The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Essay Paper Example For Students

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Essay Paper Muriel Sparks The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie depicts the coming of age of six adolescent girls in Edinburgh, Scotland during the 1930s. The story brings us into the classroom of Miss Jean Brodie, a fascist school teacher at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls, and gives close encounter with the social and political climate in Europe during the era surrounding the second World War. Sparks novel is a narrative relating to us the complexities of politics and of social conformity, as well as of non- conformity. Through looking at the Brodie set and the reciprocities between these students and their teacher, the writer, in this novel, reviews the essence of group dynamics and brings in to focus the adverse effects that the power of authority over the masses can produce. Sparks, in so doing projects her skepticism toward the teachers ideologies. This skepticism is played out through the persona of Sandy Stranger, who becomes the central character in a class of Marcia Blaine school girls. Sandys character is even more focally sculpted than the teachers favored disciples who came to be known as the Brodie Set; a small group of girls favored by Miss Jean Brodie in her Prime. The Brodie Set is a social system and a enigmatic network of social relations that acts to draw the behavior of its members toward the core values of the clique. The teacher Miss Jean Brodie projects upon this impressionable set, her strong fascist opinions. She controls this group on the basis that she is in her prime. Her prime being the point in life when she is at the height of wisdom and insight. Sandy pejoratively uses the personality traits and ideology of Brodie to overthrow her, by unveiling them. Sparks is clearly opposed to the kind of authoritarian power and control that is exercised over the impressionable adolescents by a conniving school teacher. The writer thus uses the pitfalls of social conformity found in classical studies, in order to make specific points. For example, research done by social psychologists Muzafer, Carolyn Sherif and Solomon Asch treated social conformity as an aspect of group dynamics (Coon, 560). This is present in Sparks novel, as seen by the dynamics of the group formed by a teacher named Miss Brodie. Brodies students, like the subjects of the said psychological studies, conform to a set of beliefs under the pressure and power of suggestion despite what could be better judgement. This is shown in the passage when Sandy expresses the desire to be nice to Mary, but decides not to because she knew that such an action would not be in accordance with the Brodie Sets system of behavior (Spark, 46). The narrator says about Sandy: She was even more frightened then, by her temptation to be nice to Mary Macgregor, since by this action she would separate herself, and be lonely, and blameable in a more dreadful way than Mary who, although officially the faulty one, was at least inside Miss Brodies category of heroines in the making. Theorists would say that an individual tends to conform to a unanimous group judgment even when that judgment is obviously in error (Coon, 561). The more eager an individual is to become a member of a group, the more that person tends to orient his or her behavior to the norms of the group (Coon, 561). This eagerness is true of Sandy Stranger. Miss Brodie often makes reference to Sandy overdoing things, or trying to hard. If the Brodie Set must hold their heads high, Sandy held her head the highest (Spark, 35). Miss Brodie warned that One day, Sandy, you will go too far. Also, the more ambiguous the situation, the greater the groups influence on the individual (Coon, 562). When the groups judgment reflects personal or aesthetic preference, however, the individual feels little pressure to conform as is the case with Sparks character, Sandy Stranger. Brodies fascism, born of an authoritarian political movement that developed in Italy and other European countries after 1919 as a reaction against the political and social changes brought about by World War I, is projected in this novel as the unsettling proliferation of socialism and communism in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. The early Fascist program was a mixture of left and right wing ideas that emphasized intense nationalism, productivism, antisocialism, elitism, and the need for a strong authoritarian leadership (Homans, 451). Essay On Jefferson Essay They express acquiescence to the norms of that group. Sandy rejects homogeneity. Spark, in effect, gives, through her antagonist Sandy, her own ideology as to what knowledge is worth having, and how that knowledge should be acquired and disseminated. Furthermore, we are given insight as to dynamics of how knowledge is verified and acted upon. The novelist approach is less theoretical and more personal. We do not like Miss Brodie for her way of distributing knowledge and exercising power. This is not accidental, but arises from, what seems to be Sparks own theological erudition and personal experiences. Spark, herself, like the character Sandy in her novel, rebels by conversion. Spark converted from Anglican to Roman Catholic during the 1950s, and clearly projects a stance against fascism and its ideals, in life and in her novel(Lodge, 122). There is thus, the divergence of the basic assumptions of the dynamics of social power and knowledge as reflected in the authors life as well as is projected in her novel (Lodge, 122). This approach then takes into account concepts that are not merely theoretical but also personal. There is however personal, some social grouping depicted, that accords with grouping identified by some theorist (Costanzo, 372). In Brodies group we find elements of the two basic kinds of social affiliation that most theorists present, sociality by partial fusion, and sociality by partial opposition (Coon, 563). The us as represented by the Brodie Set and the Other as represented by Sandy and all other Catholics and any not sharing the Brodies views (Coon, 563). There is some evidence to indicate that there is a relationship between self-confidence and resistance to group pressures to conform (Coon, 566). When we analyze the critical episodes in Brodiess dealings with her student we find a troubling endurance of a collective judgement of ideas, that marks the group. Brodie is eccentric in her teaching method and styles as she manipulates the minds and lives of all within the group. Spark thus unveils with careful timing, an epistemological leverage with which Sandy betrays and overthrows the Brodie Set. That Sandy leaves and becomes a nun is ironic since her strategy for preserving individuality may still be lost. The interest of any group is the natural enemy of its members individuality. Sandy must not be concerned only with the loss of individuality, as regards to the Brodie Set, but also with the danger of fascist ideology. Each individuals compliance with a group judgment, is perhaps counter to his or her own judgment, but at this small group level, conformity dispels individual judgement. Sandy projects to us that this kind of social conformity under the pressure of authority, is to be blamed for many social problems and adversities in the individual lives of the Brodie girls, and in society at large. Bibliography 1. Coon, Dennis. Psychology: Exploration and Application. West Publishing Company: 1980. 2. Costanzo, P. Conformity development as a function of self blame. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 14; 366-374: 1970. 3. Csikszentmihalyi, M. Larson, R. Being Adolescent. Harper Collins Publisher: 1984. 4. Homans, G.C. Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: 1961. 5. Lodge, David. The Uses and Abuses of Omniscience: Method and Meaning in Muriel Sparks The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Ithaca, Cornell: 1971.