SOURCE: "Moral Vision in Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," in Renascence, Vol. XXXIII, No. 1, Autumn, 1980, pp. 3-9.

In the following essay, Dorenkamp discusses the theme of morality in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, focusing on the main characters, Jean Brodie and Sandy Stranger.

Muriel Spark's novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, is an economical treatise on moral perception which exemplifies not only the necessity of such perception, but also the terrible responsibility accompanying its acquisition. This relationship, arising from the close association between knowledge and action, is central to the conflict of the book and is reflected in its very structure. To understand how the novel itself becomes a treatise on moral perception, I shall examine three discernible points of view: that of Jean Brodie herself, that of Sandy Stranger, and that of the narrator (or point of view, properly speaking). Finally, I...