We know her just as her young pupils knew her: as a collection of sayings, a rhetorical performance, a teacher's show. Miss Brodie, in other words, is not really "known" at all. But what does it mean to love a fictional character, and this one in particular? If you ask people what they "know" about Miss Brodie, they will likely recite a number of aphorisms: "I am in my prime", "you are the crème de la crème", and so on. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) was Muriel Spark's best novel, and Jean Brodie is one of the very few postwar fictional characters to have attained household status. I can still hear the rich way that actress pronounced the place where Mr Lowther lived, investing the name "Cramond" with all the diligent poise of Edinburgh gentility. My parents had the Penguin paperback on their shelves, and long before I read the novel I had seen the gentle old film, with russet-haired Gordon Jackson as the bashful Mr Lowther, and Maggie Smith, magnificently enunciating, her long neck demurely but elegantly wrapped in silk. L ike many people, I grew up with Miss Jean Brodie.
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