''The Company She Keeps'' (1942) is the debut and a semi-autobiographical novel by American writer
Mary McCarthy.
It is an unconventional work, tracing the journey of a highly politicized young
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
college graduate through various stages of emotional development, in unusually frank and revealing detail. The story blends many themes that had marked the author’s own life, such as patriarchy, feminism, rebellion and betrayal, as expressed in her later autobiography, ''
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood'' (1957). The six episodes do not follow directly in sequence, and some had already been published as magazine fiction. Critics noted that some of the characters are easily recognizable portraits from the contemporary New York literary scene.
Background
Autobiographical elements
Margaret Sargent, protagonist of ''The Company She Keeps'', closely resembles McCarthy’s account of herself in her later autobiography ''
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood'' (1957). But this was not obvious for more than a decade after this novel was published.
Many of the circumstances of Margaret’s, or Meg’s, life mirror McCarthy’s own young adulthood: A college graduate living in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
; a young first marriage that ends in divorce; works for a publisher, reading manuscripts, and writes for a liberal magazine.
[Hardy, Willene Schaefer. ''Mary McCarthy.'' New York: Frederick Ungar, 1981. Print.] Because McCarthy travelled in prestigious literary circles, her characters have been traced as thinly veiled accounts of well-known intellectuals, such as
Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson Jr. (May 8, 1895 – June 12, 1972) was an American writer and literary critic who explored Freudian and Marxist themes. He influenced many American authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose unfinished work he edited for publi ...
and
Philip Rahv
Philip, also Phillip, is a male given name, derived from the Greek (''Philippos'', lit. "horse-loving" or "fond of horses"), from a compound of (''philos'', "dear", "loved", "loving") and (''hippos'', "horse"). Prominent Philips who popularize ...
.
But, ''The Company She Keeps'' is by no means a purely autobiographical work. McCarthy confesses to reimagining or simply inventing episodes, and doesn’t always remember which parts of her stories are true and which are fictionalized.
McCarthy has stated in interviews that the episode in the chapter “The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt” really did happen, though she changed names and cities to retain a degree of anonymity.
Prior publication
Several of the episodes in ''The Company She Keeps'' were originally published as short stories in other sources. “Cruel and Barbarous Treatment,” written in 1938 and published in ''
The Southern Review
''The Southern Review'' is a quarterly literary magazine that was established by Robert Penn Warren in 1935 at the behest of Charles W. Pipkin and funded by Huey Long as a part of his investment in Louisiana State University. It publishes fiction ...
'' in the spring of 1939, was one of her first works of fiction.
[Gelderman, Carol. ''Mary McCarthy: A Life.'' London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1989. Print.] McCarthy wrote the other five stories that eventually became ''The Company She Keeps'' over the course of the next three and a half years. “The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt” was published in ''
Partisan Review
''Partisan Review'' (''PR'') was a small-circulation quarterly "little magazine" dealing with literature, politics, and cultural commentary published in New York City. The magazine was launched in 1934 by the Communist Party USA–affiliated John ...
'' in the summer of 1941, “The Genial Host” was published in ''The Southern Review'' in the fall of 1941, and “Ghostly Father, I Confess” was published by ''
Harper’s Bazaar
''Harper's Bazaar'' is an American monthly women's fashion magazine. It was first published in New York City on November 2, 1867, as the weekly ''Harper's Bazar''. ''Harper's Bazaar'' is published by Hearst and considers itself to be the st ...
'' in April 1942. The other two episodes, “Rogue’s Gallery” and “Portrait of the Intellectual as a Yale Man,” were published for the first time in ''The Company She Keeps'', in the spring of 1942.
Form
''The Company She Keeps'' consists of six episodes featuring the same heroine, Meg Sargent. But, the stories do not easily cohere into a whole. The
narrative voice
Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to storytelling, convey a narrative, story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deli ...
switches between the second- and third-person, and the heroine’s name isn't even mentioned until the second episode, and then only obliquely.
