The Prime
One could conceivably make a strong argument that there is another more significant use of metaphor in the novel, but it is quite unlikely. Just in case anyone was wondering, in the words of Miss Jean Brodie herself:
“One’s prime is the moment one was born for.”
The Allusive Metaphor
An allusive metaphor is one in which the figurative comparison is made directly (rather than through the simile’s use of “as” or “like”) to a figure relatively famous enough that it would not be considered obscure. Of course, one can make an allusive metaphor to an obscure figure, but it rather defeats the purpose. When Eunice begins doing cartwheels (which Miss Jean has deemed a sacrilege of sorts when performed on Sundays, she refers to the girl through a metaphorical allusion recalling a airy spirit from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. She is not calling her a mermaid, although that particular allusion would actually not be entirely inappropriate:
“You are an Ariel.”
Mary Macgregor
Early on in the novel, similes are used extensively to give a quick sketch of the personalities or quirks of the girls making up the Brodie set. One of the sharpest and most effective is directed toward giving a kind of thumbnail or snapshot of Mary Macgregor, a girl who seems both part of and not quite part of the Miss Jean’s girls. Keep in mind that Miss Jean Brodie values intelligence but even more importantly, she values intelligence in others that she is able to manipulate:
“Mary sat lump-like and too stupid to invent something. She was too stupid ever to tell a lie, she didn’t know how to cover up.”
"Team Spirit"
“Team spirit” is a phrase that pops up often and on its most literal level it means exactly what it implies: support of competitive games. The girls in the Brodie set invariably turn their back on the juvenile concept of competing in sports as Miss Jean encourages them to more independent. But “team spirit” carries a much darker and more sinister metaphorical aspect for the teacher, who warns her students that:
“Phrases like ‘the team spirit’ are always employed to cut across individualism, love and personal loyalties”
She’s not kidding, either. The teachers who are not exactly in lockstep with Miss Jean Brodie’s more idiosyncratic and rebellious manner of education look to the concept of “team spirit” as a means of breaking her hold over the girls in her set. In this way, then, “team spirit” is really a metaphor for pretty much everything that Brodie is working against.
Metaphorical Redunancy
An exchange takes place later in the novel between Miss Brodie and two of her students in which they are sizing up the wife of a man who came closer to relieving the teacher of her spinsterhood than anyone else. The only stumbling block being that Dierdre was already his wife when they began to fall in love. The exchange is amusing because it directly comments upon the nature of the simile while also revealing more information about the nature of the “prime" as well as the fact that at all times Miss Brodie is aware of her status as an educator:
“She looks really like as if she won’t have any prime,” Sandy said.
“The word ‘like’ is redundant in that sentence.”
