Previous
Symbols
Mr. Teddy Lloyd, the married man who loves and is loved by Miss Jean Brodie, shares her artistic nature. Not only is he the art teacher at Blaine, but he is also a painter of portraits, and has a studio in his home for this purpose. As suggested in a scene when Mr. Lloyd explains the lines and curves of the women in Botticelli’s painting La primavera to the giggling of his pupils, painting is, for both Mr. Lloyd and Miss Brodie, a medium through which one may touch on the sexual without experiencing bodily excitement oneself, a medium through which one may experience human emotion but with something of a godlike detachment. In line with this idea, the love between Mr. Lloyd and Miss Brodie plays out only on Mr. Lloyd’s canvases, an affair of the spirit, as it were. But this “affair” is so strong that every face Mr. Lloyd paints, be it Rose Stanley or even his own children, seems to resemble Miss Brodie. In this sense, Mr. Lloyd’s portraits symbolize the power of Miss Brodie’s influence on those around her, a power exerted on her lovers and students alike: just as Mr. Lloyd transfigures everyone into a Miss Brodie, so too does Miss Brodie attempt to transfigure her special girls into copies of her.
Mr. Teddy Lloyd’s Portraits Quotes in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
The The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie quotes below all refer to the symbol of Mr. Teddy Lloyd’s Portraits. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 6 Quotes
She [Miss Brodie] thinks she is Providence, thought Sandy, she thinks she is the God of Calvin, she sees the beginning and the end. And Sandy thought, too, the woman is an unconscious lesbian. And many theories from the books of psychology categorized Miss Brodie, but failed to obliterate her image from the canvases of one-armed Teddy Lloyd.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Miss Jean Brodie LitChart as a printable PDF.
Mr. Teddy Lloyd’s Portraits Symbol Timeline in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
The timeline below shows where the symbol Mr. Teddy Lloyd’s Portraits appears in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3
...The scene is this: Mr. Lloyd is tracing with his pointer the lines of a painting by Botticelli, the Primavera; the schoolgirls can’t suppress their laughter when he traces the lines...
(full context)
Mr. Lloyd then continues the lesson, turning to a painting of Madonna and Child without any sense of religious awe, only a “very artistic attitude,”...
(full context)
Chapter 4
...asks them, as she often did, about Mr. Lloyd, and they tell her about two portraits in his studio, an amusingly serious one of his family, and one of Rose Stanley,...
(full context)
Chapter 5
...years old at this time, Sandy stands with Mr. Lloyd in his studio admiring the portrait he has done of Rose Stanley in her gym tunic. Strangely, Rose’s face in the...
(full context)
...indulges in sex, but because she is popular with the boys. Teddy Lloyd completes a portrait of all the girls, whom “in a magical transfiguration,” all resemble Miss Brodie on Mr....
(full context)
Chapter 6
...the Lloyds while with them; and when she looks on as Mr. Lloyd paints a portrait of Rose nude, Sandy notices that the image emerging resembles Rose but even more than...
(full context)
...while Sandy reads psychology and goes often to the Lloyds’ to sit for her own portrait, sometimes accompanied by Rose. Once, when Sandy and Mr. Lloyd are all alone because his...
(full context)
...She tells him that he is making her look like Miss Jean Brodie in the portrait and he begins a new canvas, “but it was the same again.” Sandy asks Mr....
(full context)
Mr. Lloyd continues painting accidental portraits of Jean Brodie, even though he recognizes as Sandy does that she is...
(full context)
...following autumn, Sandy meets Miss Brodie several times, discussing Mr. Lloyd as usual, how his portraits all reflect the lover who renounced him. Miss Brodie tells Sandy that, however strange, it...
(full context)
...to the Lloyds’ to say goodbye, she looks around Mr. Lloyd’s studio and sees the portraits “on which she had failed to put a stop to Miss Brodie.” Sandy is “fuming…with...
(full context)
