The Group by Mary McCarthy (audio-book)
8/10
I read this book many years ago when I was a young feminist, learning about woman's place in the world. When I saw it on my local library shelf, I had forgotten its power and just got it out for curiosity's sake.
Do any women, nowadays still say 'I wouldn't call myself a feminist?' It is a crime if they do, and they should be made to read this book to remind them what women who do call themselves feminist have achieved for all women in the last 50 or so years.
Mary McCarthy wrote this in 1963. It is a novel that follows the lives of a group of young women who have just graduated from the elite Vassar College in New York in 1933. They are mostly intelligent and well-heeled; of 'good pedigree' and are expected to achieve success in work or in marriage.
We learn, by following their lives over the next few years, leading up to America's involvement in WWII, about the married lives, the single lives, the working lives, the sex lives of women of this class at that time. We learn about the inaccessibility of contraception, the lack of information about sex, the double standards held up for men and women, the stigmatisation of those who choose to go their own way. We learn what it is like to be in a relationship where the man holds all the real power, and how difficult it is to get a divorce. We learn that a man can have his wife committed as insane, with very little psychiatric evidence. We learn that men and male scientists believed that they knew more about child-rearing than new and experienced mothers did.
It is a book of its time. It is a good read. It is an important reminder for all of us that we should continue to think about inequalities and how history still impacts on who we are in the present.
8/10
I read this book many years ago when I was a young feminist, learning about woman's place in the world. When I saw it on my local library shelf, I had forgotten its power and just got it out for curiosity's sake.
Do any women, nowadays still say 'I wouldn't call myself a feminist?' It is a crime if they do, and they should be made to read this book to remind them what women who do call themselves feminist have achieved for all women in the last 50 or so years.
Mary McCarthy wrote this in 1963. It is a novel that follows the lives of a group of young women who have just graduated from the elite Vassar College in New York in 1933. They are mostly intelligent and well-heeled; of 'good pedigree' and are expected to achieve success in work or in marriage.
We learn, by following their lives over the next few years, leading up to America's involvement in WWII, about the married lives, the single lives, the working lives, the sex lives of women of this class at that time. We learn about the inaccessibility of contraception, the lack of information about sex, the double standards held up for men and women, the stigmatisation of those who choose to go their own way. We learn what it is like to be in a relationship where the man holds all the real power, and how difficult it is to get a divorce. We learn that a man can have his wife committed as insane, with very little psychiatric evidence. We learn that men and male scientists believed that they knew more about child-rearing than new and experienced mothers did.
It is a book of its time. It is a good read. It is an important reminder for all of us that we should continue to think about inequalities and how history still impacts on who we are in the present.
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