the classroom—stories about inspiring educators and their unformed and stubborn, but ultimately obedient, students—and is even treated on occasion as one of the genre’s progenitors. It’s a dubious distinction for a book that so gleefully scorns the ideas it’s credited for popularizing. Why, after all these years—and a play, and an academy award winning film adaptation—can we still not get a handle on Jean Brodie? Because Muriel Spark wanted it that way.

First time readers burdened with the expectation that they are encountering The Dead Poet’s Society for women are sure to be astounded: Miss Brodie is charming and shallow, generous and tyrannical, curious and cruel. In an early passage, the insightful Sandy reflects on the way another student is continuously rejected by her cohort for the sake of everyone else’s belonging:

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