On my mind: Dracula

I'm about to start planning my A level English coursework on 19th century Gothic literature. Our texts are Dracula, Frankenstein and the poetry of Keats. We were allowed to write our own questions, and I came up with: 

I sometimes think we must all be mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait waistcoats.

Discuss the themes of madness, melancholy and mania in Dracula, Frankenstein and the work of Keats.

I've always been interested in changing attitudes towards mental illness, so I'm pleased that I've managed to structure my question around a topic which I'm actually passionate about.

I obviously won't post my coursework until it's been moderated because it would get flagged as plagiarism when I tried to submit it, but expect it to appear some time around... August. I'm sure you're all waiting with bated breath!

On a related note: 

I bought fangs. 

'Elementary'. Or is it?

For those of you who don't know, 'Elementary' is the in-development CBS Sherlock Holmes series. Set in modern day New York.

I have issues with this for a variety of reasons:

1) It's clearly a rip-off of BBC's Sherlock series. According to this article, CBS actually approached the BBC about making a licensed American version of the show and were rejected (not surprisingly - this list of 'American television series based on British television series' shows how notoriously unsuccessful hit UK shows are when they are adapted for a US audience).

2) It's set in New York. Do CBS think Americans are incapable of enjoying tv not set in America? The Sherlock Holmes books are about as British as you can get - take Sherlock out of 221B Baker Street and the stories lose all their charm. Can you imagine Sherlock surrounded by American accents? It just doesn't work.

3) Sherlock goes to rehab. According to the information already released, Sherlock is a Scotland Yard consultant who ends up in New York after a stint in rehab to kick his drug habit. This probably riles me up more than anything else. Sherlock has always been a functioning user: in the books, he takes cocaine to stimulate his brain and to keep his thought processes as fast as possible. In 19th century England, cocaine and opium were legal, making cigarettes and nicotine patches such a good 21st century alternative in BBC's Sherlock. Making a 21st century Holmes a user of illegal drugs who becomes so dependant that he goes into rehab shows little regard for the updating of contextual points to fit the modern setting (something that Moffat and Gatiss do amazingly well).

4) Watson is a woman. I don't have a problem with this as a concept - I think it could be done very well, but I'm worried it won't be. Will they fall in love? Will she throw herself at him, only to find him uninterested? Will she be a lesbian? Who knows. All I know it that they've switched her from an ex-army doctor to a surgeon who has been struck off, and that her name is Joan (Joan?! If I had to feminise the name 'John' I definitely would have gone for Jo). When I told my friend about this she let out an anguished cry of 'Oh my god! They're going to have sex!', which pretty much sums up all my feelings about 'Joan Watson'.

I guess all we can do is wait and see. It could turn out to be fantastic! Jonny Lee Miller has been cast as Sherlock, and I adore everything he's ever been in; I'm not too sure how he'll play Sherlock, but let's hope his Midas touch can salvage what currently seems to be a hideous mess. Still, I do think that people who want to watch something that's based on Sherlock Holmes but set in America could just watch House...

Links:

How Dr. Gregory House is like Sherlock Holmes

'Watson Was a Woman?' - transcript of a tongue-in-cheek speech given at a 1941 meeting of the Baker Street Irregulars, arguing the point that Sherlock and Watson are nothing more than a married couple

Favourite Quotes

The amazing thing is that every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way they could get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.

Lawrence Krauss - A Universe From Nothing

Favourite Poems: Having a coke with you

Favourite Poems: Women of 1926

Mother’s advice, and Father’s fears,
Alike are voted—just a bore.
There’s Negro music in our ears,
The world’s one huge dancing floor.
We mean to tread the Primrose Path,
In spite of Mr. Joynson-Hicks.
We’re People of the Aftermath
We’re girls of 1926.

