Women's Socialisation in Mary McCarthy's The Group:
A Feminist Reading
2130505 Master's Thesis
April 2016
Sarianna Ikonen, 186052
English Language and Culture
School of Humanities, Philosophical Faculty
University of Eastern Finland (Joensuu Campus)
ITÄ-SUOMEN YLIOPISTO – UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN FINLAND
Tiedekunta – Faculty
Filosofinen tiedekunta
Osasto – School
Humanistinen osasto
Tekijät – Author
Sarianna Ikonen
Työn nimi – Title
Women's Socialisation in Mary McCarthy's The Group: A Feminist Reading
Pääaine – Main subject
Työn laji – Level
Englannin kieli ja kulttuuri
Pro gradu
-tutkielma
Sivuainetutkielma
Kandidaatin
tutkielma
Aineopintojen
tutkielma
Päivämäärä –
Date
x 2.4.2016
Sivumäärä – Number of
pages
87
Tiivistelmä – Abstract
Tässä pro gradu -tutkielmassa tutkitaan naisten sosialisaatioprosesseja feministisestä näkökulmasta
Mary McCarthyn romaanissa The Group (1963). Feministisen kirjallisuusteorian sekä sosialisaation
ajatuksen avulla tutkielmassa tarkastellaan kuinka McCarthy on kuvannut kahdeksaa naispäähenkilöään,
ja pyritään löytämään mahdollinen feministinen pohjavire kerronnan taustalta. McCarthy luokitellaan
yleisesti feministiseksi kirjailijaksi, mutta hän on itse kieltänyt olevansa feministi. Tämä ristiriita on
näkyvissä myös The Groupissa: tarinassa on toisaalta vahvoja feministisiä sävyjä, mutta toisaalta
päähenkilöt ovat kaukana ”feministisankarien” ideaalista.
Tutkielman teoreettisena viitekehyksenä on käytetty feminististä kirjallisuusteoriaa, joka on yhdistetty
sosialisaation ideaan. Sosialisaatiolla tarkoitetaan niitä tapoja, joilla yksilö sitoutetaan noudattamaan
tietyn yhteisön käytösnormeja. Kuten feministit ovat huomanneet ja tuoneet näkyväksi, naisten
sosialisaatio eroaa huomattavasti miesten sosialisaatiosta, sillä naisilla on itseilmaisunsa suhteen
huomattavasti vähemmän liikkumavaraa kuin miehillä. Naisten on perinteisesti haluttu olevan passiivisia
aktiivisten toimijoiden sijaan. Naiset on myös määritelty heidän ihmissuhteidensa kautta: naiset ovat
äitejä, vaimoja, tyttäriä, sen sijaan, että heidät nähtäisiin yksilöinä. Jos he eivät onnistu tai suostu
mukautumaan ”kiltin tytön” rooliin, seurauksena on sosiaalisia sanktioita: riski menettää kasvonsa
muiden silmissä, kunnioituksen ja sosiaalisen statuksen menetys.
The Groupissa sosialisaatioprosessit voidaan nähdä käytännössä, sillä siinä naispäähenkilöt ovat juuri
valmistuneet yliopistosta ja aloittelevat kukin omaa elämäänsä. Koska kyseessä on kuitenkin 1930-luku,
jotkut heistä eivät pysty tekemään omaa elämäänsä koskevia päätöksiä itsenäisesti, vaan aviomiehillä,
vanhemmilla ja työnantajilla on joskus suurempi päätäntävalta kuin heillä itsellään. Ne, jotka ainakin
jollain tasolla elävät omaehtoista elämää, joutuvat kohtaamaan aiemmin mainittuja sosiaalisia sanktioita.
Tutkielmassa romaanin kahdeksan päähenkilöä on jaettu karkeasti kahteen ryhmään, mukautujiin ja
vastustajiin, sen mukaan onnistuuko heidän sosialisaationsa vai ei, siis tuleeko heistä yhteisön silmissä
”kunnon naisia” vai ei.
Tutkimalla teosta yllä mainitulla tavalla kävi selväksi, että tarinassa on tietynlainen feministinen
pohjavire, ja The Groupin voikin nähdä havahduttamisena naisten asemaan, mikä on feministiselle
kirjallisuudelle ominainen tekniikka. Toisaalta koska McCarthy oli kirjailijana lähes pakkomielteinen
faktojen ja totuudenmukaisuuden suhteen, tarinassa on myös sävyjä, jotka ovat osittain ristiriidassa
feministisen ajattelun kanssa. Päähenkilöt eivät ole toisilleen hyviä ystäviä, vaan lojaaliuden sijaan he
arvostelevat toisiaan ja juoruavat toistensa selän takana. Heidän ryhmänsä mentaliteetti näyttää
ystävyyden sijaan rakentuvan ennemminkin statuksen ja sen tavoittelun varaan, ja feministinen ajatus
”sisaruudesta” tai naisten välisestä yhteenkuuluvuuden tunteesta loistaa poissaolollaan.
Avainsanat – Keywords
feminismi, sosialisaatio, feministinen kirjallisuusteoria, naiset, 1930-luku, The Group, Mary McCarthy
ITÄ-SUOMEN YLIOPISTO – UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN FINLAND
Tiedekunta – Faculty
Philosophical Faculty
Osasto – School
School of Humanities
Tekijät – Author
Sarianna Ikonen
Työn nimi – Title
Women's Socialisation in Mary McCarthy's The Group: A Feminist Reading
Pääaine – Main subject
English Language and Culture
Työn laji – Level
Pro gradu
-tutkielma
Sivuainetutkielma
Kandidaatin
tutkielma
Aineopintojen
tutkielma
x
Päivämäärä –
Date
2.4.2016
Sivumäärä – Number of
pages
87
Tiivistelmä – Abstract
This thesis deals with women's socialisation processes in Mary McCarthy's novel The Group (1963) that
is examined from a feminist point of view. By using feminist literary theory and the idea of socialisation,
this thesis studies how McCarthy has portrayed her eight main female characters, and whether or not a
feminist “voice” can be found in the background of the narration. McCarthy is often included in the
“canon” of feminist writers, but she herself has claimed that she is not a feminist. This controversy can
be seen in The Group as well: on one hand, there are some strong feminist tones in the story, but on the
other hand, the main characters are far from “ideal” feminist heroines.
As theoretical framework I have used feminist literary theory, and connected it with the idea of
socialisation, which means the ways in which individuals are bound to society's behavioural norms. As
feminists have noted, women's socialisation differs from that of men significantly, as they are left with
notably less latitude with their self-expression than men. Traditionally, women have been wanted passive
by society, and they have been defined through their relationships with other people: women are
mothers, wives, daughters, and so on, rather than individuals. If they fail to fulfil the role of a “good girl,”
they must face social sanctions, which means the risk of losing face among other people, losing
respectability and social status.
In The Group, these socialisation processes can be seen “in action,” as the main female characters have
just graduated from college, and are starting their own lives. It is the 1930s, and for some of them, their
choices do not seem to be their own: husbands, parents, and employers control their lives more than the
women themselves. The ones who do, at least to some extent, live the way they please, face the social
sanctions mentioned above. In this thesis, the eight main characters have been divided into roughly two
groups, the compliants and the resisters, according to the successfulness or failure of their socialisation
into “proper women.” Proper woman here means, of course, the “ideal” of a woman in the 1930s.
By studying the socialisation processes of the main characters from a feminist point of view it becomes
clear that there is indeed a certain feminist voice in the background of the story, and The Group can be
seen as consciousness-raising, which is a common feminist literary technique. However, since McCarthy
as a writer was nearly obsessed with truth and facts, there are tones in the story which in a way conflict
with the feminist agenda. The main characters are far from perfect as friends to each other: instead of
being loyal, they are judgemental and gossip about each other. Their group mentality seems to be built
more on the idea of status than friendship, and the feminist idea of “sisterhood” is conspicuous by its
absence.
Avainsanat – Keywords
feminism, socialisation, feminist literary theory, women, 1930s, The Group, Mary McCarthy
Contents
1. Introduction
1
1.1 Aims and Structure
1
1.2 Mary McCarthy and Her Work
5
1.2.1 McCarthy's Writing
10
1.2.2 The Group: Story and Plot
14
1.2.3 The General Reception of McCarthy's Work and the Reception of
The Group
1.3 Context
2. Theoretical Framework
2.1 Feminism and Literary Theory
17
19
25
25
2.1.1 Defining Feminism
25
2.1.2 Feminist Literary Theory
31
2.1.3 The Woman Writer/Woman Reader
33
2.2 Socialisation
3. Analysis
36
45
3.1 The Compliants
46
3.2 The Resisters
54
3.3 The Whole Group
63
3.4 Feminist Voice in The Group
68
4. Conclusion(s)
Bibliography
77
1
1. Introduction
This thesis examines Mary McCarthy's novel The Group (1963) and its eight female
characters from a feminist point of view. By using feminist literary theory and criticism,
and to some extent the idea of socialisation, I wish to explore in detail how McCarthy
describes these women and their socialisation. The idea for the thesis emerged when many
sources suggested that McCarthy was a feminist, but in my reading The Group was not
really a very feminist text, or at least it was far from my idea of an “ideal feminist text;” a
text where women are strong heroines, not controlled by anyone, and allies to each other
instead of being stereotypical backstabbers who get into “catfights.” The issue was
complicated further when I read multiple interviews where McCarthy herself says that she
is not a feminist, and in fact almost despised the movement. What was going on? After
pondering upon the problem for a long time, I came to a conclusion that perhaps the
conflict between the feminist ideology and the institutionalised processes of socialisation
may explain these varying interpretations of McCarthy's work.
1.1 Aims and Structure
First, I will present Mary McCarthy and her literary works, as well as other background
material for my thesis. While the information to be given in this section (and in other
sections as well) about Mary McCarthy may at first seem too detailed and personal, I will
later demonstrate that she more often than not used autobiographical material in her
writing, and was herself almost obsessed with details. As Alan Wald says: “McCarthy was
extraordinarily candid about the details of her life in her autobiography, fiction, and
2
interviews. A good deal of her recollections has received verification through documents
and other primary sources” (70). Frances Fitzgerald suggests that “[McCarthy’s] work was
her life in the sense that it was not different from it, not something compartmentalized and
filed away. It was her response to life in all its forms from art to politics to sex” (192).
My thesis deals with the socialisation processes of the female characters in Mary
McCarthy's The Group. Susan A. Wheelan provides a comprehensible definition of
socialisation that forms the backbone of this study:
Through the process of socialization, individuals internalize the culture of the
society in which they live. Socialization enables people to take on social roles and
to learn cultural values, norms, and ideologies. As a result of interactions in many
social situations and groups, individuals learn how to think and act like other
members of their culture. Individuals learn the customs, roles, beliefs, accepted
behaviors, and attitudes of members of their particular society. Socialization serves
to reconstitute society across generations. It ensures that traditions, modes of
behavior, beliefs, and roles will be carried on in the future. It reproduces culture
across time. Each generation inherits the cultural blueprint of its ancestors. No
generation invents its culture from scratch. (25)
These processes can be seen in action in The Group, which is about eight Vassar (a
college in New York) graduates, all female. The story follows their lives from the year they
graduate, 1933 (when they are all still very young and have high hopes for their lives),
until 1940 (when all of them have already had some tough lessons about life). It starts at
the wedding of Kay, who is one of the main characters, and ends at her funeral. Between
these events, the young women all try to “find their paths” in life, and establish their place
in society. The novel does not really have a clear, coherent plot, but rather it is a depiction
3
of these women’s everyday lives and the random events and conversations that are parts of
them.
I want to study how the socialisation processes of the characters are described in the
novel during the seven years in their lives depicted in the novel. In so doing I need to
consider the society of the 1930s, and women's role and position at the time. Do the
characters manage to “fit in” the norms of that time period? How do they do so? If they
fail, what are the consequences?
To support my study I will use feminist literary theory and criticism, and I will
especially use the Anglo-American branch of feminist literary theory. Peter Barry describes
the Anglo-American version of feminist literary theory in the following way:
[it] maintain[s] a major interest in traditional critical concepts like theme, motif,
and characterisation. [The critics] seem to accept the conventions of literary
realism, and treat literature as a series of representations of women’s lives and
experience which can be measured and evaluated against reality. They see the close
reading and explication of individual literary texts as the major business of feminist
criticism. (119)
Barry also claims that the Anglo-American representatives of feminist literary theory
“place considerable emphasis on the use of historical data and non-literary material (such
as diaries, memoirs, social and medical history) in understanding the literary text” (119),
which seems fitting for my study, because McCarthy was a very autobiographical writer.
What, then, do I hope to find in my analysis? McCarthy has often been said to be a
feminist writer. She is, for example, regularly mentioned in anthologies introducing
feminist writers and literature. However, not much thorough feminist research has been
done on her, nor on her work: “Feminist critics, who have exhaustively promoted and
4
analyzed nearly every other woman writer, have shown remarkably little interest in her”
(Dickstein 18). Hilfer expands this view by saying:
[F]eminist criticism has not altogether taken up the challenge of contemporary
fiction by American women. Classic writers such as Katherine Anne Porter are
generally disliked or ignored by the more prominent and theoretically inclined
feminist critics due to her sometimes illiberal politics. […] Writers like Mary
McCarthy […] tend to receive more attention from educated readers and newspaper
reviewers than from the most academically prestigious feminist criticism. (191)
This raises some questions. Should only the “clearly” feminist writers and texts be
acknowledged by feminist critics? Who, then, is a “feminist writer?” What is a “feminist
text” like? There are elements in Mary McCarthy's work, too, which may be seen as
feminist, and elements that perhaps are not. Her novels are realist novels, and portray
women's lives more or less as they were, not as they “should” have been. Surely this
cannot mean that they are not interesting to feminists?
What makes the matter yet more complex, as already mentioned, is that McCarthy
herself stated that she was not a feminist. According to McCarthy, The Group was meant to
be a novel about progress and the blind faith of the 1930s. In 1959, when McCarthy started
to work on the manuscript that later became The Group, she applied for a grant and
described the story as “‘a kind of compendious history of the faith in progress of the
nineteen-thirties[.] [...] It is a crazy quilt of clichés, platitudes, and idées reçues. Yet the
book is not meant to be a joke or even a satire, exactly, but a ‘true history’ of the [time]’”
(McCarthy qtd in Gelderman 253).
Hence, I am interested in finding out what kind of feminist aspects can be found in
the novel and its characters. Here, I am using the idea of socialisation as a tool to help
5
understand the circumstances in which the characters live. I am also interested in the ways
in which the novel might not be feminist, and want to see whether I can trace the reasons
why there are such elements in the story. I feel that this is important, since it may help to
explain, at least to some extent, the “reluctancy” of feminist researchers towards McCarthy.
This thesis hopes to demonstrate that while there are occasionally strong feminist
tones in The Group, some parts of the story conflict with the feminist agenda to some
extent. The Group could be read, for example, as consciousness raising (of the situation of
women in the 1930s), which is a feminist literary technique. Yet, as I argue, the novel can
also be seen as a story full of weak, mean, and foolish women – female characters who
have always existed in literature without anything especially feminist about them.
McCarthy was keen on exposing the cruelty of people, but also despised women who felt
they were victims. Because of these contradictions, it is important to examine both sides
equally, and not only to do an “automatically” feminist reading of the novel.
1.2 Mary McCarthy and Her Work
“McCarthy may be more famous now for her personal life than for her fiction, ‘less
read than read about[.]’” (Showalter Jury of Her Peers 461)
The American author Mary McCarthy was born in 1912 (Gelderman 14). Elaine
Showalter explains that McCarthy had several different roles in her life. For example, she
had her religious background, elite education, left-wing politics, unclear attitude to
feminism and her eager participation in antiwar protesting. However, she “never fit
comfortably into any of these cultural categories [as] she was too sexual and
antiauthoritarian for the Catholics, too serious and political for the society girls, too chic
6
and fashion-conscious for the feminists, too frivolous for the politicos” (Jury of Her Peers
458).
McCarthy was orphaned at the age of six, when her parents died of the influenza
epidemic that raged around the world in 1918 (Gelderman 1). She was raised by her
paternal relatives, whom she has described as repressive, and later by her maternal
grandparents, whom she liked better, but still felt lonely (Gelderman 20-8). However, the
grandparents offered her an upper-class lifestyle, and later were able to send her to eminent
girls' schools. Fitzgerald suspects that the risk-taking and “brutal” honesty that made
McCarthy somewhat notorious later in her career and life, could stem from
the fact that [her parents] died when she was very young: they died very quickly,
almost overnight, and she wasn't told until later. Then she and her brothers had a
Dickensian few years in the “care” of her McCarthy grandparents [sic]. It was the
survival of the fittest, and she decided to survive, but she had to cast off all
dreaminess and sentimentality in order to do it. [...] Others, including her brothers,
have reacted differently to similar circumstances. In any case, [...] [t]here was no
wishful thinking [later] in her life and no hypocrisy. (194)
Janis Greve is on the same track when she says that “[McCarthy's autobiography] reveal[s]
that for Mary, aspiration toward the highest social goal is a mechanism of survival; it is a
matter about which she has no choice.” In Greve's view, because of McCarthy's contrasting
childhood experiences of love and cruelty, beauty and ugliness, among others,
Mary [began] to see the activity of living as divided into two basic impulses: as
‘forward’ movement, which is life-ensuring and and equivalent to ‘beauty,’ and as
regressive movement, which is self-denying and ultimately implies the total loss of
self. What results is a crude philosophy which defines life as social advancement,
7
and death as social stasis which feels like regression to a helpless, infantile state.
