This was a task for a creative writing class, in which we had to take a well known story and tell it from another perspective. I go to Edinburgh, what else can I say?! Based on the last scene in the film but following the book canon.
Not mine. Don't sue.
XXX
It is my last day at Marcia Blaine, and after the last few months, I cannot say I'm sorry about it.
We file in to the assembly hall for the last time, in the way we have always been. The infants, the little five year olds are at the very front and every class falls in behind them on the way. The sixth formers are at the very back of the hall. We are all quiet, inwardly emotional. It has been a difficult few months, with the death of Joyce Emily. Even though she was at school with us for a year, nobody really knew her very well. My head still thumps with a blinding rage when I think about how she died. Why she died. I am angriest of all when I think about who helped her on her way.
The headmistress is approaching the platform. Those of us who have been here since age five have sat through twelve final assemblies and we know her speech by heart. It's different though, when you stand in the sixth form section, feel the eyes of the school on you and know that this is the last time you're ever going to hear this speech.
'Today we say goodbye to those senior girls who are leaving Marcia Blaine for the last time. You girls are about to take your place in a larger, more demanding world, where you will be called upon to make many moral decisions, affecting not only your own lives but those of your families, your friends, your acquaintances. We are confident, truly confident, that the training you have received here in this school will have prepared you to face life's quandaries with courage and candour.'
She swallows at this point, taking a moment to wipe her glasses, like she does every year. This is usually where the girls start to crack. Monica is weeping beside me, not histrionically as she did when we were younger, but staring at Miss McKay with tears streaming down her face. There are a few muffled sobs behind me and the odd sniff somewhere to my left. I am tempted to, but I will not cry.
'For here at Marcia Blaine, we have done our best to nurture a virtuous woman, for her price is far above rubies. Let us pray.'
As we mumble our way through the Lord's Prayer, my mind drifts back to our 'training'. My time in the junior school comes flooding back, hours upon hours of stories that had nothing to do with the curriculum – stories of people we'd never met, places we'd never been to and ideas we'd never heard of. Stories of Beatrice (pronounced Be-a-tri-che, of course) and Dante and Mussolini, stories of Germany and Italy and Egypt and stories of different religions and thoughts that we'd never encountered in Edinburgh. Stories of a world we had never known.
Miss Brodie. She was the one that filled our heads with stories of her travels and her opinions. How we managed to get through our exams is sometimes still beyond me but at the time we didn't care. We were young and impressionable (give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life) and didn't she know it. Even well into the Senior school, we worshipped her, as if she was a goddess to us. Maybe she was. Is. Certainly it's how she sees herself – the God of Calvin, predestining and planning for us – her 'set' and her lovers. The staff pretended years ago that the pupils knew nothing of her affairs with the art master and the singing master but they didn't think she would tell us, young and innocent as we were.
It makes me furious and sick with shame to think that it's only now that the scales are falling from my eyes and I am seeing the woman standing on the platform with the rest of the staff, the bright orange dress surrounded by the black of the academic robes, for what she really is. She's a dangerous manipulator and if anyone wants any further proof of that, all they need to do is look at what happened to Joyce Emily. Her attempts to join our little group –held together by nothing more than Miss Jean Brodie – annoyed us and her boasts of delinquency were nothing other than childish but I cried all evening when I heard that she was dead. Her train was blown up on the way to Spain to fight. That stupid, stupid, ridiculous girl went and got herself killed for Miss Brodie, without even understanding what it was for that she exchanged her life!
It's no good. The tears finally start to fall. Rose reaches over and takes my hand and I am lucky I have this assembly as a cover.
The worst thing is that it could have been any of us who went. It could as easily have been Jenny, or Eunice, or Monica, or Rose, or Mary or I. Well, maybe not Mary – she couldn't navigate her way across Edinburgh but if she asked for help, Miss Brodie would certainly have given it to her. We were so young, optimistic, determined and enchanted that it could have been any one of the six who went. Joyce Emily just had a bit more nerve, no doubt borne of years of delinquency, that no doubt spurred her on. No doubt it was all an adventure to her. Until it wasn't.
Yesterday, Miss Brodie came to the sixth form common room to speak to us, to tell us how proud of us she was that the four of us who stayed the distance were so grown up, that we were about to go out into the world, to change the world, and to put all her teaching to good use. As if we were all just pawns to her.
She's standing there on the platform the way she used to do when we were little girls, head held up high and proud and I don't understand why she is still allowed to teach here. Miss McKay hates her, it's no secret. She's tried for years to get rid of her and more than once it's been a near thing but Miss Brodie has talked her way out of it every single time. It's not surprising. She's accustomed to getting her own way and she always has been. She's pushed us to dangerous ideals, she's been grooming Rose to take her place in Mr Lloyd's bed, she's groomed me to be her spy and she lead a girl to her death. Exactly as she planned it all.
It's ironic that the one person who has ever bested Miss Brodie did it by accident. Mr Lowther, now two years happily married to Miss Lockhart, as she was, is sitting at the piano, playing 'The Dark Island'. There will be this, there will be one more address and then there will be no more Marcia Blaine, and no more Jean Brodie. There will be Cambridge, and psychology and…I don't know what else, but there will be no more Miss Brodie. My mind will be my own for the first time in nearly eight years.
Mr Lowther defeated Miss Brodie without even knowing he did. It was nearly two years ago when he announced his intention to marry Miss Lockhart and it shocked us all, but it's the only time she couldn't get someone to do what she wanted. She didn't give in. I need to give her the credit for that. I was relieved when she didn't. I didn't need to worry about her. After all, she didn't worry about us, not in the way that mattered.
As we file out of the hall, to collect our blazers and satchels and walk through the gates for the last time, there is one sickening thought that strikes me as I walk past her classroom. No matter where I go, if it's Cambridge or London or Rome or Australia, she's always going to follow me. Her ghost, her spirit – they'll haunt me. Since Joyce Emily's death, I've tried to forget some of the most Brodie-esque parts of me, but her training is so deeply ingrained it will stay with me even after I've forgotten everything else about Marcia Blaine. And it's one of the first lessons that she taught us, years ago, that reminds me why.
'Little girls, I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders and all my pupils are the crème de la crème. Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life. '
Based on Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie