The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie Analysis

Regarding the family unit, Friedman, Bowden and Jones (2003) states “This basic unit so strongly influences the development of an individual that it may determine the success or failure of that person’s life.” Due to the this influence it is vital to assess the family during the process of caring for a patient. Their environment, lifestyle and support system all have a tremendous effect on the healing process either good or bad. In this essay, the Hillard family from the movie Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) will be analyzed.

     Another example of how Miss Brodie gives her student the wrong impression was her repetitive attacks on Miss MacKay. It was obvious the two teachers did not like one another, which is bound to happen in any profession. However, advertising this dislike to her classroom only leads to problems. The first time that this occurs is when Miss Brodie was leading here class out to the elm tree for the ‘imaginary’ history lesson. On the way outside she stops her class in front of Miss MacKay’s office, points to a picture of the old Prime

In the 1980’s and 1990’s, society wasn’t the most accepting of places for people who were different from the “social norms”. Now I know, people today still struggle with trying to fit in and be “normal” but it was different. Being a gay man living in San Fransisco at the time, which had a large gay population, Richard Rodriguez had a hard time dealing with the discrimination he faced. Richard Rodriguez was an American journalist who wrote and published a memoir about his life as a gay man. In October of 1990, Rodriguez published his memoir “Late Victorians” in Harper’s Magazine, a critically acclaimed publication of the time. In his memoir, Rodriguez describes what it was like to realize he was gay and watch as the country changed to become a more accepting place. He does this by setting up how things can change and then explaining the actual ways things change for the gay population.

This approach to queer subtext has been has always been a part of Western media as we as we explored in the film “The Celluloid Closet” (1995). Queer representation for many years was an continuous uncategorized personification that was vaguely acknowledged but to those who understood the subtext, it became an undercurrent of complex coded information that eventually paved the way for the integration of queer identification within the hetero film storylines. Doty speaks about this and also mentions that at some point in time representation of queer culture and sexuality

The articles by Roderick Ferguson (2004) in his book literally highlights the regulation that established sociological schools of thought impose upon the ‘queer people of color,’ or anyone who is different in terms of sexual orientation and non-white. In the very early part of the book, Ferguson depicts the imagery of a black drag-queen prostitute from Marlon Riggs’ ‘Tongues Untied.’ He goes on to describe the way capitalism, in general, and the American system in particular has conveniently excluded many like her – people of alternative sexual preferences with both African American culture and Leftist Liberal thought rooted in the heterogeneity. (Ferguson, 2004, p. 3). It is at this point that through the work of Chandan Reddy, Ferguson reminds the reader that the core of Leftist-Liberal Marxist thought revolves around the abolishment of race, gender and sexuality.

Queer of color critique is, by definition, intersectional. As opposed to examining domesticity through the lens of a queer person or a person of color, the queer of color critique analyzes the ways that race, gender, and sexuality are built off of each other. Roderick Ferguson’s piece stems off of the presumption that racial non-normativity, or non whiteness and sexual non-normativity,

“Sex was something mysterious which happened to married couples and Homosexuality was never mentioned; my mother told me my father did not believe it existed at all ‘until he joined the army’. As a child, I was warned about talking to ‘strange men’, without any real idea what this meant. I was left to find out for myself what it was all about.” Mike Newman, who was a child during the 1950s America recalls how homosexuality was perceived during the post-World War II era (F). This sexual oppression was not only in Newman’s household, but in almost everyone’s. While the civil rights movement began in the mid-1950s and ended late 1960s, the LGBT community started to come out of the closet slowly. The gay rights movement stemmed from the civil rights movement

As hardworking women living of the prairie, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters can relate to Mrs. Wright’s situation. They know personally that long days of doing laundry, cooking, and cleaning can become very tiresome (Hedges 91). They realize that living on the prairie can force a woman to be confined to her own house for weeks at a time, and because Mrs. Wright never had children, the grueling loneliness that she suffered must have been excruciating. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters both experience the constant patronization and sexual discrimination that most women in the early twentieth century lived with. They empathize with the difficulties of Mrs. Wright’s life and almost immediately a bond is formed with a woman they do not even know.

