In the movie “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”, Jean Brodie, a female teacher, was determined to educate a few girls to be the creme de la creme. In this essay, it is argued that driven by her fanatical love for politics, and desire to shape others, Jean Brodie in fact justified her seduction by her identity as a teacher.
Being a seducer, Jean Brodie is able to validate the harms done by her influence and actions with her identity as a teacher. Being a teacher, Jean seemed to be not confined to the traditional teaching methods that make students feel bored. She took the students to recite poems under the elm tree outdoors in the autumn, and read Jane Eyre to them in the sewing class. In her spare time, she invited the girls to watch the music drama and learn history in Edinburgh’s old town. But those unique and creative teaching methods were by no means what she claimed to inspire students.
In the process, Jean took every opportunity to try to stuff her favorite literary and artistic works into the minds of these teenage girls. Jean Brodie said to young girls in the movie that her job is to put minds of on the shoulders of the young… Give her a young girl, and the student’s life is shaped by her. So she brainwashed her thoughts on the students, and her preferences became the only criterion for judging right and wrong. With this method, she can hide her desire to seduce her students beyond the classroom, impacting all aspects of the girls’ lives, and even their destiny.
In addition, there are political ideas of her time that works as a key factor in the process of seduction. Being a typical idealist fascinated by history, Jean didn’t understand politics, and can’t distinguish wrong and right. In this context, she crazily admired the Nazis leaders like Benito Mussolini and Francisco Franco, in a blind way because of her idealization. Not only was the teaching method too idealistic, Jean was also expecting to guide students to love what she loved, and hate what she hated. As a result, when Jean Brodie has excluded the traditional teaching content in her class, she has replaced it with her personal life experience and preferences for politics. This has gradually led her teaching to become a political propaganda. She has never forgotten to integrate political ideas such as fascism, the Spanish Civil War in full swing, and the confrontation between Catholicism and Calvinism in her classes. To this political end, she even thought highly of her student who joined the army, even if her political craze has led to the death of her student.
To sum up, Jean Brodie was motivated by her misunderstood sense of mission as a teacher, which has concealed her seductions and various harms done to children. In addition, as a politically fanatic and idealist, she was a dangerous teacher whose students were under the influence of political ideas.
In the movie “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”, the trajectory of Sandy’s growth from a young girl to a teenager reveals the development of seduction of Jean towards girls. In this essay, it is argued that Sandy can not be seen as a victim of seduction, as she got out of control of Jean at last, but she still suffered from loss of independence and innocence through her association with Jean Brodie.
Sandy can not be called as a victim of seduction, as luckily she can get rid of Jean’s seduction with her wisdom and keen observation. Sandy was one of Jean’s most trusted students among the Brodie set. As she was growing up, she constantly had a new understanding of Jean. It was shown when Sandy was drinking tea at Brodie’s house where Brodie was encouraging Sandy to help inspire Jany to be a lover of Mr. Lloyd. At this time, Sandy was a little jealous, and she also realized Brodie’ s absurdity.
So after she realized that Miss Brody considered herself God and tried to control the fate of others, the psychology of Sandy in adolescence has gradually changed. And as the movie progressed, Sandy’s mind and behavior grew in the opposite direction of Jean. Her resistance was silent and gradual. Jean was betrayed by Sandy who she trusted the most. Jean was forced to retire early. At the age of fifty-five, Jean suffered from cancer and eventually died alone. So after this revenge, it has shattered Jean’s dream of seduction, and stopped Sandy as well as other teenage girls from becoming victims of seduction any more.
Given the controls from Jean, the independence and innocence of Sandy were still harmed through her link with Jean Brodie. Sandy’s feelings for female teachers were a contradictory mixture of love and hatred. She respected Miss Brody as a teacher. Sandy was trusted the most by the female teacher Jean, and was also most affected by the latter. It seemed that the experience of being a member of The Brodie Set made her lose an independent thinking ability, and innocence. Being one of her loyal believers, Sandy took Jean’s own personal experience as the focus of her life. For example, Sandy has always been very concerned about Jean’s affairs with Mr. Lloyd, who loved Jean. So Sandy eventually developed an unethical relationship with Mr. Lloyd, and became Jean’s stand-in in love. Being instilled by some ideas that should not be known to children, Sandy has failed to live a life in an uncontrolled manner at first.
To sum up, Sandy, who was marked with excellent insight and calm mind, saw through the self-righteous pride and unreal ideals of this middle-aged Jean. By this, she escaped the fate of being reduced, but the harms on her independence as a teenage girl have been caused forever.