In greedy haste, on pleasure bent,
We have no time to think, or feel
What need is there for sentiment
Now we’ve invented Sex Appeal?
We’ve silken legs and scarlet lips,
We’re young and hungry, wild and free,
Our waists are round about the hips
Our skirts are well above the knee

We’ve boyish busts and Eton crops,
We quiver to the saxophone.
Come, dance before the music stops,
And who can bear to be alone?
Come drink your gin, or sniff your ‘snow’,
Since Youth is brief, and Love has wings,
And time will tarnish, ere we know,
The brightness of the Bright Young Things.

James Laver

“By the end of Act One of Othello, the scene has been set for the tragedy to unfold.” Discuss the truth of this statement, making close use of the text to illustrate your points.

Othello is primarily a domestic tragedy, although Shakespeare uses the background political drama of the war with the Turks throughout the play as a vehicle with which to further the plot, creating convenient settings which throw together the main characters in a chaotic mêlée. The play revolves around the impending tragedy, which unfolds slowly over the course of the play. Despite this, it seems that by the conclusion of act one, the scene has indeed been set for Iago’s devilish plot to manifest itself over the course of the successive acts.

Iago, the scheming grand master of machinations, is vital to the evolution of the play’s tragic element. Throughout Act One, his skill at the manipulation of other characters has become marked; one striking example occurring when Iago takes advantage of Roderigo’s lovelorn state by persuading him to ‘put money in [his] purse’. Iago’s disingenuous nature also becomes apparent during scenes one and two, first in words –‘I am not what I am’ – and later in deeds when he stays in the shadows while waking Brabantio so that he can keep up his mask of sincerity towards Othello. The development of Iago’s character in scene three, with his ‘Virtue? A fig!’ speech, reveals fully to the audience for the first time his low opinion of humanity and truly sociopathic tendencies. The result of this is that, by the time Iago unveils his grand plan in the soliloquy which concludes Act One, it seems credible that he could orchestrate such a tragedy on a grand scale.

During the course of the first act, Shakespeare raises tension through the use of dramatic irony. From the first scene and the line, ‘I follow him to serve my turn upon him’, it is clear to the audience that Iago is not the faithful standard-bearer that he appears to be, but other characters remain oblivious to his Machiavellian cunning, making it deeply ironic when he is given the epithet ‘honest Iago’. Across act one, the chasm between what the audience knows about Iago and what Othello knows about him deepens; by scene three, when Othello tells the Duke that Iago is a man ‘of honesty and trust, To his conveyance I assign my wife’, the audience knows enough of Iago’s character to be sure that he will use this turn of events to his advantage, setting the scene for the impending tragedy of later acts. By the time Iago has revealed the bones of his plan in the ‘Thus do I ever make the fool my purse’ soliloquy, it has become clear to the audience that Shakespeare will exploit this dramatic irony for the purpose of effective tragedy.

deliberately uses the staggered introduction of characters to advance the plot in Othello. Spreading the introduction of Iago, Roderigo, Othello and Desdemona over the first three scenes of act one effectively builds up a formulaic pattern: with both Othello and Desdemona, their entrance is preceded by another character building up a picture of them which is later proven to be untrue. By leaving the introduction of Cassio, the last piece of the puzzle, until later, Shakespeare builds tension; so many characters have differed wildly from what was expected of them that the audience is unsure whether Cassio will live up to his reputation as someone with ‘a person and a smooth dispose to be suspected’. Though the development of the tragedy cannot be fully complete without Cassio, the postponement of his entrance effectively adds to the suspense felt by members of the audience.

Though it is apparent to the audience early on that some form of tragedy will take place, the nature of the tragedy itself is not clear until far later on, unlike in a tragedy such as Oedipus where the audience is very aware of how the play will end. Iago’s original intention seems to be the demotion of Cassio, the ‘counter-caster’ who was promoted to the role of lieutenant while Iago was passed over.  Although later he formulates the plan involving the supposed indiscretions of Desdemona and Cassio as revenge for Othello’s possible involvement with Emilia  it is impossible for the audience to guess how the play will end after only watching act one. As a character, Othello remains fairly two-dimensional during act one; he tends to speak in short, enigmatic sentences, such as ‘’Tis better as it is’, and his character is not developed more fully until act two. Othello’s persistent calm in the face of all that happens in act one makes it very hard for the audience to imagine his rage and jealousy later in the play, let alone his tragic murder of Desdemona.

