The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Summary
Muriel Spark

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Summary

Chapter 1

Boys on bikes talk to five sixteen-year-old, fourth-form school girls, who are distinguished from one another by the way they wear their panama hats. These girls, along with one other, form "the Brodie set," a select group formed six years before when they were Miss Brodie's elementary-level pupils.

In their conservative 1930s Edinburgh school, Miss Brodie is known for teaching unconventional subjects. Her students have heard of "Mussolini, the Italian Renaissance painters . . . and the word 'menarche.'" They count on their fingers, albeit quite accurately. Miss Brodie's set has by now adapted to the more orthodox curriculum of the upper grades, but they continue to be connected to each other through their friendship to their former teacher, whom the headmistress and others find highly suspicious. Miss Brodie boasts that she is "putting old heads on [their] young shoulders," and she affirms, "all [her] pupils are the... View more of the The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Summary