The Group

Mary McCarthy tells the emotional and ,for the time she lived in, really provocating story of eight friends that want to go their own way in life, career and love after their exam at Vassar in 1933. A group that couldn't be better mixed up, from a beauty to ugly one, from poor to rich, from profound to superficial, from ambitious to lazy.... Mary McCarthy shows the women in a period of 7 years, 7 years that change everything in the young lifes of these women, some marry and get divorced again, some get children and a lot of well-protected secrets become public. The story goes on in the view of each of them and so one always gets new informations about all of them. It's much talked about politics in that novel, too, because every kingpin is interested in politics in a time, 4 years after the commercial crisis and just in the time the World War II started. All of the women get their first experiences in love and lifestyle that are really different for every of them . The book is worth to read, because it's emotional, but not camp, it's the life of a middle-twenty-something-woman. The kingpins are active and actual and the story is sweeping and thrilling.

This upper-class New England satire of the post-college lives of 8 women has definitely stood the test of time. I read it maybe 30 years ago and just reread it: it still works, and at my present age, I find myself appreciating McCarthy's superb writing on an entirely new level. Each of the women comes from a different background, has widely different experiences both in Vassar and after graduation, and sees her world after college thru different eyes. Told mostly thru the point of view of one member of the group, McCarthy's classic story lacerates socialism, the Ivy League, the prevalent double standards of the era, men - and psychoanalysis. Is there anything she doesn't excoriate with her talented tongue. Um, no, I don't think she's missed a thing.

THE GROUP was published when I was very young, however, I was aware the book had created quite a stir because my Republican, Roman Catholic father and Democratic Protestant mother had many heated arguments over its content--which includes discussions about childrearing, hetero and homosexuality, mental illness and psycholanalysis, body functions, and Communist-party affiliation. I have finally read Mary McCarthy's book and found it absolutely wonderful. Having completed it, I feel I understand my mother and aunts a little better. They were of the same genertion as Polly, Libby, Lakey, Kay, and the other eight Vasser graduates who are the protagonists of the book. Although my relatives attended state colleges in Wisconsin, I was exposed to "thinking" women who for the most part lived lives comparable to the women depicted in THE GROUP. All but one of my aunts married, and she became an "old maid school teacher." Some of my uncles were more liberal than others, but all of the men including my father had expectations about how their wives should conduct themselves after marriage and motherhood. I came of age at the tail end of this oppressive period when women were still called girls.As we read about the oppression of women in other parts of the world today, I cannot help but wonder if younger men and women can fully appreciate how recently civil rights have been extended to U.S. and European women. It's so easy to discount feminists but without the resumption of the Woman's Movement in the late 1950s and 1960s, a husband like Harald might still be able to have his wife Kay committed to a psychiatric hospital if she defended herself from his drunken attack. THE GROUP covers the years 1933 to 1940--it begins just after the stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression and ends with England on the verge of invasion from the Nazis. The book was described as a "gem of American social history" by 'The Nation' but it is also a very good read. (Supposedly, McCarthy based her characters on friends from her Vassar days, so one never knows how much is really fiction.) Reading this book, I found myself outraged and sad and laughing out loud. The discussions about child rearing are enough to make you hoot -- especially if you have been exposed to the "bottle versus breast" battle. As the victim of parents like Priss and Sloan who read entirely too much literature, I went onto subject my children to the techniques of Dr. Spock, and am now am amused by the current thinking of my daughter and daughter-in-law who also read child-rearing literature and attend discussions and are struggling with potty-training and aggressive behaviour. If you have ever raised children or are trying to raise children you will enjoy the exchanges between parents and spouses and friends in this book. The passages describing mental illness caused me react with everything from laughter to impotent rage. Polly's father is resentful because his melancholia has been rediagnose

The real pleasure of this book is in Mary McCarthy's use of language. Her turns of phrase and sharp descriptions make one long for a more literate world. Add to this her wicked insights into the vanished mores of the 1930s Eastern Seabord elite and you have a fun read. This is probably the best written of the whole "growing up in the Ivy League" canon, i.e. Last Convertible, Class Reunion, Superior Women, Love Story, etc.

Along with the more lurid and admittedly trashy "Valley Of The Dolls" and "Peyton Place," this was one of the seminal books of my youth. What is interesting now is that while the two aforementioned titles have become icons of sorts--'Valley' as a sort of feminist treatise, "Peyton Place" as socio-anthropological cant, go figure-- Mary McCarthy's "The Group" has sort of been relegated to a forgotten spot on the bookshelf, which is a shame since it is a far better book than one may realize. I hardly think the book today would have become the best seller it did, as the writing is too detailed and meticulous in comparison with what passes for much of popular fiction today. And those who made it a best seller in its day I am not so sure grasped what McCarthy was doing; instead they focused on the sensationalist exploration of then oft verboten feminine topics that are prominent in the book--everything from menstruation to birth control. What "The Group" gave me at sixteen was a yearning for the pseudo sophisticated New York world beyond my banal small town suburban upbringing; I longed, like Libby, to take the literary world by storm. At the time, of course, I took it all VERY seriously. Thirty years later, I now realize how brilliantly Mary McCarthy was playing everyone--herself, the girls of Vassar, her entire generation and the American reading public--for a bunch of fools. For what is apparent at the end of the novel is that, for all the advantages of wealth and education these women had, they are no better off emotionally (though they are economically) than their contemporaries who did not go to college, Vassar or otherwise. A very daring approach to take, one I am not sure was or would have been appreciated at the time. But now, as we move into the twenty first century, and the 30's become ever more distant, "The Group" can now be recognized for the brilliant satire it is, as well as a detailed evocation of manners, mores, styles, and a New York that hardly exists anymore. It remains even more one of my favorite books, and one's enjoyment of it only improves with age.