Narcissists and others in Mary McCarthy's The Group

Mary McCarthy's 1963 novel, The Group, in the first third sharpens its focus onto one "group" member, Kay, and her husband, an aspiring playwright in NYC in 1933, Harald (cq), but as the novel sharpens MMcC does a great job in filling us in on the back stories of the other 7 groupies (1933 Vassar grads). In the first chapters we learned more about Dottie and in particular about her first sexual experiences and the accompanying guilt and shame and sadness; by chapter 4, a year or so later, Dottie fades into the background as a minor character and we learn more about another group member, Helena, daughter of a rich Cleveland steel magnate, given "every opportunity," which is to say lessons in languages and in all of the arts, but who ultimately is a "disappointment" to her parents, not graduating at top of class, opting for a career as a preschool teacher. Her parents actually think it's wrong of her to work, taking a job away from someone who might need it; her mother in particular reasons she's glad H did not graduate at top of class, dismissing the top students as grinds and ambitious Jews. Through all this we see the sadness of H., who doesn't quite fit w/ other Vassar grads and whom we suspect may be gay. The main plot, however, stays focused on Kay and Harald, as we see year by year what a dismal and unlikable character he is: We see a nasty fight between them when he is fired from his entry-level theater job for mouthing off to the director. He can be so cavalier about finding work (this is the height, or depth, of the Depression) because Kay is from a prosperous family (H is not; his father is a high-school principal in Boise). In another scene/chapter, we see Kay and H holding a party after H's play - about his father as an Ibsen-like man fighting the corruption of the system - is optioned for production. The behavior of the guests at the party reveals further dark strands running beneath the superficial gaiety of city life: Lots of racists and anti-Semitic remarks; H caught in the act of passionately kissing the wife of another couple from the Group, H acting childish and histrionic and destroying what others at first think is his only copy of his play - a Dostoyevsky-like dramatic action that in the end turns out to be farce (Kay reveals that he has numerous other copies of the manuscript). One after another, the men in the orbit of The Group turn out to be awful narcissists, and the women, at least at this stage of their lives, are content to live in the shadows. We'll see, I suspect, how the tables turn, over time.