SOURCE: "Muriel Spark's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl," in Renascence, Vol. XXIV, No. 4, Summer, 1972, pp. 213-23.

In the essay below, Laffin analyzes the religious, Freudian, and novelistic aspects of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by examining the various motivations of the character Sandy.

It was with a sense of relief that Muriel Spark enthusiasts greeted The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, for here at last was the concretely real uncluttered by the mysteriously occult, the supernatural, the fantastic. The Comforters had been one of the most puzzling of first novels; one was not altogether sure what to make of it. Robinson was almost equally puzzling, though not as complex. Memento Mori with its social and psychological realism was absolutely lucid by comparison, notwithstanding the identity of its mysterious caller. But with The Ballad of Peckham Rye and The Bachelors readers were once again confronted...