The Group

The Group is the best-known novel of American writer Mary McCarthy. It made New York Times Best Seller list in 1963 and remained there for almost two years. In 1966, United Artists released a film adaptation of the novel directed by Sidney Lumet. The novel touched on controversial topics for its time, such as free love, contraception, abortion, lesbianism, and mental illness. It was banned in Australia, Italy, and Ireland. Plot The book describes the lives of eight female friends after their graduation in 1933 from Vassar College, beginning with the marriage of one of them, Kay Strong, and ending with her funeral in 1940. Each character struggles with different issues, including sexism in the work place, child-rearing, financial difficulties, family crises, and sexual relationships. Nearly all the women's issues involve the men in their lives: fathers; employers; lovers; or husbands. As highly educated women from affluent backgrounds, they must strive for autonomy and independence in a time when a woman's role is still largely restricted to marriage and childbirth. The plot is influenced by the political and economic atmosphere of the time. Over the course of the book, the reader is exposed to the women's views on contraception, love, sex, socialism, and psychoanalysis. Characters Kay Strong: Marries Harald Petersen, who is involved in theater management and stage directing. Kay calls him a "Yale man", even though he did only graduate work there; this mildly offends the analytical Lakey. Harald writes plays that are not produced and is frequently unemployed. Kay has "a ruthless hatred of poor people", and is frustrated by their financial situation. She supports them by working at Macy's and cares greatly about her material surroundings. Her husband has multiple extramarital affairs. Their fights and his drinking escalate; finally he hits her until she threatens him with a bread knife. The next morning, he commits her to a psychiatric hospital, where Polly is working as a nurse. Kay is released from the hospital; she divorces Harald. Her death at the end of the book is mysterious; no one knows whether she fell from the window on the twentieth floor of the Vassar Club, while airplane spotting, or whether she jumped. Her friends reunite at the end of the novel at her funeral, where they shun Harald.