[Crowley, John W. “Mary McCarthy’s The Company She Keeps.” ''Explicator,'' vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 111-115, MLA International Bibliography, doi:http://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.1993.9937991.] McCarthy wrote each story as a stand-alone piece; but the heroine and the underlying themes continue across the different settings and styles. McCarthy said that she began to think of these six stories as one unified story.
McCarthy put the stories together to form one collection and was adamant about calling it a novel, but her own formal experimentation intentionally obscures the continuity between episodes.
Content
* "Cruel and Barbarous Treatment". A young, unnamed woman is married, contemplating divorce, and having an affair. She casts her life as a drama between herself and her two lovers – the Husband and the Young Man. She doesn't dislike this play, but finds it riddled with clichés and without depth. After a while, her affair loses some of its excitement, and the protagonist decides that it is no longer enough to be a Woman With A Secret. She reveals the affair and leaves her husband. She decides she won't marry the Young Man and begins to fear a life of spinsterhood until she fully begins to embrace the glamor of being a Young Divorcee. Her husband lets her go, and eventually she tires of the Young Man’s tireless devotion. The story ends with no marriage and no affair, but the heroine refuses to fall into self-pity. She moves forward with her life alone.
* "Rogue's Gallery". The heroine, named Margaret, or Meg, Sargent, works at a strange gallery run by a man named Mr. Sheer, whose only profitable items are miniature portraits of dogs set into crystal
cufflinks
Cufflinks are items of jewelry that are used to secure the cuffs of dress shirts. Cufflinks can be manufactured from a variety of different materials, such as glass, stone, leather, metal, precious metal or combinations of these. Securing of ...
. Mr. Sheer loves
Old World
The "Old World" is a term for Afro-Eurasia that originated in Europe , after Europeans became aware of the existence of the Americas. It is used to contrast the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia, which were previously thought of by the ...
luxury items, and keeps his shop filled to the brim with new acquisitions. However, Meg soon finds out that the business is founded on nothing, and that all of the items for sale have been loaned to him on consignment. Sheer lives his life from one flawed deal to another until he eventually vanishes with no forwarding address. Meg runs into him years later; he has achieved success working in someone else’s gallery. However, he is deeply unhappy and views Meg as his only true friend.
* "The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt". Meg is on a train heading to
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
to tell her family about her new fiancée (not the Young Man of the first story) when she meets an older man who is clearly interested in her. Deciding to play the role of the
femme fatale
A ''femme fatale'' ( or ; ), sometimes called a maneater or vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps. She is an archetype of ...
, Meg enters his club car and gets drunk with him. Believing she has the upper hand as the object of desire, she is mortified the next morning when she wakes to remember having humiliating sex with him. Meg’s
bohemian lifestyle
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people and with few permanent ties. It involves musical, artistic, literary, or spiritual pursuits. In this context, bohemians may be wanderers, a ...
, represented by her underpants held together with a safety pin, suddenly seems pathetic and dirty instead of alluring. Meg leaves the man in San Francisco. On her return trip, the man meets her in
Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
, showering her with expensive gifts – but Meg can tell his interest in her is fading. Eventually, he leaves and never again contacts her.
* "The Genial Host". Meg goes to a party hosted by a dull man named Pflaumen. He is a careful director; his apartment is filled with art intended only for guests to look at, and his parties are equally carefully constructed collections of fascinating people. Pflaumen uses his guests as interesting mouthpieces for his social gatherings; in return, he lets them meet interesting influential people and asks only that they allow him to be a part of their lives. But, Pflaumen’s own dullness means that his guests often form connections without him. He tries to insert himself into Meg’s life by questioning her about her drinking. Meg dislikes him intensely, especially the way he reduces his guests to a single talking point or view, but is seduced by his lifestyle and his connections.
* "Portrait of the Intellectual as a Yale Man". This episode is told from the perspective of Jim Barnett, a self-satisfied,
Yale
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...
-educated
Socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...
. When he meets Meg, he finds her exciting but troubling; however, two months later he begins an affair with her. It fizzles out quickly and the two clash over Meg’s
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a rev ...
and intensity. When Meg gets fired over her views, Jim quietly resigns in protest and intends to write an important Marxist book; however, the story ends with him going to work for a popular conservative magazine that pays well.