(Greve 173; emphasis original)
Greve surmises that “[McCarthy's aunt's] managing of her household like a military
regiment, in combination with [her aunt's husband's] tyranny, forever distort the meaning
of the word ‘equality’ for Mary” (173). What she means is that all of the children were
treated equally (cruel) but the differences of personality or individuality were not taken on
account at all. Combined with the humiliations by her uncle, McCarthy started to “[equate]
the notion of social equality with self-negation” (Greve 173).
One of the important events in Mary McCarthy's life was her entering a Catholic
girls' school, The Sacred Heart Convent, at the age of eleven. McCarthy's biographer, Carol
Gelderman, describes the school as follows:
Here the students, all girls, curtsied and spoke French; wore uniforms; practiced
perfect posture [etc]. Here education was not just a matter of mastering skills,
although intellectual discipline was rigorous [...]. A Sacred Heart girl learned that
things must not just be done – they must be done in a certain way. (36)
This helped shape McCarthy's perfectionist character. On the basis of her years at the
school McCarthy wrote one of her best-known works, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
(1957).
Later, in the fall of 1929, at the age of seventeen, McCarthy was admitted to Vassar
College in the state of New York (Gelderman 47). Vassar was a distinguished liberal arts
school, which in her days was for women only (Vassar opened its doors to men in 1969)
(“About Vassar”). This was another major life event of Mary McCarthy. McCarthy
graduated from Vassar in 1933 (Gelderman 60), which is the same year when the female
characters of The Group graduate from Vassar. She later used her classmates of Vassar as
8
characters in the novel so openly that it caused anger among them:
[McCarthy had a] habit of mining her life for her fiction – friends, husbands, lovers,
neighbors, colleagues, and classmates were all fair game. The fictionalizing often
involved betraying intimacies and stomping on weaknesses. (In June 1993 when
members of the Vassar class of 1933 celebrated their sixtieth reunion the New
York Times reported that they were still fuming about McCarthy's act of exposure
and betrayal in The Group.) (Gross 29)
All in all (not only in The Group), “Vassar left its mark. References to it abound in her
writing” (Gelderman 60).
McCarthy was married four times. As Gross mentions in the quote above,
McCarthy's husbands, too, have been transferred into her writing. For example, her first
husband, Harold Johnsrud, became Harald Petersen, the abusive husband of one of the
group members, Kay, in The Group. As Gelderman notes, “[t]he account of Kay and
Harald's wedding service [in the beginning of The Group] and the breakfast that follows, is
actually a description of McCarthy and Johnsrud's” (61). There are also other scenes in The
Group which have happened in real life between McCarthy and some of her husbands (not
necessarily always Johnsrud), but I will return to them later.
She had one child, Reuel, with her second husband, Edmund Wilson (Gelderman
94). Wilson, like McCarthy, was a noted critic and writer, or, as Gelderman puts it, “one of
the best-known critic-journalists in the country [in the 1930s]” (86). He was also a major
influence for McCarthy's writing, and the reason why she attempted writing fiction in the
first place. McCarthy later confessed that marrying Wilson was to some extent a careermove, and that the marriage was not really a happy one (Brightman 263, Gelderman 90).
McCarthy was politically active. She was especially concerned about the Vietnam
9
War (1955-1975) and was part of the anti-war movement. She even visited Saigon in 1967,
and wrote about the war for many newspapers and magazines (Gelderman 278-300).
Whereas she followed politics observantly, the feminist movement of the sixties did not
interest McCarthy as such: she felt that it saw women as victims and this did not suit her
mindset. “She considered ideological feminism, as she said, ‘bad for women in its self-pity,
shrillness, and greed’” (Schlesinger 203). Stacey Lee Donohue points out that
McCarthy once denounced feminism as “a competitive ideology born of
desperation[.]” [...] She believed that the successes she had in life were due to men:
as Philip Rahv's girlfriend, she got to write for Partisan Review; through Edmund
Wilson, she started writing fiction; and her third husband [...] took care of life for
her while she continued to write. (95)
McCarthy's personality (or rather her public image) has been described as, for
example, scary, sharp, honest, and mean, and it is often mentioned that she had a shark-like
smile (Gross 28). Gross notes that “McCarthy's biographers remark on the recurrent
imagery of sharp instruments when critics talk of her work” (28). For example, scissors,
swords, knives, stilettos, and switch-blades are words of frequent use by critics to describe
McCarthy's writing, as are also adjectives that are more or less specific to these objects:
“cold, heartless, clever, cerebral, cutting, acid, acidulous” (Gross 28). Fitzgerald says, too,
that “[McCarthy] was sharp, full of edges. She attacked all kinds of distinguished people.
She attacked people no one would think of attacking now” (192). However, in her personal
life she has also been said to have been a great friend (Schlesinger 201).
In the beginning of this section I quoted Elaine Showalter, who has said that Mary
McCarthy is nowadays perhaps more known for her life than for her work. So why is this?
Already in her days, she was a public figure: famous – or notorious. She also promoted
10
such a view in her autobiographies; she did not feel the need to hide her personal matters.
The description in The New York Times' McCarthy biography (Mary McCarthy: A
Life by Carol Gelderman) review sums up her career and life well:
Her subsequent career [...] has [...] been full of incident and productive in an
admirably varied way. Although her early fiction, her criticism and her books on
Venice and Florence, together with her frequent appearances in The New Yorker,
had secured her reputation as a leading woman of letters, it was not until the
publication of ''The Group'' in 1963 that Mary McCarthy became a best-selling
novelist, well known to the general public. [...]
A lover of controversy, she has never hesitated to take an outspoken stand
on political and cultural issues. She rallied vigorously to the side of her close
friend Hannah Arendt when the latter was under attack by much of the vocal
Jewish community for her book on Adolf Eichmann. She flew to Hanoi and
wrote favorably about the Vietcong during the depths of the Vietnam War. She has
attacked what she regards as the myths and pieties of feminism. Repeatedly she has
risked – perhaps invited – charges of perversity or naivete. (Towers)
Mary McCarthy died in 1989 at the age of 77 (Brightman 623), having gained a
worldwide reputation for her journalism, fiction, and autobiography.
1.2.1 McCarthy's Writing
Mary McCarthy wrote prolifically. Her best-known works, as mentioned, are Memories of
a Catholic Girlhood and The Group, the latter being her best-selling work. 53 editions of
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood were published between 1957 and 2006 in five
11
languages. Of The Group, 80 editions were published between 1954 (when parts of what
later became The Group were published as short stories in magazines) and 2010 in ten
languages (Worldcat.org). A film adaptation of The Group was also released in 1966
(imdb.com). In addition to fiction, McCarthy was also prolific in other domains of writing.
As Fitzgerald points out, McCarthy's range of work covers “novels, short stories, memoirs,
literary criticism, theatre criticism, art history [and] war reportage” (191) as well as letters
and essays, which she wrote countlessly. McCarthy lived most of her life in the United
States, but also in Europe, for example, in Paris. She wrote travel books about Venice and
Florence, Venice Observed (1956) and The Stones of Florence (1959), which focus
especially on art in these two cities (Caws 138).
McCarthy often used plenty of autobiographical material in her writing, including
her fiction, and offended people she knew by using them in her texts in unflattering ways.
Gross says: “It was as a satirist rather than a fabulist that McCarthy wrote fiction. Her six
novels seem less acts of imagination than of social and intellectual criticism, scoring the
pretentious vulgarity of American life and the treachery of doctrinal thinking” (29).
Showalter points out that McCarthy’s honesty had some serious downsides:
McCarthy had a perverse and contrarian streak that drove her to speak up unwisely,
to confess too much about herself, to recklessly humble male egos, often in public.
For a woman writer to appear heartless in the 1950s was even more damning in the
eyes of male critics than being all heart in the 1850s. (Jury of Her Peers 460)
Some of the people she used in her books were able to forgive her, while some were not.
Either way, McCarthy stated: “‘I can't stop myself. I go and do it, and hope they [her
acquaintances] won't suffer too much’” (McCarthy qtd in Gelderman 189). Gelderman
quotes Angélique Levi, McCarthy's French translator and good friend: “[McCarthy] picks
12
up on the ridiculous side of people. It's her inspiration, the core of her humor, and her
vision of things” (190).
McCarthy has often been described as merciless and brutal in her honestly – also
towards herself. Mary Ann Caws writes: “In Mary McCarthy's work and life, I don't see a
lot of self-deception; she was fearless about discomfort, hers and the reader's too. [...] [In
her work,] [s]he takes the grave step of creating a protagonist – purportedly fictional, but
clearly autobiographical – very like herself and yet frequently dislikeable” (138). For
example, in The Group, Kay has been seen as McCarthy's alter ego. She is not a very
likeable character as she is, for example, stubborn and yet weak, trying to keep up the
appearances no matter what, while her husband abuses her mentally and physically. Arthur
Schlesinger, an old friend of McCarthy, reminisces also that “[i]t was typical of Mary that
she applied her exacting standards to friends as well as to everyone else” (202).
Hilfer has noticed something similar, when he writes that “McCarthy in her rather
ferocious concern for truth [writes] from the outside, as a witness, an accuser, even a spy of
women's experience, her own included” (192). Hilfer connects this with feminist criticism,
and wonders why this style of writing has been perceived by feminist critics as
“masculine,” and how McCarthy, who “told painful truths and abjured political
cheerleading,” has been nearly forgotten by these critics (192). Be as it may, McCarthy
could well be seen as a pioneer, for example, in the field of describing women's sexuality.
As Gelderman describes, “No one before had written so openly about contraception. [In
The Group,] Dottie's visit to the doctor to get a pessary, written so matter-of-factly and
with such unflinching detail, shocked nearly everyone” (252). Other important themes in
Mary McCarthy's works are truth and deceit, narrative technique, construction of self as
character, as well as ethnicity and religion (Murphy Preface 2).
13
One of McCarthy's literary trademarks is her use of very specific details in her
fiction, such as brand names, places, or dates. Katie Roiphe describes McCarthy's prose by
saying that she had an “insistence on the social rather than the internal, on aspect rather
than development” (129). She was more interested in “art and artifice, in the way people
present themselves,” rather than “in childhood traumas and subconscious motivations” –
the then very fashionable Freudian character analysis (Roiphe 130). “[T]he furnishing of
evidence is particularly important to McCarthy, and [in Memories of a Catholic Girlhood]
she vividly portrays a crisis of ‘fact’ which begins immediately after the deaths of her
parents” (Greve 179).
Randall Jarrell (1914-1965), an American novelist, is said to have created a
fictional character, or, rather, a caricature, of Mary McCarthy, in his novel Pictures from an
Institute (1954). In the following excerpt he “picks up on McCarthy's attempt to capture
social milieu through its details” (Roiphe 129):
Gertrude [McCarthy] was as all knowing as Time. All clichés, slogans, fashions,
turns of speech, details of dress, disguises of affection, tunnels or by-passes of
ideology ... lived in Gertrude. If one of Gertrude’s heroines, running to snatch from
the lips of her little daughter a half-emptied bottle of furniture polish, fell and tore
her skirt, Gertrude knew the name of the dress maker who made the skirt – and it
was the right name for a woman of that class at that date; she knew the brand of the
furniture polish. (qtd in Roiphe 129)
The quote is funny because it is rather accurate: for example, The Group is full of brand
names and other details which would be specific to the 1930s, and not only that, but “the
right name for a woman of that class” or social position, too.
14
1.2.2 The Group: Story and Plot
The Company She Keeps (1942) had made McCarthy famous among critics and shocked
them, and The Group did the same for larger audience (Murphy Preface 2). According to
Murphy, McCarthy got the idea for The Group when she was preparing an article about her
fellow Vassar alumnae and noticed that many of her peers were unhappy about being
“nobodys” (meaning that they were, for example, mothers, housewives, office workers,
and so on). They seemed to be even more so because of their education: they had been
taught to want and to expect more in life. They could have been something more than
simply housewives thanks to their education, or that is at least how they felt. They had left
Vassar feeling like the whole world was open to them, but the reality was very different
and nothing “grand” ever happened to them; they gained no status of their own. McCarthy
was interested in the reasons that had lead her peers to their unhappy situations. This
pondering made her to start writing The Group, in order to make sense to this
“metamorphosis” of Vassar women. (Murphy, “Reassessment” 86)
The Group is about eight Vassar graduates, all female, a group of “friends” – they
are not very loyal or kind to each other most of the time. The group consists of Kay, a
naïve girl from the Midwest, who could be seen as the main character; Dottie, a “happygo-lucky” girl from a wealthy Bostonian family; Polly, whose family has lost their fortune
because of the Depression; Priss, who has her first child and disagrees with her doctor
husband about how the baby should be raised; Libby, the “mean girl” of the group; Helena,
who is quiet but rebellious; Pokey, a fat, rich and lazy girl, who only gets through Vassar
because of the help she gets from her friends; and Lakey, a mysterious beauty, who spends
most of the story in Europe, and is revealed to be a lesbian at the end of the book. As said,
15
the story follows their lives from their 1933 graduation to 1940. It starts from Kay's
wedding, and ends in her funeral.
In a typical “McCarthy manner”, there does not happen much in the novel; there is
not a clear plot. As Timothy F. Waples says, “[h]aving knowledge and acting on it are two
different things, as McCarthy's fiction always demonstrates (an important reason why her
fiction is often short on plot and long on talk)” (80). The Group fits this “pattern,” since it
simply depicts the characters' lives, and gives an image of a certain period of time, that is,
the 1930s, from the point of view of these women. More or less all eight of them get their
chance to “speak,” or to be in the spotlight, some more than others. As Gelderman
illuminates,
[t]he novel consists of chapters written from the viewpoint and in the language of
eight girls[.] [...] McCarthy's own voice is almost completely silent; The Group is
as far as she could go in ventriloquism, she has said. Since everything is written in
the characters' voices, everything is dramatized. The characters do little besides
talk, and their conversations effectively characterize them. [...] William Abrahams,
one of the few critics who realized that the novel was written in the “chirp, twitter,
gasp, and gabble” of the group, wrote that “Miss McCarthy's mastery of
intonations and vocabulary of what one might call 'educated-banal' is a remarkable
tour de force, sustained as it is for almost four hundred pages.[”] (254-55)
The following excerpt from The Group, narrated from Libby's viewpoint, illustrates this
“ventriloquism” perfectly:
[Libby] had been in New York nearly two years now, living first with two other
girls from Pittsfield in Tudor City and now alone, in this spiffy apartment she
had found. She was avid for success, and her parents were willing; Brother was
16
settled, at long last, in a job in the mill, and Sister had married a Harkness. So
Libby was free to try her pinions.
Mr LeRoy had given her stacks of manuscripts to start out with. She had had to
buy a ladies' briefcase at Mark Cross to lug them all back and forth – black calf,
very snazzy. “You're made, Libby!” her roommates in Tudor City used to gasp
when they saw her stagger in with her load. (McCarthy 211; emphasis original)
The novel presents a retrospective image of the 1930s: it depicts the society of the
time, and how these women are a part of it, all in their own way. In the background there is
the Great Depression, which affects them, some more than others, and the threat of the
Soviet Union and communism, Hitler, the Spanish Civil War... All these subjects current at
the time are mentioned in the book, but they are not foregrounded in a specific way. The
other themes of the novel are, for example, contraception and sex, which were still taboos
in the 1930s, but were becoming slightly more acceptable subjects in the 1960s, when the
novel was written. The political climate of the 1930s, as well as (women's) education, are
also themes dealt with in the story.
Moreover, The Group is also a novel about relationships: relationships that these
women have with each other, relationships they have with men, and their relationship to
society. Some of the women work, get married and travel, and others do not. Some of them
are more appreciated members of the group (and society perhaps) than others, although
they all come from the same educational “starting point”. The reasons for these differences
can be traced to the socialisation processes that the characters go through. The lives of the
women are often described tinged with competition for (social) status and fear of being
deviant in a negative way – although at the same time all of them wish to be progressive
and different from their mothers. Donohue describes the characters: “The women of The
17
Group compete with each other for who gets the best life, the best man, and their juggling
of allegiances at Vassar is merely a precursor to their lives; their ‘friendship’ is superficial”
(95). This is a rather starkly absolute statement, but at least partly true: the need to be an
accepted and respected member of society sometimes does surpass the importance of
friendships for them.
