Plot

Frustrated by students she perceives as provincial and unwilling to marry her wealthy suitor, George Jenkins, Miss Brodie seeks an appointment at the elite Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh.

Episode "Newcastle," written by Jay Presson Allen (screen credit), who is also the author of the hit play made from the original novel, and who is a credited consultant on all episodes of this Scottish TV series, opens in Miss Brodie's classroom at St. Hilda's School for Girls, in Newcastle, England. Miss Brodie, stylishly dressed and groomed, is instructing a class of approximately twenty 12-to-13 year old girls wearing identical grey school uniforms. Her accent immediately identifies her as Scottish, while the accents of the girls are all English. The date is early January, 1930, a few days into the "spring term," which will have a week's vacation in mid-February, called the "half-term" vacation, and will end just before Easter (April 20, 1930). There will then be a "summer term" starting just after Easter, with a week's "half-term" vacation in mid-May, and ending in early July.

Miss Brodie is expressing disappointment with the girls' English essay compositions, for which she had set the theme as "a famous man with whom I should chose to spend an evening unchaperoned." She singles-out a girl, Louisa, who had devoted her essay to explaining why she would not want to spend such an evening with the Russian mystic Rasputin, confidante of the last Czarina, wife to the last Czar, the Russian royal family over-thrown and murdered in the 1917 Russian Revolution. Miss Brodie describes Rasputin as a gifted man who used hypnosis, and she denigrates Louisa for having complained that Rasputin drank too much and was hairy. Miss Brodie then speaks to the class about Franz Mesmer, whom she identifies as the founder of hypnosis as used by Rasputin [in fact it was Scottish surgeon and scientist James Braid who developed the techniques of hypnotism based on Mesmer's work]. Miss Brodie shakes her head in sadness, regarding the whole class:

"You are fated to become Girl Guide leaders and suburban housewives. You will never be life's elite. Remember that art is greater than science, and in that I include mathematics. Art and religion, then philosophy, last, science - that is the order of the subjects of life, that is their order of importance."

A girl raises her hand: "Arithmetic is on the test, philosophy is not." Miss Brodie responds, just before the school-wide bell rings to signal the end of class:

"I am here to keep your mind alive until the curriculum catches up to it."

At the nearby tea shop, two St. Hilda's teachers are at a table, complaining about Miss Brodie's open depreciation of gym and especially team sports. Miss Brodie enters alone, orders Russian tea, and sits at a separate table. The gym teacher moves over to join her and voice her complaints directly, which Miss Brodie deflects with calm confidence. Miss Brodie then leaves, as the gym teacher rejoins the other teacher. The other teacher reveals that she has heard that Miss Brodie's teaching contract expires at the end of the summer term in July, and St. Hilda's will not renew her for another year, thus ending Miss Brodie's career there at four years. It is apparent that Miss Brodie herself does not know this; she thinks herself secure at St. Hilda's for the following year, if she wishes. They laugh that she will land on her feet even after she loses her position at St. Hilda's, by marrying wealthy widower businessman George Jenkins.

Elegantly and stylishly dressed, Miss Brodie arrives at a music-concert escorted by an older man - George Jenkins, in tuxedo, as are all the men. Another man compliments Jenkins on a recent business success, and on his Italian holiday in summer 1929 - a not-so-veiled reference to a holiday he took with Miss Brodie. Jenkins comments to Miss Brodie that he does not like playing silly games which are unnecessary - he wants to marry her, but she turns this aside with a light wave. They enter the hall to a string quartet playing Ravel's String Quartet in F Major (1903). Miss Brodie is enraptured while Jenkins dozes off in his chair.

Arriving by car that evening at Miss Brodie's flat, it appears that the car is Jenkins' chauffeur-driven auto, because they are sitting side-by-side in the back, and the car appears too expensive to be a taxi. Miss Brodie invites Jenkins upstairs for orange-hot-chocolate, which he resists, noting that the two elderly women who share the flat adjacent will eavesdrop and be indignant at the impropriety of single Miss Brodie entertaining a man alone this late in her flat, and that she will be criticized at the school if word gets back.