Clearly, the scene has been set for the tragedy to take place, in that it is made apparent to the audience that Iago will carry out his plan involving Othello, Desdemona and Cassio. However, at this point in the action, it is far from obvious how the play will conclude, meaning that suspense gradually builds until a far later moment of realisation. By the end of act one, most of the bones of the tragedy are in place, meaning that the act finishes with the action of the play suspended: it is not until later that the tragedy itself swings into motion.

In Bram Stoker’s Dracula how is the theme of isolation explored through the characters?

Isolation is a central theme that runs through Bram Stoker’s Dracula, connecting many disparate threads of storyline into a cohesive novel. Isolation, as it is explored through the characters, keeps people apart, but together they must face the idea of the hostile supernatural world. Isolation as a theme is important to the novel because vampires, by their very nature and fact of being, are isolated; in becoming a vampire, one is necessarily cut off from society and doomed to a bleak eternity among the ranks of the living dead. The three main types of isolation explored by Stoker in Dracula are: physical isolation of the characters within a hostile environment; emotional isolation of the characters within society; structural isolation of the characters within the body of the novel, each having a different effect and outcome on the narrative.

In Dracula, much of the action is set in far flung, physically isolated locations, whether that is Whitby or Transylvania. The physical isolation of these settings is explored through the characters which inhabit them, mainly Jonathan in Transylvania, though this is also experienced to a lesser extent by those in Whitby. Throughout the novel, Stoker links the physical isolation of his characters with their gradual descent into madness. This is particularly noticeable and important for the character of Jonathan; his physical isolation within the desolate surrounds of Dracula’s castle manifests itself as the degeneration of his sanity. The diary entry reading, ‘Whilst I live on here there is but one thing to hope for: that I may not go mad, if, indeed, I be not mad already,’ shows that Jonathan’s isolation from human company directly leads to him doubting his own mind, and a variety of worrying traits begin to emerge, such as the inability to distinguish between reality and illusion. His encounter with the ‘weird sisters’ proves almost too much for his already fragile mental state, and upon waking the next morning, he remarks, ‘I suppose I must have fallen asleep; I hope so, but I fear, for all the following was startlingly real – so real that now, sitting here in the broad full sunlight of the morning, I cannot in the least believe that it was all sleep.’ Fearing for his life, and hating his dependence upon the Count, the emotionally starved Jonathan seeks to regain some degree of control over both his actions and his memories by obsessively searching for ‘proof’ and ‘certain small evidences’ to explain what has happened to him. In the first part of the novel, Stoker uses the first person diary entries of Jonathan to explore the mental impact of such extreme physical isolation and entrapment, allowing the reader to form a strong bond with the character that will last even when the perspective of the novel changes. The first person narrative is especially effective; the window into Jonathan’s psyche makes the link between isolation and madness even more insightful.