1.2.3 The General Reception of McCarthy's Work and the Reception of The Group
Gelderman suggests that “[f]or the past fifty years, critics [...] have seemed to be either
captivated or outraged by McCarthy as a person as much as as [sic] a writer” (xi). It can be
said that critics mostly disliked her satirical style, which she generally took to the extreme:
hence, while they often admired her “‘wit, sharp observation, extraordinary intelligence, an
unflagging brilliance and elegance of language’” (Barrett qtd in Dickstein 18) they liked to
assail the lack of feeling and “empty” characters in her fiction. Morris Dickstein points out
that “it is often said that her characters are little more than intricately described specimens,
pinned and mounted like butterflies but incapable of growth or change” (19). It has also
been said that McCarthy had a “superior attitude toward her characters” (Dickstein 20) and
that as a fiction writer she was snobbish, paid too much attention to insignificant details,
had a “wobbly moral compass”, and used her writing as a medium of gossip (Dickstein
21). Wendy Martin brings a feminist point of view to the debate when she writes about The
Group:
Many critics have objected to [The Group's] gossipy, trivial, breathy diction and
domestic details, but McCarthy's rendering of the traditionally “feminine”
effectively exposes the cultural contradictions and absurdities with which her
18
characters live. Given the fact that during much of their lives they have been
confined to the domestic and decorative spheres, it is not surprising that their
energies are directed toward etiquette and clothes. (170)
McCarthy's first novel, The Company She Keeps, caused a scandal when it was
published in 1942 due to its blunt, “matter-of-fact” sex scenes. The reviewers were not
highly impressed by the book, and Gelderman says: “[it] is a kind of autobiography, and
everyone in 1942 knew who her characters ‘really’ were” (102) – one of the reasons why
some critics accused McCarthy of gossiping. However, because it was a succès de
scandale, it sold well (Gelderman 102). McCarthy's Memories of a Catholic Girlhood was
more acclaimed. Maureen Howard calls it McCarthy's “most perfect work” (196) and
Gelderman “her finest achievement” (Just the Facts 175). The Group, then, was published
in 1963, and became an instant best-seller (Gelderman 250). It did not receive the most
positive reviews, but not many very bad ones, either: “On the whole, the reviews of The
Group, both pro and con, were milder than those for McCarthy's previous books”
(Gelderman 258). An exception would be one “review” by Norman Mailer in The New
York Review of Books, in which he bashed the novel simply because he did not like the
writer. Nonetheless, besides becoming a best-seller in the USA, The Group was also an
international commercial success and made McCarthy an international celebrity
(Gelderman 264-65).
As I mentioned, McCarthy's (fictional) work often created a stir because of, for
example, her straightforward description of sex. Besides The Company She Keeps, also
The Group was seen as “sensational” in this sense – even so much so that the novel was
actually banned in some countries. According to Gelderman, it was due to the novel's
explicitness that “it was banned in Italy, Ireland, and Australia, giving rise to expensive
19
lawsuits” (262). In the United States, too, The Group made many people write angrily to
McCarthy's publisher, calling the book “most vulgar” and “a public strip-tease,” among
other things (Gelderman 262). All the publicity that the novel received made it, of course,
ever more popular. A film adaptation of the story was made three years later; unlike the
novel, it was not a commercial, nor critical success (Gelderman 264).
As to trends in academic/critical reception, not much has been said about The
Group; all in all, it was considered more as entertainment than something to be taken
seriously – unlike, for example, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood. Feminists, for example,
basically dismissed the book as depicting female self-hatred after Elaine Showalter had
analysed the novel in the 1970s with her focus on Kay and her unpleasant characteristics:
“anger, frustration, bitchiness, self-doubt, self-sacrifice, depression, and madness”
(Murphy Reassessment 96).
McCarthy has received some awards for her literary work, and honorary degrees
from many universities in the United States (Gelderman 350). Martin sums up McCarthy's
career by saying that “[d]espite the stresses and challenges of her personal life and the
sometimes hostile response of critics to her work, McCarthy was a survivor rather than a
victim; she was unequivocally a writer of extraordinary range and a citizen of the world”
(163).
1.3 Context
McCarthy had very diverse genealogical roots: from her mother's side she had both a
Protestant and a Jewish heritage, and from her father's side Irish Catholic and American
mid-western heritage (Gelderman 5). Especially the Jewish and Catholic roots are often
20
mentioned as important background forces in her writing, as sources of inspiration and
“tools” for her world viewing. Donohue states that “Mary McCarthy is identifiably a
Catholic writer, writing in the Irish-American literary tradition, although I certainly would
not want to limit her to that identity” (87). She wonders whether the Catholic imagery of,
for example, “saints and martyrs where the love of God is expressed through masochism”
or “gruesome diseases, especially those involving the rotting or falling off of parts of the
body” that McCarthy was familiarised with as a young girl, could explain her “infamous
obsession with the physical” (88). Donohue also connects the “inconsistency” of McCarthy
with her Catholic background:
Despite her public persona as a radical and her outspokenness against the Catholic
Church, McCarthy retained her Catholic sensibility, and was a very reluctant
radical. She believed in social change, political change, and freedom for women to
reach their potential, yet she retreated whenever these changes threatened her
perceptions of the way things ought to be. (97)
Rhoda Nathan writes about the Jewish influence that can be found in McCarthy's
work, saying that it was a key to her social and political views:
Scrupulously, almost morbidly, honest and projecting a near-clinical detachment
about her own and others' positions with respect to controversial
issues,
she
alternately distanced herself from and identified with her Jewish roots and the
identities of her colleagues, friends, and lovers. (99)
Nathan also notes that the Jewish “issues” themselves were not of interest to McCarthy, at
least as much as the phenomenon of anti-Semitism: “In her fiction, she employed the
thorny dual problems of anti-Semitism and ‘passing’ in a gentile society, both drawn from
intimate experience, as complex metaphors for other forms of social discrimination” (99).
21
Besides her religious roots, another important influence and inspirator for
McCarthy was Vassar, the New York college for privileged young women. Gelderman
states that
McCarthy was able to use everything – academically, emotionally, and, above all,
socially – that she learned at Vassar. [...] [At Vassar] she gained a world of fact,
which she later called “the staple ingredient” of all great novels. Not only
The Group, with its vivid reproduction of Vassar College and the 1930s, but all of
McCarthy's novels exemplify what is to her the very definition of the novel: “its
concern with the actual world of fact, of the verifiable, of figures, even, statistics.”
(60)
The 1930s, as the historical background of the novel, is the period of Great
Depression, when hundreds of thousands of people were unemployed and became
homeless in the United States alone. It did not, however, affect either McCarthy or –
fictionally – the characters in The Group severely, although it did, of course, have an
impact on them as well. As Flannery writes of the issue:
The Depression era prompted increasing numbers of women to pursue new avenues
of education that had previously been unavailable, and had seemed unlikely
and unpopular for their gender. Prior to the Depression, many women did not
pursue higher education by enrolling in college courses. The women that did
engage in academia often limited their involvement due to the fact that if they
planned to marry (as most did), they would not be permitted to work thereafter.
But with the 1930s economy in shambles and unemployment on the rise, many
men were finding it difficult if not impossible to obtain work. This lack of
employment made the majority of men unlikely candidates for marriage, causing
22
women to become more concerned with their own education as a means for
financially supporting themselves. Women began to explore educational
opportunities at the University for classes that would be practical and useful for
future careers and jobs. (Flannery)
In addition to the depression, the 1930s saw also other great turmoil; at the international
level, in the threats associated with the Soviet Union and Hitler in Germany. Also the
Spanish Civil War raged on (1936-1939). At the end of the decade, World War II broke out.
All this is the historical background of The Group. The characters do talk about it to some
extent, but besides these conversations, it does not really affect their everyday lives in any
concrete way.
Laura Hapke claims that in the 1930s, a woman was very fortunate if she had some
kind of an education: of the eleven million working women in the United States at the
time, only fifteen percent had a diploma. Mostly the diplomas were high school or college
ones, and only rarely graduate degrees. Hapke goes on to say that “[b]ut whether [the
women's] vocational talents were those of senior clerks or medical doctors, they joined
their blue-collar counterparts as targets of disapproval in the 1930s” (183). For example,
fictions of the time “often chastised the [working] women, featuring their apologies to their
husbands for having better jobs or [...] providing jeremiads about castrating careerists”
(Hapke 185). In addition, the business magazines of the time either ignored women's
possible interest in careers other than marriage, or at least assumed that women were
aiming only for the jobs which were not “the province of men” (183). “Appropriate” work
for educated women would have been, for example, teaching, nursing, merchandising,
copy writing, catering and book reviewing (Hapke 183). These jobs are the ones that also
(most of) the female characters of The Group pursue.
23
Hapke notes that in the 1930s, there was a constant mental struggle for female
professionals between the “‘passivity expected’ of women and the ‘assertiveness
demanded’ by workplace duties” (187). She also says that if women were interested in
some (higher) professional position, they had to hide their ambition and maintain an
unaggressive and emphatetic image, because that was “culturally required” of women – the
“public […] preferred a career woman not to be threatening” (Hapke 187-8). The
professional women had to, besides balance between work, marriage and motherhood, also
battle the mental image of a career oriented spinster which was, of course, considered as
something ridiculous and unnatural for a woman to be (Hapke 188). It was also to avoid
ending up as a spinster that women had to be careful of being ambitious and hard: they
were told that these qualities would repel men (Hapke 190).
Thirty years later, in the 1960s, when The Group was for the most part written,
times had somewhat changed; the anti-war movement and (the second wave) feminism
thrived. While McCarthy was active in the anti-war movement, as mentioned earlier, she
did not find feminism very interesting. And, “[a]s she got older, she got progressively more
hostile toward feminism” (Donohue 95). Donohue quotes a 1979 interview, where
McCarthy said the following:
As for Women's Lib, it bores me. Of course I believe in equal pay and equality
before the law and so on, but this whole myth about how different the world
would have been if it had been female dominated ... I've never noticed that
women were less warlike than men. And in marriage – an equal division of tasks is
impossible – it's a judgment of Solomon. (95)
Moreover, in a story by The New York Times in the 1980s it becomes clear that McCarthy's
attitude had not changed:
24
Discussing contemporary feminist writers in the context of the idea that dishes and
diapers are demeaning, Miss McCarthy said: “I'm not familiar with them. I've read
very few. The only ones I read are my friends, and they are women who don't get
into that kind of thing.” Although she believes the women's movement has
contributed to an awareness that women have been exploited economically, she said
she was not a feminist, which came as a surprise to some in her audiences. (“Mary
McCarthy and Vassar Hit it Off”)
As can be gathered from the material above, Mary McCarthy was rather “layered,”
both as a person and as a writer. As her work is so richly detailed descriptions of a certain
era, and keeping in mind her unorthodox personal life (for a woman of her time), The
Group and its female characters' socialisation appears to be a great subject to study from
the feminist point of view.
25
2. Theoretical Framework
This section will introduce feminist literary theory, which means examining literature from
a feminist point of view, and the idea of socialisation, which is commonly used in social
sciences, and is not foreign to the study of literature, either. First, I will provide a general
introduction to feminism, what the term means and how it has come to be a movement and
an ideology; feminism has always relied on the idea that the personal is political. I will also
give examples of how and why feminism is connected with literary theory, and what the
phrase “feminist literary theory” may mean. I will then present the general idea of
socialisation, its meanings, and how it is divided into primary and secondary socialisation.
The last section of this theoretical framework addresses the phenomenon of secondary
socialisation, and more specifically that of women.
2.1 Feminism and Literary Theory
In this section, I will first offer some guidelines as to what feminism means or what it can
mean. Second, I will focus on feminist literary theory, its meanings and how it can be
applied. Third, I will discuss the idea of a woman writer and woman reader.
2.1.1 Defining Feminism
What does feminism mean? This may seem as a simple question, but the truth is that
feminism has meant and now means many different things; the answer varies according to
whom is answering. Some general observations can be, however, made. I shall start with
26
Maggie Humm's definition of feminism:
Feminism incorporates diverse ideas which share three major perceptions: that
gender is a social construction which oppresses women more than men; that
patriarchy shapes this construction; and that women's experiential knowledge is a
basis for a future non-sexist society. [...] [However,] [t]here is no single feminism
but many different interpretative methods, [for example], [b]lack feminisms,
poststructuralism, the psychoanalytic and so forth. (Criticism 10-11)
Hence, what makes feminism such a complex matter, among other things, is that it covers
so many different issues and fields. What I am most interested in here is, of course,
feminist literary theory and criticism.
“Representation [of women in literature] becomes reality, confused with absolute
truth” (Robbins 2). Therefore, it is important to understand that feminism as a term is “antitotalising” (Robbins 2). Everyone has their own understanding of the world, and there is no
one single truth connected to it. Its many meanings depend on the contexts and other
defining factors of different people saying “feminism”. As Robbins puts it, “One of
feminism's meanings has precisely to do with overstepping boundaries, defying limits and
refusing to be contained in or by ready-made systems of significations” (3).
Closely connected to the definition(s) of feminism are the three words: female,
meaning the biological sex; feminine, as in gender, culturally set and expected behavioural
characteristics (of female sex); and feminist, connected to politics, the idea that “confusion
of biology with culture can and should be questioned” (Robbins 6). It must be said that
these three words are very “slippery” in a way that they are always being questioned and
re-defined. In this thesis, however, I will understand these terms as Robbins has defined
them.
27
“Women are not all the same, but they do share similarities in subject positions
related to the cultures in which they live” (Robbins 14). These similarities can be, for
example, physiological oppression (children as “women's work,” violence and rape);
cultural oppression (women as objects rather than subjects); and psychological oppression
(women internalise a view of themselves as inferior) (Robbins 15). The cause for the
oppression can be found in patriarchy; the cultural belief that men are superior to women.
All in all, it could be said that no matter whether it is about the material world,
work, reproduction, culture, sexualities, class, race, minds, representations, behaviour, or
law – it is always “and the (female) body”, when it comes to feminism (Robbins 6;
emphasis added). Since feminism(s) is political, it is meant to change things, to make a
difference. According to Robbins, feminism does not want to completely forget biology,
since women's bodies (and the minds inside of them) often suffer the most when larger
groups of people are being oppressed (7). Feminism for politics means that feminists
understand how cultural structures (gender) often have a negative impact on female bodies,
do not like it, and say it in public. After this, there is of course the need to find solutions; to
offer new kinds of ways to look at things and do things (Robbins 7).
Literature may seem to be quite far apart from the problems mentioned above.
However, it is political in a sense that traditionally “literature” and “literary” have been
connected with education and “value,” and these terms are, of course, connected with men.
The education of women has been a lot more limited than that of men, depending on, for
example, social class (Robbins 7-9). Whereas women of higher social status could have
received some kind of an education, and could have, for example, learned to read, the same
would have seemed impossible for a lower-class woman. But even the most privileged
women were not allowed in the universities in the United Kingdom and the United States
28
until the end of the nineteenth century – and even then they could simply attend the
lectures, but not formally graduate (this right was gained in the 1920s; in Finland, in 1901)
(Helsingin yliopistomuseo, OUA: The First Woman Graduate of the University). And so,
without the education, one does not have the power nor right to say what is valuable
(Robbins 7-9). Literature is, hence, political; it is a tool.
The literary text reflects and (re)creates the world in which it is written and read.
This may be very indirect, but it happens nonetheless: the “what” and “how” of a text
matter (Robbins 9). “What appears to be impossible can be narrated as possible; if we can
imagine something, then just maybe it can happen” (Robbins 10). Expressing the ideas
through literature, which is full of value, makes that value to become a part of these ideas.
In realist fiction, what is showed and what is not showed are equally important matters.
Adopting one point of view excludes the other (Robbins 45). “Representation might not be
the same thing as reality, but it is a part of reality. The images we see or read about are part
of the context in which we live” (Robbins 51).
Thus, what makes literature an interesting subject of study for feminists is that
literature is one of the cultural aspects that shapes thinking: a literary text nearly always
gives some kind of representation of, among other things, gender. As Humm puts it: “The
cultural practices of literature are pervasive in schools, higher education and in the media.
Literature produces representations of gender difference which contribute to the social
perception that men and women are of unequal value” (Literary Theory 194).
It is no wonder, then, that finding a female tradition of literature has been an
important task for feminists for decades. However, deciding who is included has been
problematic: “Lesbians, both black and white, and heterosexual women of colour criticize
white heterosexual feminists for creating a literary history which is almost as selective and
29
ideologically bound as the male tradition” (Eagleton, Finding a Female Tradition 1-3). In
addition, the women of lower social classes were previously often “forgotten” when
creating the “canons” of women writers. Hence it is clear that besides sexism, also
heterosexism, homophobia and racism are, or can be, issues of feminism (Eagleton,
Finding a Female Tradition 3). And this is why today it is more sensible to talk about
feminisms, in plural, (see Robbins) because one feminism simply is not enough.
Can there be then, or should there even be, a definition of what a “feminist text” is
like? Ros Coward lists some of the general features that, in her opinion, make a text
feminist. A novel may, for example, “make explicit their allegiance to the women's
liberation movement”; or “the encounter with the milieu and aspirations of feminism often
forms a central element in the narrative” (379). In addition, “the practice of consciousness
raising – the reconstruction of personal histories within a group of women – sometimes
forms the structure of the novel” (379). Coward also mentions that in some cases, “feminist
commitment is guaranteed not so much by the content of the book as by the other
theoretical and political writings of the author” (379).
