琼·布罗迪小姐的青春 (1961)

布罗迪小姐的青春是穆里尔·斯帕克所写的一本小说。该作品最初发表在纽约客杂志上，后于1961年由麦米伦出版公司发行单行本。2005 年，这部小说被时代杂志评选为 1923 年至今 100 部最佳英语小说之一。 1998年，该小说入选20世纪百大英文小说，排名第76位。

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a novel by Muriel Spark, the best known of her works. It was first published in The New Yorker magazine and was published as a book by Macmillan in 1961. The character of Miss Jean Brodie brought Spark international fame and brought her into the first rank of contemporary Scottish literature. In 2005, the novel was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to present. In 2026, it placed #31 on The Guardian's list of the 100 best novels of all time.

Plot summary

In 1930s Edinburgh, six 10-year-old girls, Sandy, Rose, Mary, Jenny, Monica, and Eunice, are assigned Miss Jean Brodie, who describes herself as being "in my prime," as their teacher. Miss Brodie, determined that they shall receive an education in the original sense of the Latin verb educere, "to lead out", gives her students lessons about her personal love life and travels, promoting art history, classical studies, and fascism. Under her mentorship, these six girls whom Brodie singles out as the elite group among her students—known as the "Brodie set"—begin to stand out from the rest of the school. However, in one of the novel's typical flash-forwards we learn that one of them later will betray Brodie, ruining her teaching career, but that Brodie herself will never learn the identity of this traitor.

In the Junior School, they meet the singing teacher, the short Mr. Gordon Lowther, and the art master, the handsome, one-armed war veteran Mr. Teddy Lloyd, a married Catholic with six children. These two teachers form a love triangle with Miss Brodie, each loving her, but she loves only Mr. Lloyd. However, Miss Brodie never overtly acts on her love for Mr. Lloyd except once to exchange a kiss with him, witnessed by Monica. During a two-week absence from school, Miss Brodie embarks on an affair with Mr. Lowther on the grounds that a bachelor makes a more respectable paramour: She has renounced Mr. Lloyd as he is married. At one point during these two years in the Junior School, Jenny is "accosted by a man joyfully exposing himself beside the Water of Leith." The police investigation of the exposure leads Sandy to imagine herself as part of a fictional police force seeking incriminating evidence in respect of Brodie and Mr. Lowther.

Once the girls are promoted to the Senior School (around age 12) but now dispersed, they hold on to their identity as the Brodie set. Miss Brodie keeps in touch with them after school hours by inviting them to her home as she did when they were her pupils. All the while, the headmistress Miss Mackay tries to break them up and compile information gleaned from them into sufficient cause for Brodie's dismissal. Miss Mackay has more than once suggested to Miss Brodie that she should seek employment at a 'progressive' school; Miss Brodie declines to move to what she describes as a 'crank' school. When two other teachers at the school, the Kerr sisters, take part-time employment as Mr. Lowther's housekeepers, Miss Brodie tries to take over their duties. She sets about fattening him with extravagant cooking. The girls, now aged 13, visit Miss Brodie in pairs at Mr. Lowther's house, where Miss Brodie frequently asks about Mr. Lloyd in Mr. Lowther's presence. At this point, Mr. Lloyd asks Rose and occasionally the other girls to pose for him as portrait subjects. Each face he paints ultimately resembles Miss Brodie, as her girls report to her in detail, and she is thrilled. One day when Sandy is visiting Mr. Lloyd, he kisses her.