The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Panama hats are a required component of the girls’ uniforms at the Marcia Blaine School, but each girl in Miss Brodie’s set alters her hat slightly so that it expresses her personality. The hats thus symbolize the attempt to distinguish oneself within a larger group that otherwise demands uniformity. The school expects students to turn the hat’s brim up at the back and down at the front. However, it allows them to make slight changes to their hats as long as they do not wear them at an angle. The novel’s opening scene, in which the girls are 16, describes how each wears her hat and drops hints about what those choices might say about them. Monica, for example, wears her hat higher on her head than is typically done, “perched as if it were too small and as if she knew she looked grotesque in any case” (3). Here, Monica is depicted as cynical, as if she knows that no alteration to her hat will make her look or feel better. Eunice wears hers the exact opposite of how the school expects students to wear their hats: the brim is turned up at the front and down at the back.