Emotional isolation is the most common variation of the theme, and the one which is more easily explored through the character of Dracula. As the title character, Dracula is the lynchpin which holds the otherwise meaningless elements of the plot together, with minimal conflict. Though he achieves the distinction of forming the heart of the novel when he has no pulse of his own at all, Dracula himself is the most emotionally isolated character of the entire cast. Dracula lives alone except for the three female vampires, and he has no intellectual equals among those who reside with him. The emotional isolation of Dracula is explored most extensively during the exchanges between Jonathan and the Count; though told from Jonathan’s point of view, sentences such as, ‘The count stayed with me, chatting and asking questions on every conceivable subject, hour after hour,’ and, ‘And it was evident that he wanted to talk, if only for talking’s sake,’ clearly show that his captor craves the intellectual companionship of humans. Having transcended death some 900 years ago, Dracula may no longer actually be human but clearly retains some human characteristics and Stoker explores how an exile from society would act when a clever, eloquent and knowledgeable solicitor wandered into his environment. Dracula’s loneliness is temporarily ameliorated through his interactions with Jonathan, and he seems to genuinely enjoy their conversations about London, ‘I have come to know your great England; and to know her is to love her. I long to go through the crowded streets of your mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is’, as well jumping at the chance to improve his language skills ‘You shall, I trust, rest here with me a while, so that by our talking I may learn the English intonation; and I would that you tell me when I make error, even the smallest, in my speaking’. Still, as the day of Jonathan’s departure and Dimitri’s journey to England creeps closer, Dracula’s loneliness once again becomes apparent, shown through lines such as the oddly poignant ‘I shall be all alone’. Although Dracula is of course a creature of great evil and one of the greatest literary monsters ever imagined, Stoker cleverly gives the reader enigmatic hints of the man that Dracula once was; the soft whisper of, ‘Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past. Is it not so?,’ conveys more emotion than an overt back story would, and emphasises Dracula’s present isolation. Stoker also ensures that the theme of isolation, as explored through Dracula, runs like a thread throughout the whole novel. The distressingly moving line, ‘And my heart, through weary years of mourning over the dead, is not attuned to mirth,’ takes on even more meaning after Dracula’s destruction; it is only by crumbling into dust that this hated monster can at last find peace.

It seems fitting that Mina, who acts throughout the novel as Dracula’s foil, is also shown by Stoker to carry the burden of emotional isolation. However, while Dracula is isolated by his vampirism, Mina is isolated by her social situation as an emancipated woman, showing that Stoker appreciated the problems faced by the New Woman at the time. As an orphan who works for a living, it seems strange that Mina’s closest friend is the frivolous, flirtatious Lucy who leads a life of leisure and luxury. The reader realises that Mina is misunderstood by those around her, who view her as something of a mother figure – Arthur is said to cry ‘like a wearied child’ on her shoulder – instead of an intellectual equal. Even her relationship with Jonathan, which seems bizarrely free from any kind of physical contact, lacks true depth; while she works hard to keep up with his studies, the only times he thinks of her in Transylvania are when he is wracked with guilt over his meeting with the female vampires and when he tastes some delicious foreign dish, making the note ‘Mem., get recipe for Mina’. Therefore, although Mina has stable and affectionate relationships with Jonathan and their friends, she will to some extent always be isolated by the lack of understanding and acceptance given to emancipated women in society at the time.

Stoker’s use of structure in the novel only serves to emphasise the isolation of the characters throughout. The often epistolary structure means that there is very little actual contact between characters. This idea of letters replacing actual human contact cleverly accentuates the theme of isolation; diary entries present fully formed bubbles of character to the reader, yet these characters rarely come into full contact with each other. This isolated structure means that the reader alone can see the whole picture and draw connections from otherwise unrelated material, not unlike Mina sitting atop the hill with Whitby unfolded beneath her:  ‘The band on the pier is playing a harsh waltz in good time, and further along the quay there is a Salvation Army meeting in a back street. Neither of the bands hears the other, but up here I hear and see them both.’ Each band could be viewed as a different narrative or point of view; while within the story they appear isolated, from the lofty position of the reader, or indeed the writer, they are intrinsically connected. 

It is clear that in Dracula Stoker uses the traditional folktale of the vampire superstition as a background against which he could create a story exploring the theme of isolation in society and personal relationships. It is a story that is as much about human nature as it is about the supernatural.

Diagnosing literature

Being a curious kind of a person, I can't help but attempt to diagnose the afflictions which strike down various ficticious characters. While reading The Fall of the House of Usher, I stumbled upon a passage which got me thinking. 

Roderick Usher is said to have:

'suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses:
insipid food was alone endurable, he could wear only garments of certain texture, the odors of all flowers were oppressive, his eyes were tortured by even a faint light, and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror'.