* "Ghostly Father, I Confess". In the final story, Meg visits her
analyst, Dr. James. All of her fragmented selves are present in this meeting, and Meg, ever the author, wants to impress him. Meg’s tyrannical husband has forced her to attend these sessions; Meg wants to divorce him but is unable to do so. Meg and Dr. James search her "child" for answers to her unhappiness; they discuss the death of her mother, her father’s sending her to live with her grim Aunt Clara, her mother’s
Catholicism
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
and her father’s
Protestantism
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
, and Meg’s eventual escape from her aunt. Dr. James believes that her husband serves as a stand-in for both her tyrannical Aunt Clara and her indifferent father. Meg leaves the office and remembers a dream she had about kissing a
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
. The story ends with a
prayer
Prayer is an invocation or act that seeks to activate a rapport with an object of worship through deliberate communication. In the narrow sense, the term refers to an act of supplication or intercession directed towards a deity or a deified a ...
: “If the flesh must be blind, let the spirit see. Preserve me in disunity.”
[McCarthy, Mary. ''The Company She Keeps.'' New York: Harcourt, 1942. Print.]
Literary characteristics
While ''The Company She Keeps'' is not one of McCarthy’s better-known works, it has been well studied. Scholars analyze it according to the following themes:
Reality vs. fiction
Scholars are fascinated by the
autobiographical
An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life.
It is a form of biography.
Definition
The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...
aspects of ''The Company She Keeps'', and view the novel as a developmental stepping-stone on McCarthy’s journey toward discovering her identity as a writer. The stories contained in the novel are not necessarily meant to be chronological, but they are assembled and published as a unit. Readers follow a thread from the first story to the last. McCarthy endows Meg with an author-like literary consciousness, painting her as a director or artist.
[Hewitt, Rosalie. “A ‘Home Address for the Self’: Mary McCarthy’s Autobiographical Journey.” ''The Journal of Narrative Technique,'' vol. 12, no. 2, 1982, pp. 95-104. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30225042.] Readers can approach Meg’s fragmentation and search for an integrated self as a reflection of McCarthy’s own journey.
Catholicism
McCarthy’s most famous work, the autobiography ''
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood'' (1957), discussed the role of Catholicism in her upbringing. Because of this, some scholars’ interest lies in analyzing McCarthy’s other works through the lens of Catholicism. Despite McCarthy’s avowed
atheism
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no d ...
as an adult, her early grounding in Catholicism shaped her writing and life. Her Catholic readership thinks it perceives its continuing influence in her life. A kind of
asceticism
Asceticism (; from the el, ἄσκησις, áskesis, exercise', 'training) is a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from sensual pleasures, often for the purpose of pursuing spiritual goals. Ascetics may withdraw from the world for their p ...
, and a need for
confession
A confession is a statement – made by a person or by a group of persons – acknowledging some personal fact that the person (or the group) would ostensibly prefer to keep hidden. The term presumes that the speaker is providing information th ...
and self-understanding permeate her writing.
[Campbell, Debra. “‘One of Ours?’: Catholic Readings of Mary McCarthy, 1942-1964,” ''U.S. Catholic Historian,'' vol. 20, no. 1, 2002, pp. 99-115, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27671153.] In the earlier novel ''The Company She Keeps'', this is evident in the final episode, as is McCarthy's tendency to write thinly veiled accounts of her personal affairs. McCarthy's first novel was an important 20th-century model of a female, Catholic, coming-of-age story.
Other scholars note that this Catholic influence is specifically an
Irish-Catholic
Irish Catholics are an ethnoreligious group native to Ireland whose members are both Catholic and Irish. They have a large diaspora, which includes over 36 million American citizens and over 14 million British citizens (a quarter of the British ...
influence, and that McCarthy approaches her work with an Irish-American literary sensibility. McCarthy broke out of the style of anti-intellectual, sexist Irish-Catholicism, but still struggled with the Church’s sexist and restrictive definition of women, and Irish
fatalism
Fatalism is a family of related philosophical doctrines that stress the subjugation of all events or actions to fate or destiny, and is commonly associated with the consequent attitude of resignation in the face of future events which are thou ...