What is common is that all feminisms have to do with oppression – literature and
theory excluded or included, but oppression is always the “centre point” (Robbins 13). Of
course, “[c]auses and effects [of oppression] are multiple” (Robbins 13). Furthermore,
woman-centredness is also important: the sexual politics inside and outside the text. The
analysis of the text is linked to the analysis of the world as lived experience, whether
material or mental. Literature is, among everything else, a social and economical product:
it provides ways of seeing ourselves and others. Being aware of this, and making women
the centre point, is what feminists do (Robbins 14). “Literature is not some transcendent
space in which the contingencies of everyday life are elided or absent. In literate cultures,
30
literature is part of reality” (Robbins 15; emphasis original). Hence, reading can be seen as
a political act, and the reader's response to the text is of importance.
Robbins gives an example that already in the eighteenth century women were
advised, by men, to cherish their “natural” love for clothes. The (ideologically charged)
word “natural” is a positive term here, although in general in culture, women are
disparaged for liking something like clothes and fashion, because it is seen as insignificant.
Liking something insignificant, then, makes women themselves insignificant. But what can
they do, since the surrounding world tells them that it is simply “natural” to them? “Society
has created women's foolishness and has then proceeded to blame women for their
weakness, indeed has come to regard women's weakness as natural” (27). These double
standards are what feminism fights against.
Robbins sums up some of the victories that the fight for equality has brought about:
The significant successes of feminist activism have been in the realm of extending
individualism to include some women. In particular, the opening up of higher
education and professions to (bourgeois) women at the end of the nineteenth
century, the extension of the franchise to women in the early years of the twentieth
century, and the more recent institution of equal-rights legislation, maternity rights,
the availability of safe and reliable contraception, have been successes of feminisms
in its liberal guises. (25)
To conclude: feminism is closely connected to politics, and the idea that “the
personal is political” has always been important to it. The study of literature, then, is of
importance to feminism because literature represents the real world in some ways; this
includes also the idea(l) of gender.
31
2.1.2 Feminist Literary Theory
While the previous section dealt with feminism in general, and its relationship to literature
in particular, in this section, I will take a look at feminist literary theory. To start with,
some definitions of the term might be useful, hence, first by Toril Moi: “‘Feminist
criticism’ […] is a specific kind of political discourse: a critical and theoretical practice
committed to the struggle against patriarchy and sexism” (246). And another by Ellen
Rooney: “Feminist literary theory maintains that women's reading is of consequence,
intellectually, politically, poetically; women's readings signify” (4).
The difference between, for example, empirical or sociological researchers and
feminist literary theorists is, of course, the way they see “text”: feminist literary theorists
focus on the “textuality” and even the smallest details, whereas the others would find this
unnecessary and making the work more difficult. Feminist literary theorists, however, find
all sorts of generalisations disturbing. Hence, it is also rather difficult to formulate the
“basic rules” or “fundamental guidelines” of feminist literary theory – because that again
would require that generalisations should be made (Rooney 2). Rooney also points out that
theory is actually a literary genre itself, instead of some kind of a “metalanguage”, and
thus, there is always a sort of dialogue going on between a theory and a text (instead of
simply “applying” the theory onto a given text). The text also affects the theory, and not
only the other way round (2).
Robbins agrees that “feminist literary theory” as a phrase is something that is
constantly contested and cannot be taken for granted (1). Definitions are meant to give
clarity and limits, so that it would be easier to explain what one means. However,
definitions exclude just as much as they include (Robbins 2). For example, defining
32
“woman” happens against the “norm” of “man” (Robbins 2). And to make matters even
more complicated, “[m]aterial conditions have psychic effects: feminist literary theory has
to account for both” (Robbins 39). This means “combining social and psychological
perspectives” (Robbins 39) and noting the illogicality of the human behaviour. The context
of the reader as an individual also matters.
Theory is meant to be something objective that can be put to test in practice. A
feminist theory, then, may feel immediately contradictory, since it means mixing the
expected objectivity with politics and subjectivity. It mixes practice, doing, with theory,
looking. Hence, the phrase “feminist literary theory” mixes the personal (political) with
objectivity; theory and practice; (supposedly) apolitical value of literature with a political
viewpoint; and aesthetics with politics (Robbins 12).
“The theory” is not just one theory, either. In 1981, Elaine Showalter identified
three different approaches to feminist literary theory: the British, the French, and the
American approach (Robbins 12). This division, which was not strict and accurate, was
meant to demonstrate the many aspects that feminist literary theory includes. The differing
“strands” of feminist literary theory stress distinct issues. According to Showalter, the
British branch stresses oppression; the French, repression; and the American, expression
(Robbins 12). This is because all of the branches have a respective “power source:” the
British feminist criticism, according to Showalter, is “essentially Marxist,” whereas the
French is “psychoanalytic,” and the American “textual” (Robbins 12-13).
It is clear that the fields of feminism, and also feminist literary theory and criticism,
are so multiple and fragmented that it is difficult to say anything too definite about, for
example, feminist texts. In this thesis, I will keep in mind the basic principles of feminist
literary theory, which means being observant about possible oppression of women that can
33
be read in the novel, and seeing what kind of an image the novel gives about gender
(in)equality.
2.1.3 The Woman Writer/Woman Reader
The concept of the woman author is rather important for feminist literary theory. It is also
of importance for this thesis, since the personality and character of Mary McCarthy herself
is such a major part of her writing. As mentioned above, in her fiction she often created a
main character who was much like herself (including many of her weaknesses and
unlikeable characteristics), and also used her own experiences and those of people she
knew. And as said, today she may even be more known for her personality than for her
writing.
For feminist literary theory, one of the questions revolving around the concept of
female author is, does a woman writer always produce feminist text? Moi answers the
question when she writes about female literary critics:
[N]ot all books written by women on women writers exemplify anti-patriarchal
commitment. This is particularly true for many early (pre-1960s) works on women
writers, which often indulge in precisely the kind of patriarchal stereotyping
feminists want to combat. A female tradition in literature or criticism is not
necessarily a feminist one. (246)
As Tony Hilfer points out, some feminists even feel that assuming there is a specific
“female” voice is rather chauvinist – why do they need to be female writers, why can they
not be simply writers (190)? Then again, some feminists see that denying a specific female
voice is chauvinism, that it reduces women writers as a sort of sub-category in the male
34
dominated literary world (Hilfer 190). Perhaps the identification of a specific female voice
is, or has been, important when reviving female writers of the past, and maybe it could still
be important when focusing on “female experiences” in the texts by women. Then again,
when speaking of literature (especially contemporary) in general, it seems unnecessary,
slightly chauvinist even, to talk about women writers, as male writers are simply referred to
as writers. In the modern society, so should the women be, since there should be nothing
unusual or exceptional about a woman being a writer.
Elaine Showalter tells about American female writers in her introduction to Modern
American Women Writers: “Women writers came from all kinds of class, ethnic, and
regional backgrounds; [...] they located themselves at every point along the axis from
feminist activism to political indifference. Some writers explicitly repudiated the idea of a
feminine voice in literature, or even dissociated themselves from the work of their female
predecessors” (Introduction ix). Thus, female writers are no more alike than are male
writers.
When talking about the traditional canon of literature, the idea of a hierarchy
always comes up: who is the “best” and most valuable writer, who comes next, and so on.
With feminist literary criticism, this is problematic. In the past, there has often been
exaggeration: all of the forgotten female writers may have been seen as “classics”. In
addition, as Eagleton points out, the reference point for women's writing always seems to
be that of men (Finding a Female Tradition 4). This, then, easily makes everything “a
competition” between the sexes, which is not very fruitful (Eagleton, Finding a Female
Tradition 4).
The French branch of feminist theory, which combines ideas from philosophy,
linguistics and psychoanalysis, makes matters yet more complex. They say that one cannot
35
really know “what women are.” “The feminine” has always been repressed (see again
Robbins), and thus women cannot really even have their own vision or voice (=language).
Can there, then, be “a female tradition” at all, if women are speaking in the language of
men? (Eagleton, Finding a Female Tradition 5) This is perhaps slightly too vast question to
be answered in this thesis, but it seems obvious that stepping into the male territory of
literature and using language to their own “female purposes” (telling their own stories,
creating their own fictional worlds) has been problematic for women authors. In addition,
it seems that it was somewhat problematic for Mary McCarthy, too, since, as mentioned
earlier, she gave the credit of her literary career to the men in her life. According to her,
they had made it possible for her to write and succeed. And no doubt, there were times
when she needed the help of men with her career: for example, in the 1950s when she
wrote actively, the times were not the most encouraging for female writers: “The low point
for American women writers during the twentieth century was the 1950s, when Freudians
preached in the medical and the popular press about the tragedy of American women, and
when post-war domestic values urged them to return to their kitchens and nurseries”
(Showalter, Introduction xiv).
Eagleton points out that there have been, and perhaps still are, many problems and
obstacles for the female writer, starting from the material conditions (lack of privacy,
obligations of the home and children...), to the cultural ones. It is not “natural” for women
to write, has the society whispered, and probably still does. And of which subjects could
women write? “If the woman writer writes about women, she risks the label of ‘partiality’,
‘narrowness’, ‘a woman’s book’” (Eagleton, Women and Literary 40; emphasis added). If a
male writer writes about men, however, there is nothing unusual about it. A male writer can
also write about women, and there is nothing wrong with that, either. Thus, there are, or
36
have been, double standards for male and female writers.
Eagleton also notes that not only the writing itself is problematic for the female
writer; also the reception of that said writing is difficult. Female writer's text can always be
downplayed by saying that it is good, but it simply brings “the feminine qualities” into the
field of writing in general (see above: “a woman's book”). Nonetheless, the text is not
equal with the literary products of men; they are not “in the same league”, because of the
gender of the writer (Women and Literary, 41).
To conclude, we need to address the important question: “Can the author's
consciousness, her actual experience and deliberate ends, be bracketed, provided that we
attend to historical contexts and ideological problematics?” (Rooney 6). In other words,
would letting go of the author's intentions, and relying on historical, cultural and sociopolitical contexts make it possible to interpret the text “objectively?” Which is more
important: the author's experience or the reader's? Mary McCarthy was a prominent
character in her time, and as a writer known for mixing autobiography and fiction in her
work (as she does in The Group, too). Hence, at least in her case, it seems important to
consider also the meaning and effect of the writer to the text in question.
2.2 Socialisation
In this section, I will first present a general view of socialisation processes. Second, I will
examine more closely secondary socialisation, and even more specifically that of women.
As mentioned at the beginning of this thesis, the term “socialisation” denotes the
ways with which individuals integrate and are integrated into society. Most often these
processes are unconscious in a way that they are not directly “taught” to people, but, rather,
37
are learned as a sort of silent knowledge. A person does not born as a member of society,
but rather he/she becomes one through socialisation process(es) (Berger & Luckmann
149). Furthermore, socialisation can be divided into two different types: primary and
secondary socialisation. Primary socialisation takes place in the childhood, and it is the
form of socialisation with the most impact on one's life, since the matters imbibed then
affect one throughout life. Perhaps the more relevant form of socialisation for this study,
however, is secondary socialisation; that is, how people in their later life continue to adapt
and be adapted to society (Berger & Luckmann 150).
In primary socialisation, there is no problem with identification: one cannot choose
one's parents. And since one cannot choose one's parents, the identification, and thus
absorbing the values and behavioural models, is in fact semi-automatic. The world (view)
that the parents offer is the only one existing to the child, since he/she does not know about
anything else (Berger & Luckmann 154). In contrast, “[s]econdary socialization is the
internalization of institutional or institution-based ‘sub-worlds’” (Berger & Luckmann 158)
and learning the different kinds of social roles that exist. The different kinds of institutions
(for example, race, class, gender) develop slowly over time. It is their job to, for example,
regulate people's behaviour by making some behavioural models acceptable and others
punishable (Berger & Luckmann 72).
Along with institutions, also different kinds of social roles develop. These control
the way people act, too (Berger & Luckmann 88, 91-2). As Berger and Luckmann note:
“As soon as actors are typified as role performers, their conduct is ipso facto susceptible to
enforcement. Compliance and non-compliance with socially defined role standards cease
to be optional, though, of course, the severity of sanctions may vary from case to case”
(92). That is to say that one's social role is different when one is a black woman rather than
38
a white man, for example. They then have different social rules to follow (or break): what
is completely acceptable for a white man might be seen as “unfitting” for a black woman.
“The new generation posits a problem of compliance, and its socialization into the
institutional order requires the establishment of sanctions. [...] The children must be 'taught
to behave' and, once taught, must be 'kept in line'. So, of course, must the adults” (Berger
& Luckmann 80).
The operating of institutions and social roles, along with the “sanctions” connected
to them, is very automatic and invisible, hence making it difficult to “fight” them (although
that is what feminism, for example, has been doing and still does). In regard of my thesis,
it is good to know about the basic idea of socialisation, and I will further develop this
understanding by focusing on the secondary socialisation of women.
Generally, there is a need to develop an identity that is in harmony with the
dominant ideologies of a given society. As mentioned, this need is expressed silently, but if
someone is not obedient to the cultural norms, they will be quickly brought into line
(Rishoi 2-3). For women, identity development is even more difficult, because they need to
balance between what they want, and what society wants from them. In other words, there
is a “conflict between their own desires and the social repression of women's desire”
(Rishoi 3). Traditionally, women have been wanted passive and non-demanding, and thus,
they have been moulded into such a way by socialisation.
Before feminist theorists started to question the matter, the (American) view of
identity was all about the individual: the common belief was that everyone had their own
unique selfhood within themselves, and relationships or culture could not touch one's
identity, or, “essence.” Feminist theorists have pointed out that rather, one's identity is
constructed, it is “self-in-relation” (Rishoi 16). This goes with men, too. Women, however,
39
have always been seen “in-relation” to men – only inferior (despite the idea of an
“essence”). Thus, “women continue to be held accountable for their ability to nurture
relationships, and if a woman does not define herself in terms of her relationships (wife,
mother, daughter, friend), she runs the risk of being an ‘unnatural’ woman (or worse)”
(Rishoi 16). Being seen this way, then, might lead to various social sanctions, in order to
“keep the woman in line.”
Rishoi gives an example from her own youth in the 1960s and 1970s, and the
period's conflicting ideologies of femininity: the girls were expected to go to school and
actually do something with their lives, but on the other hand the old ideals of submissive
housewives were still going strong (3). Also, the girls did not need to hide their
achievements from boys anymore, but if they took initiative in dating, they were “pushy.”
There was also the cultural era of free love (sex), but if girls went along with it, they were
“sluts” (Rishoi 3). Hence, the life of girls/young women was constant balancing between
what was acceptable, and what might “cross a line.” Staying in the limits of “acceptable”
would mean to remain an accepted (“normal”) member of a community, whereas crossing
the line might lead to social punishments.
Rishoi points out that the (secondary) place of woman in Western culture has been a
given for a very long time, and not until relatively recently it has been questioned. Even if
women tried to take part in the common discourse of men, they were still “only” women
(3). She also claims that “The idea that woman is an uncomplicated being whose life
course is dictated by biology and nature has been argued and defended by thinkers from
Aristotle to Freud and beyond” (6). This means that all of these important influencers of
the Western culture have reinforced the idea of women being subordinate, giving substance
to their socialisation into such. Rishoi goes on to say that despite this having been the
40
“master narrative” of womanhood in Western society for so long, women have now, in the
recent decades, managed to change this to some extent by taking action (6-7). 1 They have,
among other things, revealed some of these invisible, intangible structures and processes,
which cause the women to be seen as inferior.
Rishoi discusses American coming-of-age novels, and says that they “[foreground]
the pain and confusion that accompanies a conflicted subject position”, meaning that
women, too, want to belong to their own culture, but cannot really, because their own
desires are always conflicting with the passivity that the society expects from them (9).
Rishoi also points out that very often even in the study of literature and coming of age
stories, the beginning of women's lives has been associated with their first romance, or
even marriage without even thinking about it (9). There is no such “quest” at the beginning
of a woman's life as there is of a man's; romance nearly always replaces it (Rishoi 9). This
has been seen as ordinary and normal.
Rishoi goes on to suggest that “While women might commonly live lives that do
not measure up to the mythic norm, their fictional narratives suggest much less room to
negotiate gender norms than actually exists” (12). She sees this as a way to reclaim agency
for the author herself, and to resist society's interpellation (12). Rishoi notes that the
particular historical moment in which the events in a story take place has a big impact on
the construction of female characters' identity – but perhaps even bigger impact makes the
historical moment when the author has written the story (21). To quote Rishoi, “The
institutions, practices, and prevailing hegemony at the time of writing exert certain limits
on what the writer can and cannot say, and on what discourses of womanhood will be
tolerated” (Rishoi 21).
