Muriel Spark, “Miss Brody’s best years”, from English: Eleanor Berger, The Armchair, 160 p.
Against the backdrop of the growing devaluation of the status of teachers (and their pay) and the severe shortage of them, it is interesting to read a 61-year-old novel about a teacher who, she claims, gave her life to the teaching profession. Miss Jean Brody is one of the most wonderful characters ever immortalized on a page, and later on a movie screen. It’s hard not to read about her without seeing Maggie Smith, who gave Miss Brodie eternal life in the 1969 film, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for it.
The film was called in Israel at the time “Miss Brody’s Spring”, and the previous Hebrew translation of the book (from 1986) bore the name “Miss Brody’s Aviva”. The original is: “the prime of…”. Elino’er Berger’s masterful new translation boasts a less poetic name, but no less accurate. Jean Brody announces again and again to her students at the girls’ school in Edinburgh and probably to herself, that she is in her best years (“The best years of of a person are the time for which he was born”) and at the height of its flowering.
Smith was 35 when she played the role; Brody in the book (spoiler alert!) dies prematurely at age 56, and may be in her 40s as she takes command of the “Brody girls,” the elite students she labels as having the potential to be “the crème de la crème” or “the elite of life.” The numbers don’t matter. What matters is the attitude. And Miss Brodie’s attitude is different and controversial at best. “Give me a girl at an age where I can make a mark and she’s mine forever.” She shapes her students in her image, as if they were lumps of plasticine, and accompanies their development from the age of 10 to 15, when they become little women, just before the transition to the upper division.
- Timings of entry and exit of fasting Tishah
Here is an example of a typical Brody lesson.
“In the meantime, I will tell you about my last summer break in Egypt … I will tell you about skin and hand care … about the Frenchman I met on the train to Biarritz … and I must tell you about the Italian paintings I saw. Who is the greatest Italian painter?”
“Leonardo da Vinci, Miss Brodie”.
“Not true. The answer is Giotto. He is my favorite painter.”
“Goodness, truth and beauty come first,” Miss Brodie declares, then elaborates: “Art and religion come first, then philosophy and finally science. This is the order of life’s great issues, this is the order of their importance.” She tries to inculcate life skills in her students, starting with correct posture and correct facial expression (“This is one of the best virtues a woman is endowed with, an expression of composure, whether for clan or for kindness. Look at ‘Mona Lisa’, there it is!”), moving on to dress regulations (” I don’t accept girls who roll up the sleeves of their shirts, no matter how nice the weather is. Roll them down immediately. We are civilized beings”) and even rules for opening a window (“15 centimeters is more than enough. Beyond that is massive”) and ending with romantic mannerisms. She tells them about Charlotte Brontë’s love life, and her own love life, and the girls become involved in these until all parties are in danger.
She has no interest in the official and routine school materials, although she is furious when they try to refer her to “progressive” schools that she calls “crazy”, although the extent of her trolling is not in doubt. And so her students “knew the basics of astrology, but not the date on which the Battle of Ploden took place or what the capital of Finland is. Every Brody group, except for one girl, counted with the help of their fingers, like Miss Brody herself, and the results they reached were more or less accurate.”
“Girls, I will make it my life’s mission,” she tells the students. “If I receive a marriage proposal tomorrow from the Lord President of the Court, I will refuse it. I am dedicating myself to you in the best of my years. Please line up now and walk with your head held high, held high like the head of the actress Sybil Thorndike, A woman whose appearance is noble.”
Spark, who shines a magic lantern on an entire world that has disappeared, describes in her wonderful and breathtaking writing also the type of women to which Miss Brodie belongs, seemingly difficult to define (“She was her own Edinburgh Festival,” says a former student of her over the years): “The spirited daughters of dead merchants or exhausted, of religious priests, of university lecturers, doctors, people who used to own large warehouses or have fishing rights, who gave these girls a sharp mind, red cheeks, a body like a horse, a satisfactory education, a healthy mind and financial means.
They could be seen manning the democratic counters of Edinburgh grocers, arguing with the manager at three o’clock in the afternoon about everything from the authenticity of the Holy Scriptures to the question of what the word ‘responsibly’ emblazoned on a jar of jam really meant. They went to lectures, tried to survive on honey and nuts, learned German and then went hiking in Germany.”
The novel accompanies Miss Brody and the students in several periods, and especially in the 1930s, on the eve of World War II, which Brody believes will not break out at all. She nurtures the individuality of her students and opposes “team spirit”, but actually builds a company of disciplined female soldiers who obey the commanding officer’s every whim, and is carried away by the magic of fascism. “Mussolini did great things,” she tells the girls, and has high hopes for Hitler as well, although she admits in retrospect that he “didn’t behave well.”
She also, in contrast, does not behave well all the time, and among other things bullies a slow student, Mary McGregor, humiliates her and tears her comic book. Later, the tragic end of McGregor will cause regret in all who come in contact with her. The ruin of the eccentric, colorful, lonely and unforgettable Miss Brodie is more than writing on the wall, it is an entire fortress. And despite her obsessive eagerness to know which of her students “betrayed” her and caused her to be expelled from school, it is clear to everyone that it is only a matter of time.
“Miss Brody’s Best Years” is a great literary work, a perfect and cross-generational novel that will be read with pleasure and wonder even in 200 years. It dwells on everything that stands behind the marketing slogan “Teacher for Life”, and leaves us to decide whether Brody is a formative or destructive force. It’s a story that has everything, including a sharp and accurate picture of adolescence and first revelations.
Like for example the moment when the student Sandy encounters a pineapple for the first time in her life, and concludes to herself that it has an “authentic taste and appearance of happiness”. The reunion with Miss Brody in her best years, and with Muriel Spark in her literary best, is such an authentic happiness.