ENG328Y1 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Narration
7-9 pages double-spaced, 12 font
Discuss the theme of education in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
Thesis: Apart from Sandy, who ironically is unable to escape Miss Brodie’s influence, even in the
midst of her adulthood, the girls either meet premature deaths or successfully shake off their teacher’s
influence. I would posit that this failure is evidence of the capacity for our early education to shape who
we are depending on how closely our inherent beliefs align with those of our teachers.
Education influences some of the girls throughout their lives
Why are some girls affected and some left alone?
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Sandy is unable to escape Miss Brodie's influence no matter how hard she
tries
The extreme hatred that springs from extreme love
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Wants Miss Brodie's full attention:
"Sandy was jealous, because Rose was not supposed to be thoughtful."
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The inevitability of events
Whatever is meant to happen will happen
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Predestination
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No matter how hard we try to escape our destiny, it will always catch
up to us
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Each character is defined by a limited set of labels
We are simply a group of embodied stereotypes
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No one is an individual
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"Leading out" - she was wrong about the meaning of this
Representative of how she failed to control some of the girls as much
as she hoped because some of them just didn't have what she saw in
them
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The prime occurs for the girls and different times
It is not necessarily the time of your life when you are most beautiful,
but when you are flourishing most
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Were the girls in their prime during their time with Miss Brodie?
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Perhaps all the central characters were in their prime at the same time
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Essay Outline
Flat characters defined by limited labels allow us to impose our own
interpretations of them onto them
We are a group of embodied stereotypes
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Lack of individuality
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We find out about all the girls' futures early on
Our powers of presumption give us the powers of an omniscient
narrator
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But as much as we can know about people, we can never really get in
their heads
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Sandy's interest in psychology leaves her forever guessing
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Why does she keep talking about her prime?
The prime occurs at different point of their lives
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She really did better the lives of some of her students
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She made Mary happy despite how mean she was to her
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She made her feel like she belonged
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We know that the girls have pretty standard, boring futures
Maybe none of them have their primes
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Maybe Brodie is the best of them
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But that's why she's all alone
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However, she suppresses the kindness in the children as well (30)
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Leading out of knowledge
Plato's Meno
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Knowledge as recollection
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She claims to lead out what's in them but she really just tells them what
to think
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This works with Sandy because she already believes these things
because she is Miss Brodie
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But Miss Brodie can't understand the other girls and so they aren't
influenced by her
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None of us understand each other really
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Why could some girls escape her influence?
Sandy was a lot like Miss Brodie - manipulated the girls and betrayed
everyone from the start
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If anything she was worse
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Miss Brodie didn't really understand the girls, she was too self-centred
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Whereas Sandy was able to understand and exploit all the characters
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Still, Sandy ended up miserable and under Miss Brodie's influence for
her whole life
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Sandy's hatred for Miss Brodie stemmed from a deep admiration for
her and a love that disappointed her
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Paper 2
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
3:21 PM
