Jean Brodie

Jean Brodie is a fictional character in the Muriel Spark novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961); and in the play and 1969 film of the same name—both by Jay Presson Allen—which were based on the novel, but radically depart from it in the interest of theatre and poetic licence.

Miss Brodie is a highly idealistic character with an exaggerated romantic view of the world; many of her catchphrases have become clichés in the English language.

The character takes her name from the historical Jean Brodie (aka Jean Watt), common law wife or mistress of Willie Brodie—whom the fictional Miss Brodie claims as a direct ancestor; thus, she is the fictional namesake of the real Jean Brodie. The real Willie Brodie was indeed a cabinet-maker and fashioner of gibbets; he was a deacon of the Kirk o' Scotland; he did rob the Excise Office; and he was executed on a gibbet that he may indeed have designed himself.

Likewise, his fictional descendant—though much more human and likeable—may be described as ending up hoist by her own petard. The story of William and Jean Watt Brodie was preserved for posterity in the play Deacon Brodie, or The Double Life—A Melodrama in Five Acts and Eight Tableaux by W. E. Henley and Robert Louis Stevenson. The play opened at the Prince's Theatre in London on 2 July 1884, with Mr. E. J. Henley as Deacon William Brodie and Miss Minnie Bell as Jean. Mr. Henley reprised his performance at Montreal on 26 September 1887, this time with Miss Carrie Coote in the role of Jean Watt/Brodie.