Mary Mccarthy The Group Analysis

The challenging and complicated lives of women in the 1930s are explored in the novel, The Group, by Mary McCarthy as 8 Vassar students struggle through their first 7 years of adulthood after college graduation. Through the lives of these women, the readers experience firsthand the political, social, and economic discrimination women went through in the early twentieth century. The group of friends grow apart as the years go by, but a funeral for one of their own ends the book with the remaining 7 together again. The Group is a story about friendship, overcoming gender barriers, and healthy and unhealthy relationships, using different characters' perspectives throughout the book in order to give the reader a complex and full understanding of each storyline and character arc.

The story begins with the wedding of Kay Strong, a member of the infamous "group", and Harald Petersen, days after commencement. This event introduces the personalities and power dynamics of "the group". In spite of the sexist time period,
Many stereotypically racy topics of the 1930s-1960s are included, such as when "Dottie loses her Bostonian virginity, the scene in which the frank Norine and the refined Helena discuss Norine's infidelities, the later scene between the re-married Norine and the prissy Priss, [and] the encounter between Kay and Polly in the mental hospital" (Kauffmann). The majority of these taboo subjects include the topic of sex, which was not thought of as something that could enter the mind of a woman. Mary McCarthy uses her own life experiences to tell the real story about the lives of women in the 1930s. Bits and pieces of her are found in "the Western girl who comes East, and then marries into the theater, the literary beginner scurrying for reviews" and help her correctly portray women's issues