Kay, because she begins the narrative with her marriage and ends it with her death, serves as a focal point to unite all the characters in The Group, whose reactions to and relationships with Kay reveal their own priorities.

Both a type and an individual — everywornan — Kay is clever but without common sense, attractive but not impossibly beautiful. Somewhat of an outsider, she is the girl-next-door, full of small-town prospects, who gets the advantages of an Ivy League education, goes off to conquer the Big Apple, and pins her hopes to a young man's fortunes. Although an "outsider" from the Midwest, Kay has adopted the standards of "modernity" and trendiness with a goodhearted curiosity and brightness, a combination of the naive romantic and the more worldly cosmopolitan. Her husband Harald (who shares McCarthy's first husband's name and profession), although brilliant and articulate, is moody and egocentric...