This sounds suspiciously like Sensory Processing Disorder, something which I am quite familiar with. According to the SPD Foundation, a person suffering from this neurological disorder 'may over-respond to sensation and find clothing, physical contact, light, sound, food, or other sensory input to be unbearable'. In other words, you could only want to wear certain fabrics, hate the smell of flowers, be blinded by the light and despise any sound but strings. 

But that's not the end of the story. 

A little research told me that Poe was suffering from something called MUSES Syndrome, a 'chronic syndrome characterized by hyper- and/or hypo sensitivity affecting at least 4 of the 5 primary senses (smell, vision, hearing, taste and touch)' caused by carbon monoxide poisoning.

 Roderick Usher's mysterious illness was in fact Poe's own, and maybe this goes a little way towards explaining why Poe himself was such a troubled soul. You probably would be too if you felt awful all the time.

To what extent do Frank McCourt in Teacher Man and Muriel Spark in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie present a portrait of an unorthodox teacher, with particular emphasis on the teacher’s influence, whether good or bad, over students and the issue of inclusivity versus exclusivity?

The word teacher has been in use since the 14^th century and, quite simply, means ‘one whose occupation is to instruct’.[1] Nonetheless, the role of teacher can stretch far beyond the straightforward transmission of knowledge, with teachers serving as advisors, confidantes and sometimes friends. The character of the teacher is one which is explored frequently throughout literature, with two main stereotypes appearing time and time again: the inspirational but essentially flawed teacher, such as Hector in The History Boys, and the teacher with absolutely no redeeming features at all, Dickens’ infamous Wackford Squeers being a good example, whose presence eventually allows the protagonist to triumph over adversity. However, Frank McCourt in Teacher Man and Miss Brodie in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie seem to fit neither of these stereotypes, occupying a literary niche all of their own: that of the unorthodox teacher.

Teacher Man and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie both feature unorthodox teachers as the main character, though Frank McCourt and Jean Brodie are unorthodox in very different ways and have different aims in mind. While both teachers use storytelling as a key component of their lessons, they do so with dissimilar motives:  McCourt tells stories to connect and engage with his pupils, and to reach his difficult students in a way that would otherwise be impossible, but Miss Brodie often uses wholly or partly fictionalised narratives to make her appear worldly and cultured in the eyes of her girls, thus strengthening her hold over the group. On one memorable occasion, Sandy becomes ‘fascinated’ by Miss Brodie’s ‘method of making patterns with facts’ when she adapts stories of her old lover, Hugh, to fit the artistic leanings of her new lovers Mr Lloyd and Mr Lowther. Although McCourt’s storytelling seems to predominately bring about good, Ron Charles suggests that ‘Charming students with your personal life is one way to lead them into the wisdom, beauty and inspiration of literature, but for the teacher this is such an intoxicating, addictive method that it's hard to keep the real destination clearly in mind’[2] – McCourt so badly wants his pupils to like him, and to behave, that he is willing to sacrifice some part of their education in favour of long-winded and mostly irrelevant tales of his life in Ireland. Still, there are moments when McCourt’s storytelling, though often straying from the prescribed curriculum, helps his students to relate to him and see him as a fellow human being, with one boy saying that ‘it was funny to think you had a teacher up there that worked like real people’. He shows his pupils that they are on the same level as him, while Jean Brodie deliberately crafts narratives designed to provoke feelings of awe and, up to a point, alienation in her pupils. While Frank McCourt tends to use all kinds of stories as an addition to his teaching, encouraging pupils in one grammar lesson to think about just why ‘John went to the store’, Jean Brodie uses hers as a replacement, regaling her class with tales of European culture and love affairs past and present.

Most people would agree that the relationship between pupil and teacher is commonly put on hold when they are not in the classroom and generally comes to an end when the pupil leaves the school. Frank McCourt and Jean Brodie are similar in that they both break down the conventional boundaries between pupil and teacher. Jean Brodie primarily works to break down the physical boundaries between pupils and teachers, inviting the girls over to her house and later encouraging a sexual relationship between Rose and Mr Lloyd. However, Frank McCourt works more to break down the mental boundaries in the pupil/ teacher relationship, encouraging his students to think for themselves and look at their world in a new light, and sparking discussion by asking them to imagine the private lives of their teachers, even down to the options of cotton pyjamas versus sleeping naked.

