Muriel Spark’s classic novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was published in full by the New Yorker in October 1961 and subsequently in hardcover. The novel remains in print and was successfully adapted for the stage and screen by Jay Presson Allen.
If you ever saw the film, you won’t have forgotten Maggie Smith’s incredible portrayal of the title character. Smith took home the Oscar for best leading actress with that performance. She brought Miss Brodie’s manifold complications to life.
Miss Brodie is a teacher of girls at the Marcia Blaine School in Edinburgh and she is in her self-declared “prime.” The 1969 film is available in its entirety on YouTube. Below is the trailer.
“One’s prime is elusive,” Miss Brodie explains in Spark’s novel. “You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur. You must then live it to the full.”
I love this: “I have long wanted to know the Greek language, and this scheme will also serve to impress your knowledge on your own minds. John Stuart Mill used to rise at dawn to learn Greek at the age of five, and what John Stuart Mill could do as an infant at dawn, I too can do on a Saturday afternoon in my prime.”
And this: “Mona Lisa in her prime smiled in steady composure even though she had just come from the dentist and her lower jaw was swollen.”
Yesterday Don Lemon instructed CNN viewers that GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley “is not in her prime” at age 51, apparently because she is beyond her childbearing years. Don Lemon is an idiot. He doesn’t understand what he is talking about. He never had a prime. He may nevertheless have unintentionally contributed to the good life by calling Muriel Spark’s Miss Brodie to the mind of those of us who may admittedly be past our prime.
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