A liberated young schoolteacher at an Edinburgh girls' school in the period between the two wars, instructs her girls on the ways of life. Ignoring the more mundane subjects, she teaches them of love, politics and art. Her affairs with two male teachers become known and she finds herself fighting to keep her job. She believes that she can always count on the 100% support of her favourite pupils, but one of them does not feel that Miss Jean Brodie is in her "prime" any more. No longer swayed by her teacher's eloquence, she begins to learn about life and love herself.