A similarity between the roles of Frank McCourt and Jean Brodie as teachers is that both experience frequent clashes with higher authorities throughout their careers. Frank McCourt only ever experiences true difficulty when interacting with high-level administrators who he believes have lost touch with the pupils in their schools. He is often uneasy about socialising with his fellow teachers, but this seems to stem from his deep personal insecurity and lack of confidence in his teaching abilities rather than a conflict of personalities, such as the one which he experiences with Mitchel B. Schulich. Rosetta Marantz Cohen, in her Autobiography as Pedagogy suggests that, while McCourt’s idiosyncratic teaching style is frowned upon by box-ticking bureaucrats, McCourt himself is trying to go above and beyond the role of an ordinary teacher and teach his pupils not just about English, but about life. Marantz Cohen talks about McCourt’s unit at Stuyvesant High School which involves reading recipes to music as a lesson ‘in pluralism and self-revelation [which] receives only mixed reviews from a constituency deeply concerned with college admissions and high stakes testing.’

While Jean Brodie also has some spectacular clashes with the senior management team at Marcia Blaine School, hers are the result of motives not nearly as noble as McCourt’s. Miss Brodie purposefully distances herself from her teaching colleagues, making herself a paragon of academic dedication whose sole purpose in life is to give up her ‘prime’ to teach her girls. However, Spark darkens the picture with Miss Brodie’s talk of the ‘conspiracies’ and plots to force her out of her position. It is clear that Miss Brodie seeks to increase her self-importance - she seems proud that Miss McKay has concerns about her: in her eyes, she is standing her ground over values which are important to her. However, presented as the situation is by Spark - through the eyes of Miss Brodie’s pupils, it becomes clear that Miss Brodie has in fact achieved nothing more than the corruption of innocent minds: something which the higher authorities are right to be concerned about.

The level of influence which teachers have over their pupils, particularly younger students, is sometimes a controversial issue. Miss Brodie has such power over her pupils that they seem like puppets, their only purpose being to carry out the will of their puppeteer. Eventually Sandy breaks away from Miss Brodie’s power, but she is never entirely free: even when she is controlling her own free will in the act of the betrayal, she is doing it with the very conscious thought of how it will hurt Miss Brodie. Sandy has been controlled so completely that, when she eventually does sever the ties holding her back, she is overwhelmed by vindictive feelings and she positively relishes finally having power over the one who has suppressed her for so long. Miss Brodie works by taking advantage of her pupils’ impressionability and planting ideas in their heads, often with dire consequences, as Joyce Emily’s decision to run away and fight in Spain shows. However, this manipulation extends far beyond the classroom; over time Miss Brodie insinuates herself so completely into the girls’ collective consciousness, with Sandy understanding ‘them as a body with Miss Brodie for the head’, that she is able to control even the minutiae of their lives, spouting aphorisms regarding everything from the ‘use of cleansing cream and witch-hazel over honest soap and water’ to membership of the Girl Guides.

Like Jean Brodie, Frank McCourt also influences the students that he teaches throughout his career. However, there are few other similarities between the two in this respect because during the period covered in Teacher Man McCourt shows himself to almost exclusively influence his pupils for good. His gift is that he makes his students think for themselves and believe they could do things that they had never even imagined. One outstanding example is that of Sarena, who began as one of the most difficult students, but was eventually won over by McCourt’s open and accepting nature and later wrote to a friend expressing her wish to ‘go to college and teach little kids’. 