Miss Brodie laughs-off his concerns and he follows her upstairs. Over cocoa, Miss Brodie complains "I have failed at that incubator for housewives. I want to leave my mark. It is my mission to open windows on the world, to illuminate young minds." They embrace and kiss. Jenkins again offers marriage, that he wants to take care of her; Miss Brodie replies that she does not want to be taken care of by him or by anyone else. The next morning, the scene begins as Miss Brodie is dressed for work and about to leave; Jenkins is not there, but the bed is mussed enough to indicate that they slept together and that Jenkins then left before Miss Brodie went to sleep.

In class the morning lesson is geography; Miss Brodie points out Flanders, and mentions that that is where her lover Hugh died: "he fell like a flower on Flanders' fields." From the way she says it, it is apparent she has told them about Hugh before; she speaks as one reminding them of a story they already know, not as one telling them an unknown story for the first time. She then discusses Italy, which she has seen, praising its beauties.

This is interrupted by a secretary entering to inform Miss Brodie that the main office has received a telephone call for her, from Edinburgh. The secretary thinks it is bad health news about an elderly aunt of Miss Brodie, but in reality it is a friend of Miss Brodie's, calling to say that she has just learned that the Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh has a sudden and immediate need for a teacher in her grade level, due to the unexpected pregnancy of the current teacher, a married woman 43 years old. Miss Brodie ends the call from the friend and then, the secretary withdrawing from the office to give her privacy, immediately calls Marcia Blaine to make an interview appointment.

Arriving at Marcia Blaine by taxi from the train station, Miss Brodie is met outside by the school chaplain, who escorts her to the office of the headmistress, Mrs. MacDonald. Above them as they walk, the art teacher, Mr. Lloyd, bored with teaching his class of 15-and-16-year-old girls (3-to-4 years older than the class-level Miss Brodie teaches), looks out of the art-room window, and the stylish Miss Brodie catches his eye.

In the job interview - which is merely for the temporary post of serving-out the balance of the school year, not a long-term contract - Miss Brodie immediately catches headmistress Mrs. MacDonald's interest and respect, by explaining why she is prepared to leave St. Hilda's in the middle of the year, on such short notice:

"The English are not dedicated to our great Scottish tradition in the education of females. English schools take girls primarily for custodial purposes, to deliver the girl at age 16 in a marriageable condition. ... I have become discouraged in Newcastle - I want to offer my girls more than the English educational system is geared for: marriage fodder. I am geared to turning out girls as individuals, married or otherwise. ... [From the moment I became a teacher] I felt an overwhelming responsibility to my girls. The intensity of that feeling has never diminished. I am a teacher first, last, and always." Miss Brodie gives her resume of employment:

1890: Born in Edinburgh, raised in Aberdeen. 1912: Graduated Edinburgh University, received teaching certificate. 1913-1918: Crossman School in Perth (5 years) [fictional school]. 1919-1920: Lady Bartleson's "Progressive" school in Edinburgh (2 years) [fictional school, but there was a real progressive school movement in Scotland at the time; Summerhill is the longest real-life surviving example, founded in 1924]. 1920-1926: Governess/tutor to 2 daughters of Sir Malcolm Nayfield, attached to the British Foreign Office, with postings to Florence and Cairo; left when youngest girl turned 16 (7 years) [fictional persons]. 1927-1930: St. Hilda's in Newcastle (4 years) [fictional school].

Mrs. MacDonald notes that the salary at Marcia Blaine likely will be a substantial cut below St. Hilda's, to which Miss Brodie replies that she has a small independent income; Mrs. MacDonald laughs and says that Miss Brodie's expensive overcoat must be due to that, and not to what she had assumed, from the quality of the coat, must be the high salary at St. Hilda's. The viewers, however, recognize that the coat must be a gift from wealthy George Jenkins.

After Miss Brodie leaves, Mrs. MacDonald telephones the lower-school head, Miss Gaunt (Miss Brodie would be teaching in the lower-school, and thus, under supervision of Miss Gaunt), to say she has just had an excellent interview with the most promising Miss Jean Brodie, and it was a shame that another commitment had prevented Miss Gaunt from participating in the interview.

