A Study Of Intertextuality Between The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie And The Holy Bible

Edinburgh-born Muriel Spark is one of the most distinguished writers of postwar Britain.Religion recurs in her novels including the phenomenal success The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.Set in a traditional school in Edinburgh of the 1930s,the novel narrates the story between a schoolteacher Miss Brodie and her six chosen girls dubbed the Brodie set.Among the six students,Sandy who betrays Miss Brodie terminates the teacher’s career as well as her prime of life.In the analysis,the concept of intertextuality is used for tracing the relations between the novel and the Bible in order to present the main characters’ life trajectories and justify Sandy’s betrayal.The analysis is divided into three parts: the introduction,the main body and the conclusion.The first part is the introduction,in which a brief summary of the author’s life and the story is given,and then the emphasis is laid on the overseas and domestic scholarship on the novel.The second part is the main body that is divided into three chapters.It explores the relations between the two texts from three dimensions of the plots,characters and themes.The first chapter analyzes the ups and downs of Brodie’s and Sandy’s lives.Given that the plot revolves around the two’s destinies,Brodie’s fate is understood within the inverted U-shaped pattern featuring the rises and falls of the biblical heathen empires while Sandy’s life is comprehended within the U-shaped pattern of the first fall and rise of human history in the Bible.It points out that Sandy’s betrayal is not the deep reason of Brodie’s fall but is a manifestation of her loyalty to Brodie.Like Abraham’s faith in God,Sandy’s loyalty of Brodie contributes to her rise.In the second chapter,Brodie and Sandy are compared to God and Gentile-Jews,Jesus and Judas.The analysis of the characters demonstrates that Brodie fails in her strive for the divinity and Sandy’s betrayal reflects complex humanity.In the third chapter,the common themes of suffering and salvation in the two texts are explained.Salvation means the methods of salvation.Suffering is divided in the individual and the communal.Sandy’s suffering is observed within the framework of Job’s suffering;the analysis of Israel’s suffering under the rule of law opens a window to the knowledge of the suffering of the Brodie set and of Jews during WWII.Salvation is also divided in the individual and the communal.Repentance is the way of the individual salvation.Sandy’s betrayal as the manifestation of repentance leads to her salvation,just as the repentance of the king of Nineveh did.The removal of idolatry through a refusal of the prophet and eradication of hostility between different groups in Paul’s way are the two methods of the communal salvation.Sandy’s betrayal represents the two ways adopted by the Brodie set and the society in the WWII to accomplish the communal salvation.The analysis of the themes shows that Sandy’s betrayal not only contributes to her self-redemption but also embodies justice of the communal salvation.The third part is the conclusion.It points out that Sandy’s betrayal is not moral wrongness but represents justice.Also,the significance and defects of the analysis are demonstrated.The analysis makes a contribution to the comprehensive knowledge of Sandy’s betrayal.It encourages people to discern the nature of things,discourages people from making a moral judgment by a dichotomy and warns readers against those who play the roles of the deity and prophet in reality.