Two Diaries, Donald Vining’s A Gay Diary Vol. Two and Martin Duberman’s Gay in the Fifties look into the everyday life of gay males in the post-World War II Era. While World War II increased freedom for men to sexually explore within the male community, post-World War II extended the freedom of exploration but also created a subsequent backlash against homosexual practices. Vining and Duberman’s diaries document an extension of gay freedoms in the post-World War II period. Although Vining and Duberman give contrasting accounts of their lives as gay males in the postwar period, common themes could be drawn in the form of friendships, sexual activity, relationships, and backlash by heteronormative society.

George Chauncey’s Gay New York Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940, goes where no other historian had gone before, and that is into the world of homosexuality before World War II. Chauncey’s 1994 critically acclaimed book was a gender history breakthrough that gave light to a homosexual subculture in New York City. The author argues against the idea that homosexual men lived hidden away from the world. Chauncey’s book exposes an abundant culture throughout the United States, especially in New York. In this book Chauncey not only shows how the gay population existed, but “uncovers three widespread myths about the history of gay life before the rise of the gay movement which was isolation, invisibility, and internalization.” Chauncey argues against these theories that in the years 1890-1940, America had in fact a large gay culture. Chauncey book is impactful in the uncovering of a lost culture, but also works as an urban pre-World War II history giving an inside view of life in the city through sexuality and class.

The most persuasive critique was the idea of queer spaces are connected through multiple generations. This critique is persuasive, because it defines queer theory in some way while making it in a form. The multi-generational exchange made apparent that “the new does not always have to give way for the new” and “the new does not have to completely break with the old” (Halberstam 2). The author basically stated that the multi-generational exchange in queer spaces was a connection which neither broke from the ways of the past nor the present. In other words, queer spaces had aspects of the past that held back the progress of the queer movement now. Alternatively, queer theorists of this movement would dismiss this critique as a long winded statement of indecisiveness that creates a weak strawman of queer theory. Queer theorists would find this critique vague with a baseless. However, the

As being developed by poststructuralism, feminism, lesbian & gay studies and even American pragmatist theory (Parker,2001; Seidman,1997), queer theory has become one of the most important theories, which contributes to the research of sociology, arts and organizations. On the one hand, queer theory has been used to study the relations between the sexuality, gender and workplace. On the other hand, by utilizing denaturalized, deconstructive and performative methods to queer the presumptions of the taken-for-granted norms, queer theorists question and disprove the traditions which people cherish (Seidman,1995).

Queer theory could potentially offer the most qualitative of methodologies for collecting and analysing data. As it questions, even defies, the notions of objectivity and the essentiality of fact, queer theory opens more “texts” for study, and more bodies of knowledge to compile, compare, and evaluate.2

In Foucault and Queer Theory Spargo defines queer theory as a nebulous group of cultural criticism and analysis of social power structures relating to sexuality . It is these power structures and aspects of culture that are responsible for the discourse that creates and informs ones understanding of gender, race, and sexuality. However these aspects of identity do not exist separately from one another, but are constructed in tandem throughout history. These layers of identity inform each other in a way that is difficult if not impossible to separate. They do not act independently with an additive effect but intersect constructing their own unique set of experiences and perspectives. In this paper I will be exploring queer theory

'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie unfolds several dimensions of the female role. Set in Edinburgh in the 1930s, we are presented with a protagonist whom is a striking female role model in her domineering, manipulating and sexual powers, powers which we see her use to obtain her desired plans for her 'Brodie set,' the 'creme de la creme.' We see Miss Brodie play a God like figure in the novel, leading, teaching and imposing her opinions on them in hopes they will become like her. She strongly echoes Mussolini the Italian fascist, and we also see several contridictions in her character in terms of believing education is 'to lead out' but actually carrying out actions to draw them in and never let them go. This literature subverts conventional