In short, The Group lasts because it is read or re-read as an indicator of change—or the lack of it. For instance:

Would Kay still be supporting a creative husband who has too little talent to succeed yet enough to make her feel inferior and to attract other women?

Would Priss, who is humiliated by her obstetrician husband for being unable to carry out his ideal of childbirth, now be a pioneer of birthing centers and midwives?

Though Lakey wouldn’t have to conceal being a lesbian while a student at Vassar, would she still fall in love with a rich, powerful, and not very smart woman who is as dominating as a man?

Would Pokey, the “fat and cheerful New York society girl,” now be suing for an equal share of inherited power? After all, it is still more likely to be left to sons—or even sons-in-law—than to daughters. Would she be talking about the masculinization of wealth? It’s just the other side of the feminization of poverty.

Would androgynous Helena now describe herself as transgender, and become more at home in the world by transitioning into a man? What was not possible in the 1930s is happening in the new millennium, including at Vassar.

Dottie, who famously got a pessary—as diaphragms were then called—would no longer cause the novel to be banned in Ireland, Italy, and Australia, but would she still marry a man she doesn’t love as the path of least resistance?

Libby would no longer be told that book publishing is for men, to marry a publisher rather than be one, but would she still bring no legal charges when she is quietly raped?

As for Polly—probably the alter ego of Mary McCarthy, who also was an outsider by class and a survivor of family problems—she might still be working in a hospital, taking care of a father who is losing his grip on reality. But she would no longer take Freud seriously enough to argue with, nor would the kind psychiatrist she falls in love with.

Altogether, The Group would now be appreciated, not banned, for its demystifying description of female orgasm. We can hope that eight friends would no longer be all white, as were so many classes graduating from Ivy League colleges until the 1960s. On the other hand, I don’t remember media coverage of Sex and the City that asked why—in a city that is more than a third African American, Hispanic, and Asian American—those women friends were all white. I bet Mary McCarthy would have asked. She was very conscious of class and anti-Semitism. Wouldn’t she also have written about Race and the City?

The Group is worth reading and re-reading for all of these current reasons. Women’s lives are better indicators of change—or the lack of it—than any statistic or generality, and the bedrock appeal of this novel, like its television and film progeny, is friendship among women.

Now that we know how and why we need each other, read The Group as a measure of change.

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