The Drama of Narrative and Life in "The Group"

When confronted by a book like Mary McCarthy's The Group, following the lives of eight Vassar graduates, it is perhaps a natural response for the reader to try to identify with individual characters. Perhaps one might see some of Libby in onself, or rather Lakey, or on the contrary, feel a revulsion towards Kay, or Priss or Norine. We see each woman through her own eyes for such a short time and then we are reduced to once again seeing her through the cloudy lens of others' opinion. We wish as readers to judge, to quantify, to feel as if we might sum up a character and shelve her; confronted by eight, perhaps this is the only way to procede. And yet, McCarthy seems to both intuit our impulse and to deny it. She leaves us with each woman's internal humanity, her fright and joy and the sheer drama which each person's life holds for themselves. And then, once we feel that we might just see the soul, the essence, the uniqueness of that woman, McCarthy again drops the curtain. Because of course, every person is the whole world in their own eyes...and something much less to even their friends and lovers, let alone to the general populace.

One might even say that it is to some extent those interactions with others, almost always men, which define these women's life moments as dramatic enough to witness. Thus, Dottie Renfrew is worth looking at while losing her virginity to a man all the readers know is bad news. She willingly forfeits her dramatic, narrative potential when deciding to marry that man Brook from Arizona. In a classic role reversal, Dottie's mother begs her to throw away security for "love," for the one moment of transgressive, rule-breaking passion of Dottie's life. She feels disappointed in Dottie when Dottie refuses, let down by Dottie's very practicality and sense (pg. 229). Dottie has thrown away her chance for drama and centrality in the narrative. She could have married the weak, immoral man and remained a central figure, like Kay. And yet, instead Dottie chooses to close that curtain of reader interest herself. She chooses happiness and security over passion. Perhaps a model person, but certainly not a model character, as McCarthy herself concludes by passing over her for the rest of her book. Apparently, there is no drama, and thus no rasion de lire once a Vassar girl goes to Arizona.

The truly dramatic women, with whom we are meant to emotionally connect, tend to be the ones who inhabit constantly emotionally-searing landscapes. In particular, I think Kay and Polly remain the most truly dramatic and ergo the most heavily developed characters of the novel. Kay, whose story bookends the entire novel, seems inevitably destined for despair. Polly in contrast, beginning in poverty seems designed for an equally inevitable, Horatio Alger-ish rise to happiness. These characters are created on a trajectory; it is unclear whether it is their lives that lend themselves to a dramatic narrative or vice versa, but either way, they lack the stagnant security which to McCarthy signals a life lacking in both conflict and significance. When wondering which characters to empathize with and focus on, the reader of The Group might keep in mind the narrative blandness of contentment and the lure of a falling/rising star.