1
This work was still at the very beginning when The Group was written, and not really even began in the
1930s.
41
Rishoi also mentions that though there is always the powerful pressure of the social
norms present, the norms themselves vary according to the society, culture, and time
period. Thus, the struggle is not always the same, but instead depends on race, class, and
ethnicity (15). Rishoi adds that “Often, too, a girl […] will have to contend with the
discourses of womanhood as it is defined within her community, as well the definitions
imposed from outside” (15). Thus, if there are conflicting views of womanhood between a
smaller community of people and a larger society, this adds on the pressure for the women.
They need to balance between differing social roles depending on which group of people
they are interacting with (for example, family, their own friends, larger community,
perhaps school or workplace, and so on).
Rishoi talks about the “coming of age” as the time when a girl starts to examine her
possibilities and choices in life; and although I would understand the coming of age to
happen at a slightly younger age than what the young women of The Group represent, I
think that the time period around their graduation does involve the same issues of which
Rishoi writes about:
the process of coming of age […] involve[s] examining one's choises and deciding
[…] what direction one's life will take. Alternatively, she might watch in dismay as
her horizons shrink, her choises become limited, and her life is seemingly mapped
out for her. Nonetheless, […] she learns, sometimes forcefully, exactly what forms
of subjectivity and narratives are available to her and which forms will cause her to
be marginalized. (21)
In her book Rishoi examines how girls are being socialised to be women in, for
example, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. Here are some general observations: teaching
the value of serving others and forgetting one's self; setting ambition aside for marriage
42
and family; hiding one's negative feelings; if one has “unwomanly” ambitions and
tendencies, how to reconcile them? For instance, in Little Women, Jo March gives up her
desire to become a hero, and instead settles for becoming a heroine (67). In addition, the
socialisation of women often seems to include the connecting of anger to guilt, meaning
that anger must be repressed (Rishoi 68). Nurturing relationships is the number one priority
for a woman; any other passion must be put onto a secondary place. This means putting
others before oneself. What is more, it is definitely not acceptable to be an old maid, hence,
one must not forget to hunt for a husband while, for example, pursuing a career (Rishoi
69).
So, what kinds of models of “femininity” are there? When man is the Norm,
woman is the Other – and the Other's actions are restricted (Rishoi 142-3). “Enclosure,
madness, and restriction” seem to be what being a married woman consists of, suggests
Rishoi (142). She writes about Little Women: “[Jo] is the farthest from the ideal [woman].
Her journey to little womanhood is fraught with disappointments and bitter lessons,
leaving Jo and her reader with the unmistakable impression that becoming a woman is a
series of compromises of one's individuality – and so it is” (67).
In relation to “models of femininity,” Moi defines in her essay the differences
between “female”, “feminine”, and “feminist”, and as said already earlier, “female” is
usually used to refer to biological aspects and “feminine” to the social constructs, “patterns
of sexuality and behaviour imposed by cultural and social norms” (247). (And feminist
means the political aspect.) Now, these definitions are important here because they shed
some light on socialisation of (young) women: “[P]atriarchal oppression consists of
imposing certain social standards of femininity on all biological women, in order precisely
to make us believe that the chosen standards for ‘femininity’ are natural. Thus a woman
43
who refuses to conform can be labelled both unfeminine and unnatural” (Moi 247;
emphasis original).
What, then, are these “certain social standards,” achieved through socialisation?
Often they are not defined in more detail, but it is simply mentioned that they are the
invisible code or a set of unconscious rules which every member of a given society
somehow is aware of. Toril Moi addresses this issue and admits that this might sound
annoyingly vague sometimes. She then asks, however, whether it would be even necessary
to try to “fix” the meaning of femininity at all, or otherwise get too deeply involved with
these “archetypes”: “Patriarchy has developed a whole series of ‘feminine’ characteristics
(sweetness, modesty, subservience, humility, etc.). Should feminists then really try to
develop another set of ‘feminine’ virtues, however desirable?” (247) Moi continues that
even if it would be gratifying to create a new set of characteristics to describe femininity
from a feminist point of view, in the end it might just play into the hands of patriarchs:
“[...] To be told that women really are strong, integrated, peace-loving, nurturing and
creative beings […] is no less essentialist than the old [plethora of virtues], and no less
oppressive to all those women who do not want to play the role of Earth Mother” (247).
In conclusion, it is important to remember that feminism is closely connected to
politics, and the idea that “the personal is political” has always been significant to it. The
study of literature is of importance to feminism because literature represents the real world
in some ways, including the ideals of gender. In the analysis section of this thesis, I will
keep in mind the basics of feminist literary theory, which means being observant about
possible oppression of women that can be read in the novel, and seeing what kind of an
image the novel gives about gender (in)equality. It is also important to remember that Mary
McCarthy was a prominent character in her time, and as a writer known for mixing
44
autobiography and fiction in her work (as she does in The Group, too). Hence, it seems
legit to carry the meaning and effect of the writer in the background of the analysis.
Another significant matter is, of course, the (secondary) socialisation, which is meant to
mould people into certain kinds. In the next section, I will trace these socialisation
processes, and analyse them from a feminist perspective.
45
3. Analysis
The analysis section studies how the socialisation processes of the main female characters
are described in the story during the seven years in their lives depicted in the novel. As the
time passes, how do the characters develop, and what is that direction socially? I will
divide the main eight characters into two groups according to their socialisation's
“successfulness” or “failure.” The first group consists of the compliant ones, who accept
the society's restrictions and norms, and the second one of resisting ones, who somehow
escape the norms or are left outside because of their “abnormal” behaviour.
In order to do this I also need to consider the society of the 1930s, and women's
role and position in it, as that is the time period the characters live in. Do the characters
manage to “fit in” within the norms of that time period? How do they do so? If they do not,
what are the consequences? The concept of socialisation, presented in the previous section,
helps one understand why McCarthy has made the choices with the characters that she has:
what was considered normal in the 1930s for women? And also, how might the fact that
the novel was written thirty years later, in the 1960s, affect the story and characters? I am
mainly interested in what kinds of feminist aspects can be found in the novel and in its
characters. Here, I am using the idea of socialisation as a tool to help understand the
circumstances in which the characters live. I am also interested in the ways in which the
novel might not be feminist, and want to see whether I can trace the reasons for the
presence of such elements in the story.
As Rishoi has pointed out, identity development is more difficult for women, as
they must balance between what they want, and what society wants from them.
Traditionally, women have been wanted non-demanding and passive, and thus, they have
46
been moulded into such a way by socialisation. In this analysis section I will present the
characters of The Group based on whether or not their socialisation processes have been
“successful” or not in making them “traditional” women.
The analysis is organised in a way that allows us to study the characters in The
Group on the basis of their compliance or resistance to social norms. I will show what is
told about them and their backgrounds and attitudes to life, what is their relationship to
men and to other women, and the reasons for these states of being. “The compliants”
include Priss, Dottie, and to some extent Kay, who is partly also “resister.” Also Polly is
included in the compliants, although she does resist the norms to some degree. The group
of the “resisters” consists most clearly of Helena, Lakey, and Pokey, and I have also
included Libby in it, although she could also be seen as a “compliant” to some extent. The
compliants, obviously, more or less accept to follow the norms of society, and the resisters
refuse to do this, or at least try their best to do so.
Later in the analysis, I will examine the whole group together: what is the mentality
between them as a group of friends? How is a group of (young) women described by
McCarthy to function? Can some kind of a feminist “voice” be found somewhere in the
background of the narration? What happens to the characters in the book, and what does
not happen? Why is that? Are the female characters active or passive: are they the makers
of their own destinies, or is there an outside authority (men, parents, society in general),
telling them how to live their lives? And if so, why?
3.1 The Compliants
The compliants of the novel are most clearly Priss and Dottie, and also – although not so
47
clearly – Kay and Polly. In this section, I will introduce these characters one at a time, and
analyse the main reasons which make them appear as compliants. In the novel, especially
Priss and Dottie are described through their relationships to their men, but as I will
demonstrate, also Kay and Polly, who seem more as individuals, end up in the group of
compliants mostly because of their relationship(s) to men. In other words, the socialisation
of the compliants into traditional women is successful, and it happens mostly via the men
in their lives.
Priss is quiet and stammering. Her husband, Sloan, is a doctor, a paediatrician.
Priss's part of the story takes place when she is a new mother. As a mother, she is
controlled by other people; she also relies heavily on the nurses at the hospital because she
is so insecure of her own abilities as a mother. Priss is especially under the control of her
husband, who, as a paediatrician, seems always to be right and know what is best both for
the child and also the mother. As Wendy Martin puts it, “Sloan […] takes charge of the
birth and breast-feeding of their child as if directing a play in which she [Priss] has a walkon part” (169). This causes stress to Priss, who is the one that hears their son crying for
hours and hours because Sloan has come up with a feeding schedule, and the baby must
not be fed if it is not the right time. Priss even seems to become afraid of their baby
because of the guilt that the crying makes her feel.
While Priss has her own political opinions and has had a job of her own, her
opinions are often stomped on because her strong-minded husband thinks her thoughts are
inferior, “silly.” In addition, she starts to stammer whenever she gets in an argument with
someone. Priss has given up her job to become a mother. To use the ideas of Rishoi, Priss
is a good example of a woman who has given up her own desires because of society's
demand of passivity for women (Rishoi 9). The following excerpt presents Priss in the
48
novel (she is at the hospital after having her child):
She was wearing a pale blue bed jacket, and her thin ashy hair was set in waves; the
student nurse had done it for her that morning. On her lips […] was a new shade of
lipstick […]; her doctor had ordered her to put on lipstick and powder right in the
middle of labor; he and Sloan both thought it was important for a maternity patient
to keep herself up to the mark. (McCarthy 257)
The social role, or, the front (of a “lady”), must be kept intact even in the middle of labour.
It sounds of course comical, ridiculous even, that someone would be putting on lipstick
while delivering a child, but it also shows the influence that her husband has over her.
Since he is the expert, he can even tell her to put on make up whenever he sees it needed.
While Dottie is rather traditional from the beginning, or at least others see her in
that way, she is described as fun-loving and kind. Dottie's part of the story is placed at the
beginning of the novel, when she meets an artist, Dick, at Kay's wedding, then
adventurously starts an affair with him, loses her virginity, and never hears from him again.
This also includes the famous diaphragm-fitting scene of the novel, which was seen as
scandalous at its time: Dottie, an unmarried young woman, goes on a birth-control clinic
with her friend (Kay), so that she would be able to continue her affair with Dick. However,
the latter part of the plan is never fulfilled as Dick does not answer Dottie's calls. As Martin
illuminates, Dottie's reaction to the situation tells the reader that her socialisation into a
“good girl” has been successful: “Dick (perhaps too obviously named) deflowers Dottie,
orders her to get a diaphragm [...], and then decides not to see her again. Instead of being
angry, she is alternately grateful for him for having been her lover and guilty about her
own lack of previous sexual experience” (169).
This humiliation ends Dottie's life as a “modern” woman, and she later marries an
49
affluent widower, Brook, and leads a rather typical life of a woman of her time, not doing
much apart from raising her children and hosting dinner parties. Her best friend seems to
be her mother, who is in some ways perhaps more modern than her daughter: when she
hears about Dottie's “adventure” with Dick (right before Dottie marries Brook), she tries to
encourage her daughter to follow her heart and be with Dick if she has genuine feelings for
him. Dottie, however, has had enough of heartbreaks, and is ready to settle for a less
interesting man if it means a safe life without any unpleasant surprises.
Kay is a rather tricky case to be put into the group of compliants, since she truly
tries to be anything else. However, other people, most notably her husband, Harald,
forcefully make her to comply. She has become an independent young woman at Vassar,
mostly thanks to her biology and drama teachers. While she has dreams of becoming a
theatre professional, and in the meanwhile she has her own job at Macy's (the department
store), all her energy is basically spent on keeping up with the whims of her dramatic
husband, who is an aspiring playwright. In addition to rolling in every setback of his
career, he also has time to make Kay feel guilty about her career, and even cheat on her and
physically abuse her. Laura Hapke mentions that “[f]ictions of married professionals [in
the 1930s] often chastised the women, featuring their apologies to their husbands for
having better jobs or [...] providing jeremiads about castrating careerists” (185). This is
exactly what happens between Kay and Harald in The Group as Kay tells Harald about her
day at work:
“Go on, my dear,” he said, as her voice flagged and halted. “This is highly
interesting. From what you say, I expect you'll be valedictorian of your Macy class.
You may even find me a job in the rug department or selling refrigerators – isn't
that considered a man's sphere?” […] Kay's face flamed; she did not want to cry,
50
because the Blakes were coming. Harald must have thought of the same thing, for
when he spoke again it was in a different tone. “I don't blame you, dear Kay,” he
said gravely, “for comparing yourself to me as a breadwinner. God knows you have
a right to.” “But I wasn't comparing myself to you!” Kay raised her head in outrage.
“I was just making conversation.” Harald smiled sadly. “I was not blaming you,” he
repeated. “Harald! Please believe me!” She seized his hand. “The thought of a
comparison never entered my mind! It couldn't. I know that you're a genius and that
I'm just a B-average person. That's why I can coast along in life and you can't. And
I haven't helped you enough; I know it.” (McCarthy 98-9; emphasis original)
In addition, this scene seems to be mirroring Mary McCarthy's marriage to Harold
Johnsrud, her first husband: “[he was] an aspiring but impoverished playwright[.] [...] At
the time, [...] [McCarthy] had little confidence in her own abilities and felt that Johnsrud
was intellectually and artistically superior; she thought that his career was more important
than hers, even though she was then receiving considerable attention for her incisive and
outspoken reviews in the Nation” (Martin 164). Thus, a real life situation has been
transferred into fiction, and the feelings which occupied a real woman now occupy a
fictional character.
Kay is not, however, simply a victim. She is sometimes rather unlikeable, trying to
keep up the appearances. She also says what she thinks immediately, and does not really
understand nor care if someone hurts their feelings because of her. She is stubborn and
selfish, trying to create the perfect modern life she wants: it does not matter if poor people
are evaded in order to build the apartment houses of her dreams. Neither does it matter if
they (Kay and Harald) do not have any money, but she will have the furniture she wants
anyway. As the novel describes her:
51
It was Dottie who slightly spoiled things by asking, in those gently rumbling tones,
what happened to the poor people who had lived in those tenements before. Where
did they go? This was a question Kay had never thought to ask herself, and Harald
did not know the answer, which at once put him in a darker mood. […] Kay made a
face. She had a ruthless hatred of poor people, which not even Harald suspected and
which sometimes scared her by its violence, as when she was waiting on some
indigent in the store. (McCarthy 70, 104)
Hilfer discusses the scene where Kay is physically abused by her husband, after
which she is taken into a hospital – a mental hospital, that is. He writes: “McCarthy shows
Kay caught in a number of double binds as the crazy hospital system and her crazy
husband define her reality for her” (194; emphasis added). Hilfer mentions that although
Kay seems to be a reasonably intelligent woman, she adjusts to the whims of her
manipulative husband. To quote Hilfer, “[W]e see Kay and other women excusing and
rationalizing Harald's viciousness. They fall into the socialized tendency of women to take
responsibility even for abuse inflicted upon them, while inventing convoluted excuses for
ghastly male behaviour” (195; emphasis added).
At the end, after being trapped in a mental institute by Harald (the only way she can
get out is by the agreement of Harald), and after their divorce, her mental state is somewhat
shaken and she becomes obsessed with the Second World War, thinking that the Germans
will attack the United States any day. When she is looking for signs of enemy planes from
her window, she either falls or jumps, and dies. Louis Auchincloss writes about Kay and
Harald in the following way:
Kay and Harald analyze each other fiercely and cleverly throughout the book. He,
as the survivor, is given the last word on his way to the cemetery when he suggests
52
to Lakey that Kay killed herself to prove her superiority to him, who had tried
several times abortively. One is never sure, just as one is not sure of the validity of
any of the many fascinating theories that they spin about each other. […] They are
terrible examples of their time, two scorpions in a bottle, lashing at each other in
the endless jargon of their Freudian speculations. (184)
Because of the hopelessness of her story, it seems difficult to place Kay among the
“resisters,” especially because she dies at the end and is thus not able to “keep resisting.” It
seems as if the forced giving up of her ambitions wins when she dies. She never gets the
chance to make her own destiny, because for most of her adult life she is under the control
of her husband.
