This story, about a girls’ school, is full of sex, betrayal and tragedy. So a pretty accurate picture of a girls’ school overall. I speak with authority, as a thirteen year veteran of a Convent myself.
Miss Jean Brodie cultivates a small group of girls as her special set, all the while leading an impressively shady personal life, involving sleeping with the music teacher because she can’t get the art teacher. She isn’t big on teaching the actual curriculum, but is big on the Latin derivation of words and how good a leader Mussolini is.
In a creepy turn of events she encourages one of her students to have an affair with the arts teacher, and another to run off to fight for the fascists in Spain. Unsurprisingly these grade A life choices end in tears and she is eventually betrayed by one of her own set. Who then becomes a nun.
I think I read or saw this as a play many years ago, because I mostly recall it as a story about the girls. Apparently time is marching on, because I now read it as a story mostly about Miss Jean Brodie, who frankly I found rather inspirational. I loved how she went big on terrible choices while aggressively telling anyone who would listen about how she was in her prime. I mean: #lifegoals