And beautiful art-history major Lakey, who can get any man she wants, heads to Europe following graduation to further her art-history experience, but her trip might be as much to get away from her Vassar life and head for freedom. Wealthy Pokey can afford a life of leisure in marriage, for which she strives. Artist Helena, who plans to become a nursery-school teacher, is the communicator, who reports her friends goings-on to their former classmates. Politically-involved Priss knows that love and politics might not mesh, but doesn't like feeling like a science experiment as a replacement for love. Chemistry major Polly, who wanted to be a doctor but becomes a medical technician, deals with people with real or perceived psychological problems, both at work and in her personal life. Her exact opposite is Dottie, an inexperienced proper Bostonian who might settle for second-best as she strives for what she really wants despite coming to the understanding that she is less than second-best. The only one who might be more ambitious is English major Libby, who wants a job in publishing and whose bravado hides her insecurities when she doesn't get what she wants. Kay, who takes everything personally, needs to be in control, which becomes more difficult as problems emerge in the marriage and as world events occur around her. It’s also incredibly depressing, and the only thing that saves it from becoming too bleak is Mary McCarthy’s wit and dark humour. Ambitious theater major Kay, somewhat the outsider of the group, decides to get married immediately and support her struggling playwright husband Harald by getting a job at Macy's than pursue her own theater directing career. The Group is a fascinating novel, both from a personal and from a sociological point of view. The lives of an octet of friends who are seen as the aesthetes of the Vassar class of 1933 are presented from their graduation, when their lives held so much promise despite the Depression, to the start of WWII.

The group mary mccarthy sparknotes