Eng426 20th century english literature

Miss Gaunt: A gaunt woman, and the sister of a Calvinist minister, Miss Gaunt substitutes for Miss Brodie at Blaine in the autumn of 1931. Unlike Miss Brodie’s influence on the classroom, Miss Gaunt’s presence in the classroom subtracts, in her students’ minds, from the sexual significance of things. She becomes like a sister to Miss Ellen and Alison Kerr and advises
them to make their arrangement with Mr. Lowther permanent, but due to Miss Brodie’s intervention this does not come to pass.

0. 
   A Postmodern Reading of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
   

The novel entails core postmodernist themes and attributes. The life of Jean Brodie is characterized by constant feeling of loneliness and isolation. However, a proper modernist template will be to leave Jean Brodie in the state of loneliness and alienation
from the society. She obviously has a separate view of what education is and how education should be delivered from her headmistress and a larger number of teachers in the school. However, instead of ending the novel on the note that she is unsuccessful in her attempt to connect with other characters in the novel, her loneliness becomes a creative tool that Muriel Spark plays on to make the novel an enjoyable read. Miss Jean Brodie raises a set of young girls and imparts her knowledge of life into them, and instead of attempting a connection with the girls she diverts the energy and passion into raising them into crème de la crème. A major feature of postmodern writing is the art of playing with the theme of loneliness, despair and helplessness that modernist writing is associated with.
The purpose of the novel is not plain existentialist as most modernist novels are known to be. The focus is a mixture of characterization and existentialism. Leading modernists argue that characterization should be the focus of a proper novel and that character creating should be done through the use stream of consciousness. In this novel, the existential nature of Miss Jean Brodie herself is parodied. Miss Jean Brodie’s existentialist view is for art and beauty but the girls did not ultimately become what she might have hoped for. None of the girls turned out to be the “crème de la crème” and none even ends as a lover of art.
The novel also engages the day-to-day challenges of stereotyped educational system which Miss Jean Brodie defies to form a curriculum of her own. She teaches the girls about her experiences and etiquette. She is rarely seen teaching them any orthodox class subject. She only keeps the subject titles on the class room board in case the headmistress or other teachers in the school comes along. The difference in view of the headmistress and Miss Jean Brodie was highlighted but rather in a pseudo-confrontational manner. The headmistress and Miss Brodie were never seen arguing in the novel. The confrontations were only talked about. This difference in opinion is played with by Muriel Sparks as a form of mockery of the system. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie also highlights the experience of people living in the ghetto as Miss Brodie takes the girls on a walk; but much attention was never given to why they are the way they are except for the fact that the period was the time after the war.
In conclusion, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie embodies postmodernist attributes that gives the novel a deeper understanding. Reading the novel from a postmodernist standpoint gives a further insight into the background of the novel and the circumstances that could have informed the writing.