Of all the women of the group, Polly is definitely the most affected by the Great
Depression of the 1930s. Her family has lost their fortune, and her father also his mental
health because of the loss of wealth. After graduation, Polly lives in a small apartment,
which the other members of the group do not see as a very nice home, and works as a
technician in a hospital. She has studied chemistry at Vassar, which has not been the most
popular or common subject for a woman to study. In her free time, she teaches English to
her immigrant neighbours, who have fled the war in Europe. Libby describes Polly's
apartment:
Polly's apartment, though in a fairly decent block, was not as attractive as Libby's
[…]. In fact, it was flattery to call Polly's an apartment. It was really a furnished
room and bath, with a studio bed […], and an icebox that leaked. At least it was
clean […]. Still, Polly's apartment would be perfectly suitable if she did not
have this habit of letting herself be imposed on by strangers. […] You found
the most curious visitors at Polly's, most of them ancient as the hills. (McCarthy
53
234-5)
Polly lives humbly, but is rather happy with her life. She takes on a lover, Libby’s
boss in fact, and is more or less happy with him. The relationship ends, however, when Gus
decides to return to his wife – something that seems quite obvious to the reader from the
beginning. Polly is saddened by the turn of the events, and at the same time, her mentally
unbalanced father moves in to live with her. He ends up wasting all of Polly’s income to
renovate the apartment where they live. To Polly’s rescue comes a friendly psychiatrist
from the hospital where she works, and eventually she marries him.
Polly's placement into both categories, the compliants and the resisters, would seem
acceptable. She is, especially at the beginning, truly independent, not bound to anyone, and
her character seems reasonably balanced, friendly, and adult-like. However, as her story
develops, especially after her relationship with Gus, it seems as if her own will somehow
diminishes, and she becomes increasingly unable to speak her mind. She lets her mentally
unwell father “hijack” her life and money, and, as a good girl, she silently suffers. On the
other hand, this is of course understandable: she does not want to hurt her father’s feelings,
because she deeply cares about him and he already feels worthless because he has lost
everything in life. However, she lets the situation go so far that she has to start frequently
donate her blood in order to make extra money, which makes herself unwell. Eventually
she gets out of trouble with the help of her future husband – who, true, is a very kind and
rational person. But the moral of the story seems to be that in the end Polly cannot make it
on her own, and the ultimate rescue is a husband, who comes and restores order in her life
again. She gets into trouble because of men (Gus and her father), and she gets out of it
thanks to a man (her husband). They make things happen, and her part is to watch them
happen to her.
54
To conclude, what all the compliants seem to have in common is that they hide their
negative feelings and repress their anger – just as Rishoi says “good girls” learn to do when
their socialisation is successful (Rishoi 67-8). What is more, their growth into traditional
women is mostly via the men in their lives: men make things happen to them, and the role
of these women is to be onlookers.
3.2 The Resisters
The group of resisters consists of the characters of Helena, Lakey and Pokey. Lastly I have
also included Libby, who is to some extent a compliant as well. In this section, I will
introduce these characters individually and analyse the features which make them seem as
resisters/resisting to the social norms. Whereas the compliants seemed to end up as
compliants because of their relationships to men, it could be summed up that the resisters
are resisters perhaps most clearly because of the lack of these relationships. The idea of
social protest or rebellion is not really behind these characters' resistance of social norms
(except perhaps in Helena and Lakey to some degree), but rather they escape the
socialisation unconsciously. In other words, they do not think outright, “I will live my life
differently” (again, with the mild exception of Helena and Lakey), but they simply drift
into such a situation.
Helena is quiet and somewhat judgemental. Against her parents’ wishes she wants
to become a nursery school teacher. Her parents (mostly mother) have pushed Helena to
study and try multiple languages, instruments, sports, and other subjects of study, as the
following excerpt of the novel shows (as it also shows some McCarthy humour):
She had been registered for Vassar at birth: her mother had had her tutored in every
55
conceivable subject all through her childhood. Helena (as her mother said) could
play the violin, the piano, the flute, and the trumpet; she had sung alto in the choir.
She had been a camp counselor and had a senior lifesaving badge. She played a
good game of tennis, golfed, skied, and figure skated; she rode, though she had
never jumped or hunted. […] She could write a severe little essay, imitate birdcalls,
ring chimes, and play lacrosse as well as chess, checkers, mah-jongg, parcheesi,
anagrams, dominoes, slapjack, pounce, [and so on]. […] She had had dancing
lessons, ballroom, classical, and tap. […] [S]he knew Greek and Latin […] [and]
medieval French. […] She had had art lessons since she was six and showed quite a
gift for drawing. (McCarthy 114-5)
As can be imagined, her parents have high hopes for her future: however, Helena appears
to be her own person in a way that she is not really afraid to follow her own path in life –
although the parents do have some power over her, for example, financially. She knows she
is intelligent and could be successful in life, but mostly out of rebellion decides to become
“only” a nursery school teacher. However, after some battling, her father manages to bribe
her with a trip to Europe, and she gives up her plans. Here Helena's father, Mr Davison,
looks down upon his daughter's idea of a career: “With all Helena's education, she had
elected to play the piano and teach Dalcroze and finger painting at an experimental school
in Cleveland – to a darned lot of kikes' children, from what Mr Davison had heard”
(McCarthy 120). Helena's parents are described as rich, pretentious, and snobbish, but
Helena herself seems to be more of an intellectual and coolly analytical.
At Vassar, she is described to be chasing butterflies and roaming in nature, not
really caring what other people think of her – although she is very much aware what
everyone thinks. The other young women of the group describe her as fragile-looking and
56
androgynous, and treat her with tenderness, mixed with condescending. She does not have
a relationship with any man, nor a woman. She manages to escape the expected
socialisation into a “proper” woman, because she remains relatively indifferent to the
expectations anyone places upon her. This of course causes judgement among other people,
and the following passage shows Kay talking about her friend in not a very friendly
manner:
Helena had gone meekly off to Europe with her tail between her legs […]. And now
that she was back she was making no effort to get a job but talking of studying dry
point in Cleveland and taking a course in acrobatic dancing at the Y.W.C.A., of all
places. Nor was it a question of just marking time till she got married, like some
other girls; Helena, Kay said, would never get married – she was a neuter, like a
little mule. (McCarthy 122)
The passage also illustrates what Rishoi means, when she claims that it is seen normal that
women define themselves in terms of their relationships, and if this is not the case, there is
a risk of being seen as an “unnatural” woman (Rishoi 16). Helena, since she has not gotten
married and appears to never do so, is, even to her friend Kay, “a neuter, like a little mule”
(McCarthy 122).
Lakey gives an impression of being rather cold and hard when the others describe
her. She does not really have a major role in the story until the ending: mostly it is only
other people talking about her. She is from a rich family and has a beautiful appearance,
and does not like to listen to the usual chattering of girls. She seems rather serious, has a
darkish sense of humour, and likes to observe people. The other members of the group
have a certain sense of respect to her, mixed with a fear that they might get humiliated by
her if they say something stupid.
57
At the beginning of the story, she leaves the United States for Europe to travel and
study – the novel mentions that she completes a doctorate at the Sorbonne in Paris – and is
not really heard from until the end of the story, except when others talk about her (“Helena
had seen Lakey in Munich” [McCarthy 109], “[Lakey was] a rich, assured, beautiful
bluestocking […] who had no pity for weakness” [McCarthy 143-5], “Lakey […] had sent
the most exquisite christening robe [for Priss' baby] from Paris, fit for a dauphin – a great
surprise, because she had not written for ages” [McCarthy 260]). When she returns, to
everyone’s surprise she does not return alone, but with her girlfriend, “the Baroness.” In
other words, she is revealed to be a lesbian. This causes some stir among the group, and
they cannot really decide whether to be offended by this or not. Here Lakey has just arrived
home from Europe with this strange woman:
As they waited, […] they realized that the Baroness […] was waiting too. She
seemed to be with Lakey. […] Every now and then she would go over and say
something to Lakey; they heard her call her “Darling.” […] It was Kay who caught
on first. Lakey had become a Lesbian. This woman was her man. […] It was a
terrible moment. […] They could not help gleaning that the two of them would be
staying together at the Elysée Hotel. […] They did not know whether to be discreet
about this relationship or open. […] By instinct, the group turned to Kay, who, with
her experience in the theatre, ought to be able to tell them what to do. But Kay was
nonplused. Her open face clearly showed her disappointment, chagrin, and
irresolution. (McCarthy 427-8)
Later, however, the tension is released for the most part, probably because Lakey is
able to act natural about her relationship with the Baroness, Maria. Still, this does not mean
that the others cease to gossip and analyse her and her partner:
58
Once the group understood the convention by which the Baroness was “my friend”
like a self-evident axiom, their stiffness relaxed. […] The very thing the girls would
have thought a Lesbian would be contemptuous of – their maternity – was a source
of attraction to Lakey. […] It was astonishing, but within a month some of the girls
found themselves talking of “having Lakey and Maria to dinner,” just as they might
speak of a normal couple. […] Yet side by side with this the group felt, with one
accord, that what had happened to Lakey was a tragedy. They tried not to think of
what she and Maria did in bed together. […] It troubled them to wonder which one
of the pair was the man and which the woman. Obviously, Maria, in her pajamas
and bathrobe, was the man, and Lakey, in her silk-and-lace peignoirs and batisteand-lace nightgowns, […] was the woman, and yet these could be disguises –
masquerade costumes. It bothered Polly and Helena to think that what was
presented to their eyes was mere appearance, and that behind that, underneath it,
was something of which they would not approve. (McCarthy 429-32; emphasis
original)
Lakey thus resists the socialisation process by remaining independent, travelling in
Europe on her own, and also by expressing her sexuality as it is, instead of, for example,
denying it and trying to find a man (which might have been a rather common way to act in
the 1930s, when being homosexual was illegal in many parts of the world). In addition, she
does not remain silent (like a good girl) when Harald insults Kay after her death, but
instead gives a stinging reply, leaving Harald so furious that he has to get out of her car.
However, Lakey does immediately become a “deviant” in some ways when her being a
lesbian is revealed, as can be seen in the thoughts the other members of the group occupy
above. For example, they think that Maria is the “man” of the relationship, and yet she is a
59
woman; this makes the couple “abnormal,” even though the group almost manages to treat
them as a “normal couple.” The price for Lakey being herself must be paid in social
sanctions, and hence there is always the underlying doubt in others: “what if there is
something inappropriate in her after all?”
Unlike all the other members of the group, Pokey (whose real name is Mary) does
not really get her “say” in the novel, as her viewpoint is replaced with that of her family's
butler Hatton. He tells about Pokey and her family’s life laconically, on one hand being
happy that he is such an important part of the affluent family’s life, and on the other
inspecting them critically with some amusement:
The Prothero family […] was dim-witted and vain of it, as a sign of good breeding;
none of them, as far back as they could trace their genealogy, had received a higher
education, until Pokey, or Mary, as she was called at home, came along. […] The
whole family adored Hatton. “We all adore Hatton,” Miss Mary would announce in
a vigorous whisper. […] [T]he butler's trained features would remain impassive
[…], though the pretense of not hearing would have tried an inferior servant, since
both the young ladies [Pokey and her sister] were not only blind as moles but had
loud, flat, unaware voices like the voices of deaf people. […] [However,] Hatton
[…] was not displeased that the young ladies made it a point that nobody who
stayed in the house or came to dinner should fail to appreciate him. (McCarthy 1736)
In the view of the other members of the group as well as her butler, Pokey is
described as lazy and uninterested in most things. Fortunately, she is rich, and thus these
qualities are more or less alright for her, even though she is a woman. Her friends help her
through Vassar, and what she lacks in qualifications, money buys for her. She is the
60
wealthiest of the group, and after Vassar, she learns how to fly her own jet, and studies to
become a veterinarian – her only interest seems to be animals. She also gets married and
has children, but it does not stop her from pursuing her career. However, all this comes
along as second hand information, because her own viewpoint is missing. The story gives
an impression that her doings are uninteresting, because of her money: whatever she wants,
she can simply buy. Perhaps this means that she does not have to make an effort, and this
makes her boring.
All in all, based on the information given about Pokey, it seems more appropriate to
place her among the resisters, since the piloting of her own plane and being a vet appear
rather radical for a woman to do in the period – even if these acts could be “explained
away” by wealth.
Libby is portrayed as a rather unlikeable member of the group. She loves to show
off and is somewhat self-absorbed; she makes it seem like she and her life are perfect in
every detail, and if not, it is usually someone else's fault. The following extract gives an
idea of her mentality. When other members of the group get their “say” in the novel, their
life is usually introduced in a way of what they are doing or saying; in Libby's case, it is
more of a list of her (excellent) qualities:
Libby MacAusland had a spiffy apartment in the Village. […] Her background was
perfect for a berth in publishing: fluent reading knowledge of French and Italian;
copy editing, proofreading, and dummying as editor in chief of the Vassar literary
magazine; short-story and verse-writing courses; good command of typing – all the
tools of the trade. […] Her mother's sister had a villa in Fiesole, and Libby had
spent a year there as a child, […] and countless summers afterward – to be exact,
two; Libby was prone to exaggerate. […] Libby […] had [had] a big following
61
among the dimmer bulbs of the class. […] [However,] it seemed to be Libby's fate
(so far) to start out strong with people and then have them lose interest for no
reason she could see. […] That had happened with the group. […] The paradox was
that she was the most popular member of the group outside and the least popular
inside. (McCarthy 208-10; emphasis original)
As the passage shows, she wants to be the epitome of the modern woman, and
dreams to work as an editor of books. However, her plans do not completely materialise:
instead of the job that she wanted, she becomes a literary agent's assistant. However, she
does make it work, and at least to the outside world she seems to have the best job on the
planet.
She would also love to have an impressive boyfriend whom she could showcase to
her friends – instead, she almost ends up raped by a man she has been seeing. This is one
of the most harrowing scenes in the novel. The only thing that saves her from being raped
is the fact that she is still a virgin, which apparently scares her date to stop. When the man
has left Libby’s apartment, she starts to wonder whether her masturbating could make her
somehow dirty and is the reason for the man's attempt to abuse her. In addition, as can be
seen at the end of the following quote, she also has to worry about her reputation being in
possible danger because of the attempted rape:
“Are you a virgin?” he said suddenly, stopping right in the middle of his fell design.
Libby nodded speechlessly. Her only hope, she now felt, was to throw herself on
his mercies. “Oh, what a bore!” he said. […] “What a bore you are, Elisabeth!” […]
“It would not even be amusing to rape you,” he said. […] [Later,] her feelings were
in the strangest turmoil. Nils [the almost-rapist], of course, could not have meant
that she was a bore; he had to vent his chagrin at finding out that she was a virgin.
62
His code as an aristocrat had made him stop then. […] Libby had a little secret; she
sometimes made love to herself. […] She always felt awful afterward. […] She
stared at her pale face in the mirror, asking herself whether Nils could have
guessed: was that what made him think she was experienced? They said it gave you
circles under your eyes. “No,” she said to herself, shuddering. “No.” Perish the
thought. Nobody could guess. And no one would ever guess the shaming,
sickening, beastly thing that had happened, or failed to happen, this evening. Nils
would not tell. Or would he? (McCarthy 255-6)
Not once does she feel anger or think that the man would somehow be responsible for such
an attack, not to mention that he should be charged for it. Instead, as she is socialised to
behave, she takes all the blame, making excuses for Nils, even trying to make him seem as
somehow noble, and as it seems, she actually believes in it herself.
Whether this is the right group for Libby, can be questioned as it is slightly difficult
to place her among the resisters or the compliants. This one incident mentioned above
speaks strongly of her being a basic socialised good girl compliant, but her other life, her
ambition, even if it is based on illusions to some extent, is evidence of something else.
To sum up, the resisters are resisters perhaps most clearly because of the lack of
relationships to men: when there is no husband, there is more freedom for them to make
decisions about their own lives. The exception to this is Pokey, who does have a husband,
but thanks to her (family's) wealth is able to retain a certain, higher, level of independence.
Furthermore, it seems that the resisters escape the socialisation into proper women more or
less unconsciously. They do not think outright, “I will live my life differently” (with
perhaps the mild exception of Helena and Lakey), they simply drift into such a situation.
63
3.3 The Whole Group
In realist fiction, what is showed and what is not showed are equally important matters;
adopting one point of view excludes the other (Robbins 45). In The Group, the point of
view is that of privileged young women in New York. The point of view of, for example,
less privileged women is omitted. This means that the novel is offering consciousness
raising about the situation and problems that upper class women meet with. In proportion,
it also shows glimpses of their cold attitude towards the poor, immigrants, and so on. The
group feels the “wrongness” of their position, but they also reinforce it by acting the way
they do, unable to locate any new models of behaviour. The pressure of norms is too much,
as also Martin points out:
The Group chronicles the lives of the daughters of the professional and upper
classes. Although their economic advantages could allow them more autonomy than
that available to women from other socioeconomic backgrounds, in reality – the
novel implies – they are too often the slaves of fashion or convention, and their
understanding of freedom is limited to rebellion against parental codes. (169)
Here one could think about Polly, who at the beginning of her story has a job, immigrant
friends, and a lover. Is she able to have these things because she does not really have a
“status” to maintain like the others: her family has lost their fortune. Is wealth and prestige
in fact a hindrance for these women? But then again, not for Pokey who does whatever she
wants. It seems as if a woman needs to be either poor(ish) or very wealthy to be able to
have more freedom (at least it seems so in The Group). A semi-wealthy middle-class
lifestyle seems to be the most restrictive choice for these women.