The next scene: Miss Brodie's flat (apartment). Two St. Hilda's girls are there, not in uniform, sharing Saturday afternoon tea with Miss Brodie. Miss Brodie is reflective and depressed, making Easter-present small boxes, one each for her classroom girls, from special paper she bought in Italy last summer. Miss Brodie says she has been waiting for a letter - but she has been waiting too long, to expect anything to come. A knock at the door reveals George Jenkins. He enters, carrying a mailing tube that he says contains the Italian fascist party poster Miss Brodie had asked him to order. The two girls hurriedly leave, and then laugh on the landing, because they have cleared-out fast knowing that Jenkins is Miss Brodie's lover.

Jenkins produces a letter he intercepted just moments before from the postman outside - it is, on examination, Miss Brodie's letter of acceptance at Marcia Blaine. Miss Brodie glows with happiness.

In the classroom, Miss Brodie is conducting her last class before the start of the Winter half-term holiday - meaning it is mid-February 1930. She tells her girls that she will not be there when they return from holiday: she has given notice to St. Hilda's.

"I have influenced you to all the possibilities of life - to art, beauty, and truth. I am returning to my roots: to Scotland, to Edinburgh." She presents the girls with the boxes she made "covered in Venetian paper bought on my last holiday in Italy." Several of the girls are quite broken-up and in tears at her good-bye.

At the train-station, George Jenkins is with Miss Brodie, complaining that he could have driven her the 100 miles from Newcastle to Edinburgh. "I wish to enter the city alone," explains Miss Brodie, to which Jenkins responds, "who do you think you are, a Roman Caesar, entering in triumph?" Jenkins complains that Miss Brodie is being impractical, that she is taking a substantial pay-cut for a short-term post, and that he knows her personal independent income is small, to which Miss Brodie reacts in anger, that he has spied on her personal financial position. "I love you, and I am a businessman - knowing people's finances is what I do, I did it with you because I love you - and yours is not good." To her it is an invasion of privacy; to him, it what a man who cares about her would do. Jenkins follows Miss Brodie into the train-compartment, and denounces her impracticality, and also denounces her admiration for Mussolini. He will not be a puppy-dog panting after her in Edinburgh: this is good-bye - but he will send her a gift to Edinburgh, when she has chosen a flat.

Then Jenkins delivers some plain words about schools, the same in Edinburgh as in Newcastle:

"These schools each have boards of directors, composed of gents like me. You will find Edinburgh no different than Newcastle in that. Boards full of men who don't want their children to learn too much about their teachers' past lives. All of Newcastle knows about Hugh who fell on Flanders' fields."

This deeply offends Miss Brodie, to whom the story of her lover Hugh, soldier in the War, killed in Flanders, is her most poignant personal experience - and one she has spoken about to each of her classes at St. Hilda's for the past 4 years. "Who told it?" Miss Brodie demands, to which Jenkins responds "everyone always tells everything, you know that."

Miss Brodie dismisses Jenkins and orders him out. He obviously does not understand what she cares about. Leaning out of the train-window, she accuses him of being jealous of her greater admiration for Mussolini - "a man of destiny" - than for him. Jenkins shakes his head: obviously, she does not understand him, either.

Miss Brodie arrives in Edinburgh, alone; no one has met her at the train. In delight and exultation, she visits various famous sites and monuments, and tours the art museum - alone. At last, she is in her own culture, her own roots - the land of intellect, individualism, and intelligence, that honors creativity.

Miss Brodie's furniture arrives in her new flat; her happy, cheerful landlady, Mrs. Michie, comments on "the size of that bed for one wee woman." Miss Brodie hosts Mrs. Michie to share Miss Brodie's birthday cake and champagne (her last gifts from Jenkins) as the February snow buffets down outside the window. Miss Brodie reveals it is her 40th birthday, and toasts "my renaissance - my prime. Let us toast to new beginnings: the beginning of the decade 1930, and to the beginning of my prime." The episode ends.