Calvinism
Calvinism a Protestant denomination founded on the doctrine of predestination; the notion that well before the arrival of any human their ultimate fate relative to the afterlife has been determined by God based on some utterly mysterious calculus known to Him alone. Miss Brodie rejects this concept so comprehensively that she has actually moved to position herself into God’s place. She puts forth the outward appearance of instilling independence and self-determination among his students, but in reality they are themselves a chosen few whose fate the invisible hand of Miss Brodie is helping to shape. In this light, the tenets of Calvinist predestination is the symbol of everything that Brodie appears to fight against.
Sandy
Miss Brodie appears to privilege two character traits above all others: insight and instinct. She even asserts that her “prime” has brought her both these attributes. Of all the girls that make up her set during this period, she has conferred upon Sandy the nobility of being the greatest possessor of insight. Thus, Sandy becomes the novel’s symbol of logic and intellect.
Rose
If Sandy is the symbolic figure of insight, that must mean that another student represents instinct. And that student is Rose. One might naturally assume that if by insight, Brodie means a higher intellectual keenness, then surely instinct means that Rose is the symbol of emotional awareness. Such is not the case, however, because for Miss Brodie, instinct refers quite specifically to an awareness of the power of eroticism. Rose is more sexually charged than the other members of the Brodie set and Jean recognizes this as a sort of animal instinct. More to the point, her own instinct informs her how this symbolic incarnation of sexual power can be manipulated for her own purposes.
The Seduction of Mr. Lloyd
Miss Jean Brodie did know love and it was a love that was returned. But it was a love that could not be consummated because the object of her desire was already married to another woman. Having cast off Mr. Lloyd for this reason, Miss Brodie exploits the “instinct” of Rose to manipulate her into seducing Mr. Lloyd. If successful, this literal consummation for Rose would become a symbolic consummation—by proxy—for Miss Jean Brodie.
Mr. Lloyd's Paintings
Miss Jean Brodie is not the only one who seeks a symbolic consummation of their love affair. It is eventually noticed and pointed out that the art teacher’s portraits of her students invariably bear some kind of resemblance to Jean herself. Along with the shared interest in art and a mutual appreciation of a nude by Botticelli which succeeds only in stimulating girl giggles among the students, painting becomes the method by which Mr. Lloyd attempts to keep alive his doomed romance with Miss Brodie.
