You know those weeks when a hurricane hits the east coast and you just want to curl up with some hot tea and a book? Well, that was my week, and if I had to guess I would say I wasn’t alone. Luckily, I had the perfect Sandy-survivor’s companion: The Group by Mary McCarthy. This novel, which follows six well-to-do women in 1930s New York City, is kind of an epic. But the good kind, I swear! As that weird girl in AP U.S. History who read The Feminine Mystique for fun, I think this is best book I’ve read in a while.
We meet these six women as recent graduates from Vassar College. With esteemed educations, good looks, and high ambitions, these women have no shortage of options. Now, forget any preconceived notions you may have about women (even college-educated women) in the 1930s – I was extremely shocked to see these women openly discussing and using birth control. In New York, their lives were not so different from where I see myself in a few years – they have jobs, little apartments, rent payments to make. They are entirely independent…until they start growing older.
For the women who do choose to marry, subordination and infidelity are the names of the game. They pretty much leave behind their autonomy and their own ambitions to serve their husbands. For those who choose to pursue a career, the path is just as difficult. They deal with overbearing families and disappointing relationships, often with married men. And the workplace is equally challenging – Libby works hours upon hours to be taken seriously at a publishing firm; Polly takes a job she hates so she can pay the rent.
The biggest takeaway I got from The Group was how modern and ordinary it felt – though the female oppression was a little more obvious than it is today, these women from eight decades ago have lives very similar to the twenty- and thirty-somethings today. I’m not sure if that’s impressive for them or embarrassing for us.