The women of The Group have access to higher education and to certain
64
professions, as well as the right to vote. These were all relatively new rights in the 1930s,
but this fact does not come up really. As Robbins writes about the progression of women's
rights:
The significant successes of feminist activism have been in the realm of extending
individualism to include some women. In particular, the opening up of higher
education and professions to (bourgeois) women at the end of the nineteenth
century, the extension of the franchise to women in the early years of the twentieth
century, and the more recent institution of equal-rights legislation, maternity rights,
the availability of safe and reliable contraception, have been successes of feminisms
in its liberal guises. (25)
What the characters do not yet properly have in the 1930s, are (according to Robbins)
equal-rights legislation, maternity rights, and safe and reliable contraception (25). Hence,
they can be pushed around at work, forced to be mothers, and fooled by men when it
comes to sex. All of this can be found in the novel, and it is thus consciousness-rising.
By the 1930s, some victories concerning women's rights had taken place, but
mostly for the upper-class women. Perhaps enough time has gone by to these upper-class
women of 1930s to start to take these rights (or, privileges) as more or less granted. Maybe
one could even argue that the generation that the women of The Group are a part of, is a
sort of an “in-between generation:” they are settled in the position that the previous
generation has “won” for them, and the changes to come are the business of the next
generation, which is not content with or ready to settle for the solid situation of the 1930s?
(The next “wave” of feminism will indeed occur in the 1960s and 1970s.)
Mary McCarthy has mentioned that The Group is a novel about blind faith in
progress (Gelderman 252-3). What does progress mean to the characters of The Group?
65
They have received their education and there is technological progress, but none of this
really makes a major difference to their situation: basically everything remains to be
decided by men. As Martin writes,
In [The Group], progress is based on the promise of technology, which is the
province of men: nutrition becomes a matter of recipes and availability of canned
goods; sex, a matter of contraception; childbearing and rearing, a matter of
methodology. Men even attempt to control the basic female biological functions of
conceiving, bearing, and nurturing children. (169)
How, then, to be different from their parents, when there still is so little that they could do
or change? The progress is technical, rather than social.
David Wyatt sees two issues as important themes in Mary McCarthy's writing, i.e.,
the “uninstructed daughter” and the “ways in which women collaborate in their state of
unknowing” (206) – or do not collaborate. Hilfer has noted the same, as he writes that
The ultimate failure of the group is that they insufficiently share their separate,
sometimes accurate, perceptions. The reader of the novel is empowered because
drawing up this pool of perception while being shown the folly of the social
episteme deflecting the group from articulating their inchoate recognitions. The
result is a novel both cleverly comic and unsentimentally sorrowful. (195)
In Wyatt's view, the women in The Group do not really know what is important to
know: “Incompetence is the open secret of the Group” (207). They do not know how to “be
a woman in the world,” because no one tells them that; there are no “mentors” (Wyatt 207).
Even with their higher education they are clueless, because no one has told them anything
that would be practical and really important. No one seems to use the real names of
relevant issues. Instead, it is all so modest and “hush-hush” that when they start their own
66
lives in the “real” world, it is of course the men who take charge: they do know about these
things.
The result of not being educated about the practical matters in life, and the fact that
the women of the group are not used to sharing their experiences of inequality, may be the
reason for what Martin notes about The Group:
[The novel is about eight classmates] whose collective belief in women's rights and
social progress cannot dispel the fact that their lives are ultimately dominated by
men – fathers, husbands, lovers. Despite their ideals of self-reliance and their faith
in the promise of modern life, these new women who hope to combine love and
work discover that they are as dependent on men for their economic and social
survival as their mothers were. (169)
They do not realise that they could “join forces” and demand more equal rights. The
ultimate reason for this is most likely the successful socialisation of these women, and the
women before them, into “proper women.” By whom or what does the (secondary)
socialisation, then, happen to the female characters in The Group, and how does it happen?
How does the impact of primary socialisation show in their behaviour? What are the
outcomes of these socialisation processes?
To answer these questions, I start by ruminating on whether secondary socialisation
may mean to the group, first, how to be a “Vassar girl.” What should she be like? This
already clashes with their primary socialisation, at least to some extent: to be a modern and
independent woman is probably not what their parents have taught them to be. When the
school ends, they become housewives like their mothers. What is the use of their education
then? How to be a “modern” wife? What is a good wife like? (Not modern, probably!)
Their socialisation processes are full of clashes, and force them to balance between this
67
and that, creating double standards. Loss of respect is something they are afraid of, and
they will face it if something is “deviant” in their lives: it may lead to loss of social status,
respectability, image, class, gender status, and so on. The case is as Eagleton has stated:
“To be outside the dominant order is to be mad or dead” (“Gender and Genre” 89).
In answering the question “by whom does the secondary socialisation happen to the
female characters in The Group”, I will start from the view of Berger and Luckmann: “The
significant others in the individual's life are the principal agents for the maintenance of his
[or her] subjective reality” (170), and “[t]he most important vehicle of reality-maintenance
is conversation” (172). Hence, the way the closest and most important people in one's life
treat him/her affects a great deal the way one sees her/himself. Through conversation, one
constantly obtains “feedback” concerning one's self. This could mean simply everyday
interaction, where one is able to get a reaction from another person. For example, one
might receive a positive comment about the dinner being ready, or there could be a
negative remark about the laundry still not being done; obviously, positive feedback keeps
up positive feelings, whereas constant negativity might result in feelings of low self-worth,
as if nothing is good enough.
To the women of The Group, the closest people in their lives are probably their
parents, the other women of the group, and also their husbands if they have one. To some
of them, these “nearest and dearest” cause only pressure and feelings of failure. For
example, Kay and Priss live under the constant repressive presence of their parents and/or
husbands. In contrast to them, Lakey retreats to Europe, far away from her parents and
peers, and manages there, in a completely different environment, and with new friends, to
live the kind of life she wants to. What is more, Polly lives (out of necessity) in totally
different conditions than the others, that is, she lives in a small and cheap apartment, and
68
works as a nurse to support herself. But because she lives where she lives, she has
immigrant friends who expand her world-view and make her more aware of what is
happening elsewhere.
Martin comments on this by presenting a feminist point of view:
In both [Kay and Priss'] cases, shortsighted and overbearing husbands expect these
extremely bright and capable women to disregard the validity of their own
experiences. The only two women in the group who are not dominated by men are
Helena, who is described as sexually androgynous – she looks like a freckled little
boy – and Lakey, a lesbian. [...] Clearly McCarthy is suggesting that traditional
gender roles are based on destructive paradigms of dominance and submission. In
this context, only those women who stand outside conventions of femininity and
masculinity survive with integrity. (170)
However, one might add that characters such as Helena and Lakey may survive with
integrity, but the disparity they show automatically marks them in a way as “second class.”
As discussed earlier, in their time and in their context, even though they are “true to
themselves,” in the eyes of others (and other members of the group) they are also deviants.
In-group empowerment among these women is rather scarce. They might, for
example, look for guidance from Kay, who seems to them independent and “being in the
know,” but she usually responds with what seems as rudeness, since she does not
understand to consider other people's feelings. On the other hand, Polly is described as
empathetic, but this is often taken advantage by others in the group, using her because she
does not say no.
3.4 Feminist Voice in The Group
69
As we know by now, Mary McCarthy did not flinch from describing matters that were
normally kept silent about. One of these subjects was female sexuality. As Hilfer explains,
the sexual experiences and encounters of men had already been explored in countless
stories, but McCarthy was a pioneer in describing these experiences from the point of view
of women: “Since the secrets McCarthy revealed [about, for example, contraception] were
the kind that women had been keeping as much from themselves as others, the effect was
empowering, allowing taboo subject to become available for conscious thought and
response” (Hilfer 192-3; emphasis added). Martin sees particularly The Group as
pioneering work: “In [The Group] McCarthy emphatically rejects Victorian norms of
female passionlessness and is not afraid of her own sexuality” (165). One could, however,
add that some of the women of The Group do withdraw back to the “Victorian norms” after
their sexual encounters leave them disappointed. Still, the openness with which McCarthy
writes about these matters was something new, pioneering indeed, and certainly must have
been empowering for women to read.
Of course, the frank way of writing about women's sexuality was at the time of The
Group's publication denounced as sensational. Another matter that was at its time widely
misunderstood about The Group was its narrative technique, the so-called ventriloquism
(free indirect discourse), as it was simply seen as the typical chatty style of women's
magazines. However, this “ventriloquism” brings to the novel an “authentic” feel and a
better understanding of these women's mindsets; as McCarthy has said, most of the novel
is in “invisible quotation marks” (Murphy, Reassessment, 84). Thus, the narrative
technique is actually very important because it is the basis for understanding the characters
(Murphy, Reassessment, 84). In other words, it serves as a way of getting “inside the
70
heads” of these women. As Murphy notes, for the group, “talk substitutes for both thought
and perception” (Reassessment, 84). The women of the group do not really need to think or
perceive (because men do that), so they simply talk. In a way events appear to “flow
through” them: everything is a part of an endless conversation or gossip. Here are two
examples of this, the first one shown from Helena's point of view when she is at a party,
hosted by Kay:
Helena, who was Class Correspondent, took a few terse mental notes. “At Kay
Strong Petersen's,” she foresaw herself inditing for the next issue of the Alumnae
Magazine, “I saw Dottie Renfrew, who is going to marry Brook Latham and live in
Arizona. ‘The Woman Who Rode Away’ – how about it, Dottie? Brook is a
widower – see the Class Prophecy. […] Norine Schmittlapp's husband […] has
started an independent fund-raising organization for labor and left-wing causes.
Volunteer workers take note. […] Polly Andrews reports that Sis Farnsworth and
Lely Baker have started a business called ‘Dog Walk.’ […]”
Helena puckered her little forehead. Had she mastered (mistressed?) the idiom of
the Alumnae Magazine Class Notes? (McCarthy 110)
The second example of everything being a part of an endless conversation or gossip
concerns Libby. The following passage shows how she is fired from her job but soon
manages to find a new one, thanks to some unlikely events:
[Libby's boss] grabbed up Libby's coat and held it for her; […] Libby's head was
reeling with the shock and confusion. She took a step backward and, girls, can you
imagine it, she fainted kerplunk into Mr LeRoy's arms!
It must have been the overheated office. Mr LeRoy's secretary told her afterward
that she had turned quite green and the cold sweat had been standing out on her
71
forehead. Just like the summer day her aunt was with her when she passed out cold
in the Uffizi in front of “The Birth of Venus.” But Gus LeRoy (short for Augustus)
was convinced that it was because she was hungry […]. He insisted on giving her
$10 out of his own pocket and a dollar for a taxi besides. Then the next morning he
rang her up and told her to go to see this literary agent who needed an assistant. So
that now, lo and behold, she had this snazzy job at $25 a week, reading manuscripts
and writing to authors and having lunch with editors. (McCarthy 231)
Then again, even if they did think more deeply, they would not have the power to turn their
thoughts into real actions, so why should they bother? At the same time, as noted earlier,
conversation is a device to maintain a certain subjective reality: perhaps, then, if they
ceased the talk for a moment, they would be able to find new ways of functioning. This,
however, does not happen.
Yet a certain sense of discontent can be detected in the novel; there is an uneasy
feeling in the characters that their lives are not progressing the way they had hoped. A
good example of this is when Polly talks about her life after she has married Jim Ridgeley,
and especially how she sees the other women of the group. Now that she is married, she
often has to attend parties thrown by her classmates:
These parties, at which everyone was half a couple and lived in an elevator
building, gave Polly a vast sense of distance. All the husbands, it went without
saying, were “doing awfully well” in fire insurance or banking or magazine work,
and her classmates, except for a few rebels, who were not necessarily the same
rebels as in college, were “taking their place in society.” Yet there were nights when
Polly felt, watching them and listening, that she must be the only girl in the Class of
'33 who was happy.
72
It was plain to Polly that many of her married classmates were disappointed in
their husbands and envied the girls, like Helena, who had not got married. […]
Within the group itself, only Libby had made her mark. Kay, once so vital, had
ceased to be a pace setter. Last year rumor had had it that she, who had been the
first of the class to be married, would be the first to be divorced – quite a record.
But she was still toiling at Macy's as a junior executive in personnel, and Harald
was still writing plays that were as yet unproduced. From time to time, he had a job
as a stage manager or a director of a summer theatre, and Kay's family was helping
them in their hours of need. Opinion at the fork suppers was divided as to whether
Kay was a drag on Harald or vice versa. (McCarthy 354-5)
However, the characters do not seriously come to grips with the unhappiness with their
lives. As Robbins expresses the problem, “knowing there is a problem, and yet feeling that
to act would be wrong – [...] social context would, in any case, prevent her from acting on
any judgement of her own” (29; emphasis original). Nevertheless, social circumstances are
the causes of psychic discomfort for these women. As Robbins explains, this comes up, for
example, in Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963) (29), and, to some extent, it
explains the group's behaviour, too. In addition, showing the situation in the novel makes
the readers aware of the problem, even if it remains unnamed.
Hilfer has described The Group as follows:
Though McCarthy, writing before the revival of feminism, never introduces a
specifically feminist political voice in her novel, the absence is a felt one. The novel
cries for a perspective transcending the limitations of the massive false
consciousness it so brilliantly exposes, thus expressing not only the 1930s but its
own moment as well: the need in the 1950s and 1960s for an as yet unformulated
73
critique of the prevailing episteme. What later feminist critiques argue is what
McCarthy implicitly but clearly enough shows in The Group. (194; emphasis
original)
In a similar way, Wyatt sees a connection between Mary McCarthy and Betty
Friedan – both women recognised “the problem with no name,” the invisible chains that
bind women (203); meaning the cultural limitations which came (and perhaps still come)
along gender roles. Thus, the goal of their texts, consciously known or not, was to get
women freed from this invisible oppression. One way of doing that was/is consciousnessraising (Wyatt 203): indirectly saying to the reader, “you are not the only one who feels
like this.” And this indeed seems to be the core feminist idea in The Group: it promotes
consciousness-raising in a subtle manner, by showing the situation of these women as it is.
Here are some examples about the situation of the women in The Group. The first scene
takes place when Kay has been locked up in a mental hospital by her husband, and she tells
Polly what happened:
Tears came into her eyes […]. “Harald betrayed me. He put me in here and left me.
He pretended it was the regular hospital.” […] “He beat me when he'd been
drinking. […] It seems so long ago, but it must have been yesterday morning. […]”
“He was drinking in the morning?” “He'd been out all night. When he came in at
seven in the morning, I accused him of being with a woman. I know it was silly of
me, to accuse him when he'd been drinking. I ought to have waited till he was
sober.” […] “But I was bit hysterical, I guess[.]” […] “It was silly, but I hit him
back. Then he knocked me down and kicked me in the stomach. What should I have
done, Polly? Picked myself up and waited for him to be sorry the next day? I know
that's the right technique, but I haven't got the patience.” (McCarthy 357-9;
74
emphases added)
In this excerpt it is interesting to see how Kay is well aware of how she was expected to
behave in a situation such as this: she should have submitted to violence without any
resistance, especially since she “provoked” it by accusing Harald when he was still drunk.
However, since there is some “resister” in her, she cannot let it go, and instinctively fights
back. This leads to a situation where Kay threatens Harald with a bread knife, and Harald
shuts her in a dressing room. Eventually, when the situation calms down, Harald takes Kay
to the hospital “to rest.” In the end, he always seems to have the upper hand.
The second example about these women's situation is slightly more mundane, but
still disturbing. It shows Priss with her son and husband:
As the wife of a pediatrician, [Priss] was bitterly ashamed that Stephen, at the age
of two and a half, was not able to control his bowels. […] Sloan, even though he
was a doctor, was extremely annoyed whenever Stephen did it in public, but he
would never help Priss clean Stephen up or do anything to relieve her
embarrassment. […] Yet it was the only sphere where he could say she had failed
with Stephen. He did not wet his bed any more; he ate his vegetables and junkets;
he was obedient; he hardly ever cried now, and at night he went to sleep at his
appointed time, surrounded by his stuffed animals. She could not see where she had
erred in training him. […] Sloan's belief was that Priss's nervousness was to blame,
just as it had been with her nursing. (McCarthy 391-3; emphases added)
All the blame of Stephen's toilet problems seems to be automatically on Priss – even
though Sloan is a paediatrician. The difficulties with Stephen do not touch Sloan, the
father, at all. He is simply the authority who can point out, or accuse, even, where Priss has
failed as a parent. In other words, his position as a children's doctor (and a man) grants him
75
authority, and at the same time frees him from helping his wife, since raising children is
“women's work,” and thus, beneath him. Priss, being “compliant,” does not really question
the situation but rather takes it as it is, simply worrying that she cannot see where she has
gone wrong in raising Stephen.
