Muriel Spark was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on February 1, 1918. She was educated in Edinburgh, the setting used in most of her novels and went on the become editor of Poetry Review, an internationally acclaimed quarterly. She later published a series of biographies on writers like William Wordsworth, Mary Shelley and Emily Brontë and is best known for her novels, Memento Mori, The Ballad of Peckham Rye and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie for which she received multiple accolades. Spark was made a dame in 1993. She died on April 13, 2006, in Florence, Italy.
The portrayal of teachers in the creative medium of literature extends to a multiplicity of stereotypes; we have the understanding and fad-following women, the ‘Nazi’ referenced and bitter middle aged and those defined by a complete onset of apathy. Muriel Spark however through her eminent work, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie shatters this obtuse aspect of an unsaid rule of writing by creating an iconic figure of realistic …show more content…
She exudes the quality of supremacy, going against an established authority, willing to disrupt the lives of six innocent kids for personal gain and towing others into an immediate region of illegality, teachers and students alike. Her grandiosity is further unveiled when the reason for selecting those girls is revealed; their parents were more carefree and less involved in their kids’ lives thus confirming that her unsavoury anecdotes that were thrust upon girls would never reach the ears of authority. Moreover, Brodie considered every individual to be against her, being a figure of command, in the form of Miss Mackay, the headmistress whose suspicion of Miss Brodie’s motive open from the beginning of the novel or of submissive figures such as the Kerr sisters, who became the housekeepers of Mr. Lowther’s spacious house while she regularly continued her sexual relationship with
The portrayal of teachers in the creative medium of literature extends to a multiplicity of stereotypes; we have the understanding and fad-following women, the ‘Nazi’ referenced and bitter middle aged and those defined by a complete onset of apathy. Muriel Spark however through her eminent work, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie shatters this obtuse aspect of an unsaid rule of writing by creating an iconic figure of realistic …show more content…
She exudes the quality of supremacy, going against an established authority, willing to disrupt the lives of six innocent kids for personal gain and towing others into an immediate region of illegality, teachers and students alike. Her grandiosity is further unveiled when the reason for selecting those girls is revealed; their parents were more carefree and less involved in their kids’ lives thus confirming that her unsavoury anecdotes that were thrust upon girls would never reach the ears of authority. Moreover, Brodie considered every individual to be against her, being a figure of command, in the form of Miss Mackay, the headmistress whose suspicion of Miss Brodie’s motive open from the beginning of the novel or of submissive figures such as the Kerr sisters, who became the housekeepers of Mr. Lowther’s spacious house while she regularly continued her sexual relationship with