THE PARADOX OF AUTONOMY: IDENTITY, CONTROL, AND SELF-DESTRUCTION IN THE DRIVERS SEAT AND THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE

This research paper interrogates the complex and often contradictory nature of female autonomy in the fiction of Muriel Spark. By juxtaposing two of her most acclaimed novels, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) and The Drivers Seat (1970), the study explores how the pursuit of absolute control over ones identity and destiny paradoxically leads to self-destruction. In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the protagonists attempt to play God with her students lives results in her own betrayal and displacement. In The Drivers Seat, the protagonist Lise exercises the ultimate autonomy by orchestrating her own murder, collapsing the distinction between victim and aggressor. This paper argues that Spark challenges the liberal humanist ideal of the free subject, suggesting instead that the drive for total narrative control is a form of metaphysical rebellion that inevitably ends in tragedy. Through a close reading of character dynamics, narrative structure, and theological underpinnings, the research concludes that for Sparks women, the drivers seat is a perilous position where the assertion of selfhood becomes indistinguishable from the annihilation of the self.