. She tends to romanticize suffering and penance.
[Donohue, Stacy Lee. “Reluctant Radical: The Irish-Catholic Element.” ''Twenty-Four Ways of Looking at Mary McCarthy: The Writer and Her Work,'' Ed. Eve Stwertka and Margo Viscusi. Westport: Greenwood, 1996, pp. 87-97. Print.] Donohue suggests that McCarthy and many of her heroines, like Meg, are trapped between the intellectual and bohemian life of New York in the 1930s and 1940s, and the restrictive, traditional values and stereotypes of femininity found in the Catholic Church.
Feminist theory
Some scholars approach ''The Company She Keeps'' as an artifact, and examine it in the context of the feminist movements that gained ground during the novel's publication. The novel falls between the first wave of liberal feminism and second wave feminism, and therefore contains elements of each movement: concern with diminished options for women in the workforce and sexual liberation from the first wave, and psychological implications of sexist stereotypes and the repressive character of psychiatry as an institution from the second wave.
[Farland, Maria. “Literary Feminisms.” ''The Cambridge History of the American Novel.'' Ed. Leonard Cassuto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 925-940. Print.] Feminist literature of the time sought to synthesize
Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 p ...
and
Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts in ...
, and rework their sexist doctrines for contemporary feminism.
McCarthy’s heady intellectualism doesn't shy away from engaging in critique of these two giant figures. Her writing signals the beginning of a pushback against the Old Left by a younger generation of intellectuals, in part by taking a strong stance against Freudian psychiatry by aligning it with patriarchal subordination of female independence for fear that it would lead to madness.
Other theorists analyze ''The Company She Keeps'' through more contemporary feminist frameworks, such as Judith Butler’s performativity. Butler argues that everyone "performs" identity types in a gendered world.
[Marsh, Kelly A. “‘All My Habits of Mind’: Performance and Identity in the Novels of Mary McCarthy.” ''Studies in the Novel,'' vol. 34, no. 3, 2002, pp. 303-3019. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29533517.] For instance, Meg both depends on and fears typification. One of her defining characteristics is her ability to sort people into types, yet she is terrified of being “typed” by others.
Simultaneously, Meg’s search for an integrated self throughout the collection of stories is a search for a neat type to fit into.
By forcing her protagonist to search for, yet never find, a convenient type for herself, McCarthy uses Meg as a model of resistance against typification.
Reception
The original ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' review described ''The Company She Keeps'' as “strange and provocative” and “a most unusual novel… probably destined to create a minor furor.” The critic praises McCarthy for her original and exciting depiction of her heroine and the world in which she moves, but criticizes her for her viciousness, especially in her semi-transparent, often unflattering portrayals of actual literary figures. and says that the novel is as full of contradictions as its main character – that on one hand, it is clever and witty; on the other, it lacks maturity.
[Walton, Edith H. "Review of The Company She Keeps, by Mary McCarthy. ''New York Times,'' 24 May 1942.]
Other contemporaries and publications had similar mixed views. ''
Partisan Review
''Partisan Review'' (''PR'') was a small-circulation quarterly "little magazine" dealing with literature, politics, and cultural commentary published in New York City. The magazine was launched in 1934 by the Communist Party USA–affiliated John ...
'' originally published “The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt,” but found the sex scene so controversial and immature that they refused to publish “The Genial Host.”
McCarthy’s husband
Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson Jr. (May 8, 1895 – June 12, 1972) was an American writer and literary critic who explored Freudian and Marxist themes. He influenced many American authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose unfinished work he edited for publi ...
, a prominent writer and critic, found the book ingenious, as did writer
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bo ...
; however, most book reviewers were not as enthusiastic. Many cited McCarthy’s immaturity and sharpness, calling the book unlikeable and gossipy. Despite the mixed reception, ''The Company She Keeps'' sold 10,000 copies.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Company She Keeps, The
Feminist novels
1942 American novels
American bildungsromans
Novels by Mary McCarthy
1942 debut novels