Martin sums up the general situation of McCarthy's women as follows:
Although the women in McCarthy's novels, essays, and political and personal
narratives are often sexually liberated, they also are often bound by Victorian norms
of passivity and dependence. Sometimes they are constrained by realistic fears of
exploitation or loss of reputation. Lack of adequate economic independence in an
age of few opportunities for financial self-sufficiency prevents these women from
discarding the dream of the gallant knight who will rescue his princess from life's
rigors. Without traditions of female assertion and self-reliance, McCarthy's
women founder in confusion. (167)
Indeed, most of the women in The Group become “ordinary” wives and mothers,
even though at the beginning of the novel it seemed as the worst fate to become like their
own parents:
The worst fate, they utterly agreed, would be to become like Mother and Dad,
stuffy and frightened. Not one of them, if she could help it, was going to marry a
broker or a banker or a cold-fish corporation lawyer, like so many of Mother's
generation. They would rather be wildly poor and live on salmon wiggle than be
forced to marry one of those dull purplish young men of their own set[.] […] It
would be better, yes, they were not afraid to say it, though Mother gently laughed,
to marry a Jew if you loved him. (McCarthy 11)
This shows the reader their true attitude towards, for example, the Jews, even though they
76
themselves probably do not notice it. And in reality, none of them is in fact ready to give
up their status in the way they talk about above. The need to keep up the appearances is too
strong, as this is how they have been socialised to behave. In addition, as they realise later,
the choices they make in life are not only up to them: husbands, parents, and employers
have for some reason more authority over their lives than they themselves. As Martin
suggests, there are no role models of independent, strong-minded women (167), and thus,
the women of The Group do not know how to transfer these hopes of being different into
reality. Instead, at least some of them become exactly what they were hoping to avoid:
“stuffy and frightened” (McCarthy 11).
To sum up, the central feminist technique in The Group is consciousness-raising,
which means the ways in which McCarthy subtly shows her readers the real situation of
her female characters. The characters have a feeling that they are not living their lives the
way they want to, but yet, in the absence of strong female role models, they are unable to
do anything about it. Other important feminist points in The Group are, first, the
empowering way in which McCarthy writes about taboo subjects, most importantly female
sexuality, and secondly, the narrative technique, which in its time was diminished as
similar to the style of “women's magazines,” but is in fact an important tack of allowing
the readers to access the minds of the women of The Group.
77
4. Conclusion(s)
This thesis has examined from a feminist point of view the socialisation of female
characters in Mary McCarthy's novel The Group. By using feminist literary theory and the
idea of socialisation, this thesis has analysed the ways in which McCarthy portrays her
eight main female characters. This thesis has shown how some of them are successfully
socialised into “proper women,” while others manage to fend off the expected socialisation
(although not consciously). This thesis has also recognised some feminist techniques in the
narration, most importantly consciousness-raising about women's situation and
empowerment of women by bringing taboo subjects into conversation.
In the beginning of the analysis section I presented several questions, and now I
wish to answer them in the following way.
My first question was: “as the time passes, how do the characters develop, and what
is that direction socially?” As we know, they start out as young, enthusiastic women who
have just graduated. As the time passes, most of them notice that the world is quite
different from Vassar, that it is actually the realm of men. Men are bosses who decide
whether or not one gets the job (Libby); men are lovers for whom one has high hopes but
who never call back (Dottie); men are husbands who were supposed to be inspiring,
creative geniuses but who beat their wives and have them locked up in a mental institute
(Kay); men are also fathers who are able to control one financially in order to have a say
on one's career choices (Helena). After realising this, they can decide, consciously or not,
whether they go along with this, this is, whether they comply to the socialisation into
“good” and “decent” women, or whether they want to do it differently, risking their
reputation and status.
78
My second set of questions was: “what was considered normal in the 1930s for
women? And also, how might the fact that the novel was written thirty years later, in the
1960s, affect the story and characters? Do the characters manage to ‘fit in’ within the
norms of that time period (1930s)? How do they do so? If they do not, what are the
consequences?” For women such as those depicted in The Group, who have some social
status and wealth, the idea of normality was probably to be a good wife and mother. This
means, for example, that even though they lived in the Depression era, for those of them
who did not “have to” work, working seemed slightly “unfitting,” even though they were
educated. If they “had to” work (if the husband was not able to provide living for both of
them or if there was no husband), the job had to be of a certain kind, as mentioned in
Chapter 2. Not having a husband was considered as abnormal though, and one quickly got
labelled as a spinster, which was not highly valued.
The fact that the novel was written later, and not in the 1930s, gives McCarthy
somewhat more freedom to describe her characters more truthfully, as she was not bound
to the moral code of the 1930s, but rather to that of the 1960s, when the USA was already
slightly more liberal. Hence, McCarthy is able to call things with their real names, and that
is also why she was able to include the scene with Dottie and Dick, and show Dottie fitting
her diaphragm.
Some of the characters manage to fit in to the norms of the society while others are
less successful. Those who are more successful usually need to put their own feelings and
desires aside, as is the case with Dottie, who has a very traditional, wealthy marriage after
having such a disappointment with her experiment with the life of a “modern woman.”
Priss likes working, but becomes mother and then it is obvious that she will be staying at
home with the child. Those whose socialisation is not that successful are in some ways or
79
others perceived as somewhat strange, and described, if not as spinsters or lesbians, then as
eccentrics at least.
My third question dealt with group dynamics: “The whole group together: what is
the mentality between them, as a group of friends, how is a group of (young) women
described by McCarthy to function?” On the surface, they are indeed a group of friends, a
group that was formed in Vassar, and which continues to exist after graduation. What
becomes obvious, however, is that it is not simply friendship that binds them together:
starting already at Vassar, it is also status and appearance that serve to form the group. Who
“qualifies” as a member is an important question. Norine, who went to Vassar at the same
time but is not part of the group, tells Helena that she used to envy them because they had
“[p]oise. Social savvy. Looks. Success with men. Proms. Football games. Junior
Assemblies” (McCarthy 143). She adds that the other girls used to call them the group of
Ivory Tower, because they seemed to be so above the others (McCarthy 143).
All this influences the way in which the group functions. On one hand, there is
friendliness between them, but on the other hand, they do not hesitate to criticise and judge
each other for anything that they feel is inappropriate. This can be seen in the way they
evaluate each others' apartments, clothing, and marriage (or its lack). In addition, when one
of them behaves against established values, they do not really know what to think about it
(for example, Priss breastfeeding her child or Lakey being a lesbian, Polly having
immigrants as friends, Kay's unusual wedding, and so on). Instead of accepting their
friends as they are, they usually analyse and gossip about these things with each other,
behind the back of the person in question.
The fourth set of questions was “can some kind of a feminist “voice” be found
somewhere in the background of the narration? What happens to the characters in the book,
80
and what does not happen? Why is that? Are the female characters active or passive: are
they the makers of their own destinies, or is there an outside authority (men, parents,
society in general), telling them how to live their lives? Why?” There is a feminist voice to
be found in the novel, and it is one that shows the situation of the women as it is. There are
not endless possibilities and options for them, even though they are the most privileged
women of the 1930s: white, wealthy, and educated. They still have to face being pushed
around at work and at home, being told what to do and what not to do, and even submit to
violence. In this sense the novel is consciousness-raising. In addition, as I have shown,
most of them become “ordinary” wives and mothers, even though at the beginning of the
novel they entertained hopes of living a different kind of life than their own parents. The
need to keep up the appearances is simply too strong, since they have been socialised to
behave in such a manner. Furthermore, there are parents, husbands, and employers who for
some reason have more authority over their lives than the women themselves; the lack of
strong female role models also prevents them from taking matters in their own hands in
life.
As we know, when feminist critique highlighted the questions that Mary McCarthy
had “shown” in her earlier writing, McCarthy was not really enthusiastic. The reasons for
this can only be speculated. It seems likely that she agreed before, and probably after, the
rise of feminist movement, but felt irritated because of all the “fuss.” And perhaps then
feminists, at least partially, rejected McCarthy because she did not celebrate feminism as
she “should” have. It must be taken into consideration that McCarthy lived in a totally
different era than we live now; feminism as we know it, was only just beginning to find its
“voice,” and even that happened as late as the 1960s and 1970s. Perhaps McCarthy may
have wanted to be a feminist, but felt that it might threaten her position as a respected
81
author and critic, a position she had gained by hard work in a field that basically belonged
to men. Maybe she felt that the men who saw her as more or less equal, would have lost
their respect, had she started writing manifests about women's right not to cook or change
diapers? Thus, she had to balance between being a feminist and being a “traditional
woman” who does not “complain” about “women's jobs.” The Group appears to reveal
McCarthy's dual attitude: she would like women to be more independent, but at the same
time she has little faith in this ever happening. She is aware of the weaknesses of women
and people in general, and is also conscious of the pressure that the society of the 1930s
put on women, expecting them to behave in a certain way.
However, there seems to be a problem when one examines the ending of the novel
from a feminist point of view: is happy (or unhappy) marriage the key when it comes to the
quality of life of a woman? For both Polly and Kay, the story's central characters, marriage
is indeed the defining factor that moulds their lives into very different directions. Then
again, this was most likely true in the 1930s: a man had much more power than a woman,
and thus, one's husband's status and characteristics made a major difference in one's life. To
be without a husband was to be a “spinster,” which obviously was not desirable either.
Perhaps the parts of the novel that appear “non-feminist,” where the characters do not act
like friends towards each other, result from the fear which has been socialised into them so
deeply: if one talks about difficult issues that no one is supposed to voice, one risks losing
one's face. Hence they do not talk about such matters, and instead keep on judging each
other.
As noted earlier, The Group has not received much academic attention, but in the
light of this thesis, I think it should. There are many interesting issues in the novel to be
studied, especially from a feminist point of view, which have not really been addressed.
82
For example, the topic that this thesis has studied, the socialisation of the female
characters, could be studied even further. Another matter that would be of interest and
which this thesis has introduced only shortly, is the group dynamics of this group of
women, studied again from a feminist point of view. Then again, the character of Kay
alone would be a potential research subject: is she really a symbol of female self-hatred as
Elaine Showalter has stated (Murphy Reassessment 96)? I would say that claiming such a
thing is a gross simplification, since she is in fact a very complex, realist character, who
can only partially have an influence on her own life. In connection to this, the relationship
between Kay and Harald, with all its power, submission, violence and twisted love is yet
another issue that could be studied further – from a feminist viewpoint or otherwise.
83
Bibliography
About
Vassar:
History.
Vassar
College/Vassar
Info.
http://info.vassar.edu/about/vassar/history.html
Auchincloss, Louis. Pioneers and Caretakers: A Study of Nine American Women Novelists.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1965.
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. 1995.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009.
Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality. 1966.
London: Allen Lane, 1971.
Brightman, Carol. Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World. 1992. San
Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1994.
Caws, Mary Ann. “A Single Truth, But Tell It Sharp.” Twenty-Four Ways of Looking at
Mary McCarthy: The Writer & Her Work. Ed. Eve Stwertka and Margo Viscusi.
Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996. 137-150.
Coward, Ros. “'This Novel Changes Lives': Are Women's Novels Feminist Novels?”
Feminisms: A Reader. Ed. Maggie
Humm.
Hemel
Hempstead:
Harvester
Wheatsheaf, 1992. 377-80.
Dickstein, Morris. “A Glint of Malice.” Twenty-Four Ways of Looking at Mary
McCarthy: The Writer & Her Work. Ed. Eve Stwertka and Margo Viscusi.
Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996. 17-26.
Donohue, Stacey Lee. “Reluctant Radical: The Irish-Catholic Element.” Twenty-Four
Ways of Looking at Mary McCarthy: The Writer & Her Work. Ed. Eve Stwertka
and Margo Viscusi. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996. 87-98.
84
Eagleton, Mary. “Finding a Female Tradition: Introduction.” Feminist Literary Theory: A
Reader. Ed. Mary Eagleton. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987. 1-6.
––. “Gender and Genre: Introduction.” Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader. Ed. Mary
Eagleton. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987. 88-92.
––. “Women and Literary Production: Introduction.” Feminist Literary Theory: A
Reader. Ed. Mary Eagleton. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987. 40-6.
Fitzgerald, Frances. “Taking Risks.” Twenty-Four Ways of Looking at Mary
McCarthy: The Writer & Her Work. Ed. Eve Stwertka and Margo Viscusi.
Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996. 191-94.
Flannery, Nicolette. “Challenging Gender Stereotypes During the Depression:
Female Students at the University of Washington.” The Great Depression in
Washington
State
Project.
http://depts.washington.edu/depress/women_uw_changing_roles.shtml
Gelderman, Carol. Mary McCarthy: A Life. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1989.
––. “Just the Facts, Ma'am, and Nothing but the Facts: A Biographer's Reminiscence.”
Twenty-Four Ways of Looking at Mary McCarthy: The Writer & Her Work.
Ed. Eve Stwertka and Margo Viscusi. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996. 175-181.
Greve, Janis. “Orphanhood and ‘Photo’-Portraiture in Mary McCarthy's Memories of a
Catholic Girlhood.” American Women's Autobiography: Fea(s)ts of Memory. Ed.
Margo Culley. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992. 167-184.
Gross, Beverly. “Our Leading Bitch Intellectual.” Twenty-Four Ways of Looking at Mary
McCarthy: The Writer & Her Work. Ed. Eve Stwertka and Margo Viscusi.
Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996. 27-33.
Hapke, Laura. Daughters of the Great Depression: Women, Work, and Fiction in the
85
American 1930s. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1995.
Helsingin yliopistomuseo: Naiset yliopistossa. Henna Sinisalo. Helsingin yliopisto. 20032004. http://www.museo.helsinki.fi/nayttelyt/naiset_yliopistossa/naiset_etusivu.htm
Hilfer, Tony. American Fiction since 1940. New York: Longman, 1992.
Howard, Maureen. “Memories of Another Catholic Girlhood.” Twenty-Four Ways of
Looking at Mary McCarthy: The Writer & Her Work. Ed. Eve Stwertka and
Margo Viscusi. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996. 195-99.
Humm, Maggie. “Feminist Literary Theory.” Contemporary Feminist Theories. Ed. Stevi
Jackson and Jackie Jones. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998. 194-212.
––. Practising Feminist Criticism: An Introduction. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice
Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1995.
Martin, Wendy. “Mary McCarthy.” Modern American Women Writers. Ed. Elaine
Showalter, Lea Baechler, and A. Walton Litz. New York: Collier Books, 1993. 16371.
“Mary McCarthy and Vassar Hit It Off.” The New York Times 13 Feb. 1982.
McCarthy, Mary 1912-1989. WorldCat Identities. http://worldcat.org/identities/lccnn7960089
McCarthy, Mary. The Group. 1963. London: Virago Press, 2009.
Moi, Toril. “Feminist, Female, Feminine.” Feminisms. Ed. Sandra Kemp and Judith
Squires. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 246-50.
Murphy, Brenda. “Preface: Special Issue on Mary McCarthy.” Lit: Literature
Interpretation Theory 15 (2004): 1-3.
––. “The Thirties, Public and Private: A Reassessment of Mary McCarthy's The Group.”
Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory 15 (2004): 81-101.
86
Nathan, Rhoda. “The Uses of Ambivalence: Mary McCarthy's Jewish Politics.” TwentyFour Ways of Looking at Mary McCarthy: The Writer & Her Work. Ed. Eve
Stwertka and Margo Viscusi. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996. 99-103.
Oxford University Archives: The First Woman Graduate of the University. University of
Oxford.
2013.
http://www.oua.ox.ac.uk/enquiries/first%20woman
%20graduate.html
Rishoi, Christy. From Girl to Woman: American Women's Coming-of-Age Narratives.
Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003.
Robbins, Ruth. Literary Feminisms. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000.
Roiphe, Katie. “Damn My Stream of Consciousness.” Twenty-Four Ways of Looking at
Mary McCarthy: The Writer & Her Work. Ed. Eve Stwertka and Margo Viscusi.
Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996. 129-133.
Rooney, Ellen. “Introduction.” The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Literary Theory.
Ed. Ellen Rooney. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 1-26.
Schlesinger Jr., Arthur. “Remembrances of an Old Friend.” Twenty-Four Ways of Looking
at Mary McCarthy: The Writer & Her Work. Ed. Eve Stwertka and Margo
Viscusi. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996. 201-4.
Showalter, Elaine. “Introduction.” Modern American Women Writers. Ed. Elaine
Showalter, Lea Baechler, and A. Walton Litz. New York: Collier Books, 1993. ixxv.
Showalter, Elaine. A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to
Annie Proulx. London: Virago Press, 2010.
The Group (1966). IMDb. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060479/?ref_=sr_3
Towers, Robert. “The Company They Kept.” The New York Times 8 May 1988.
87
Wald, Alan. “The Left Reconsidered.” Twenty-Four Ways of Looking at Mary
McCarthy: The Writer & Her Work. Ed. Eve Stwertka and Margo Viscusi.
Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996. 69-76.
Waples, Timothy F. “'A Very Narrow Range of Choice': Political Dilemma in The Groves
of Academe.” Twenty-Four Ways of Looking at Mary McCarthy: The Writer &
Her Work. Ed. Eve Stwertka and Margo Viscusi. Westport: Greenwood
Press,
1996. 77-85.
Wheelan, Susan A. Group Processes: A Developmental Perspective. Boston: Allyn and
Bacon, 2005.
Wyatt, David. Secret Histories: Reading Twentieth-Century American Literature.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.