The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (novel) - Autobiographical Basis of The Story

Autobiographical Basis of The Story

The character of Miss Jean Brodie was based in part on Christina Kay, a teacher of Spark's for two years at James Gillespie's High School for Girls. Spark would later write of her: "What filled our minds with wonder and made Christina Kay so memorable was the personal drama and poetry within which everything in her classroom happened." Miss Kay was the basis for the good parts of Brodie's character, but also some of the more bizarre; for example, Miss Kay did hang posters of Renaissance paintings on the wall, but also of Benito Mussolini and Italian fascists marching. Spark grew up in heavily Presbyterian Edinburgh, while Franco's supporters were almost unanimously Roman Catholic. Christina Kay looked after her widowed mother, not the music teacher who was in love with her. She encouraged the young Muriel Spark to become a writer. Spark, like Sandy, converted to Roman Catholicism.