When Spark wrote The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie she was trying to make a particular point, as is the case with many authors. Although this is never made completely explicit, the power that Miss Brodie exercises over her pupils and the references to fascism both indicate that the author is questioning the idea of one person dictatorially ruling over the oppressed masses.  With this in mind, the structure of the novel, and in particularly the non-linear narrative, allows the reader to see short episodes of the girls’ adult lives and this means that the reader very quickly becomes aware of the long-term and far-reaching consequences of Miss Brodie’s influence. Teacher Man differs from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in that it is a memoir and thus autobiographical. McCourt is not so intent upon making a point, since his focus is on the recount of his experiences in the challenging classrooms of a New York school. He portrays himself disparagingly as a disorganised, unaccomplished, yet affable, raconteur who manages to form a bond with his initially disinterested students through his unorthodox teaching methods.

One of the most controversial and unorthodox aspects of Miss Brodie’s teaching career is her choice to focus all her attention on a small, handpicked group of pupils. The Brodie set is in its very nature exclusive, but Spark portrays the group as exceedingly factional, with Miss Brodie playing the girls off against each other; making and breaking bonds for her own personal gain and enjoyment. The exclusive nature of the group is fostered by Miss Brodie because it makes her seem more important and desirable in the eyes of her chosen girls. Small numbers of people are easier for her to control, explaining in part why there was ‘no chance’ of Joyce Emily getting into ‘the famous set’. Jean Brodie is able to be at her best, and live her life in the way she prefers, with a tight, private group; Sandy describes them as ‘Miss Brodie’s fascisti, not to the naked eye, marching along, but all knit together for her need and in another way, marching along.’ McCourt has favourites, but for different reasons – they are usually his biggest successes or those pupils with the most touching stories, such as Kevin. Miss Brodie’s favourites tend to have nothing in common and are not picked individually for their academic prowess or success, but as a whole for the ease with which they could be manipulated.

Frank McCourt believes one of his duties as a teacher is to foster an atmosphere of inclusivity and understanding in his classrooms. Being an outsider himself, he understands more than most people the desire harboured by so many teenagers to be included and, as such, he works hard to include even the most uncooperative students in his classes. The sense of achievement that McCourt feels when he finally connects with a difficult student is shown particularly well in his encounters with Clarence, the student who was at first too intimidated by the other students to read his work aloud, but was eventually convinced that his ‘street stories’ were as worthwhile as the rest of the students’ writing. McCourt is not concerned with control, but only with making everyone the best that they can be. He works to produce a classroom community that is successful and cohesive, while Miss Brodie’s exclusivity results in the abuse of power and an atmosphere of competitive repression.

The writings of Frank McCourt in Teacher Man and of Muriel Spark in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie present vivid and compelling portrayals of unorthodox teachers. They remind their readers of the huge power and influence that unscrupulous teachers could wield over their students, and the responsibility that individual teachers have to teach an appropriate curriculum in the classroom. They emphasise that teachers are entrusted with groups of students in closed classrooms, where only they and their classes are privy to events. Unorthodox methods may not be encouraged within the administrative system of schools, but teaching is most commonly a private pastime where only the students participate in the teacher’s lessons: once the necessary qualifications have been obtained there are few occasions when lessons are observed by other adults.  For these reasons, occasional and remarkable unorthodoxy of teaching methods may yet occur in schools – just as unorthodox and remarkable teachers will join the teaching profession. One can only hope that future recruits to the teaching profession are more organised and knowledgeable that Frank McCourt and less dangerous than Jean Brodie. It must be remembered that, whether good or bad, the influence of an unorthodox teacher will often stay with ex-pupils for life; when visited, years later, at her convent, Sandy was asked ‘What were the main influences of your school days, Sister Helena? Were they literary or political or personal? Was it Calvinism?’ Sandy simply replies:

‘There was a Miss Jean Brodie in her prime.’

Bibliography:

Faulks on Fiction, Sebastian Faulks

Scotnotes: Muriel Spark’s “Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”, David S. Robb

Autobiography as Pedagogy: A Review of Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man, Rosetta Marantz Cohen

Class Act, a review of Teacher Man by Ron Charles (via The Washington Post)

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05331/611479.stm

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/18/style/18iht-booksam.html?_r=1

Other sources:

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 1969 film