All the Same

I've always loved history. I grew up on a steady diet of historical fiction novels, tempered by Babysitter's Club and Sweet Valley High (because it is important to understand what is culturally relevant today as well!), I double majored in history in college and find myself spending far too much time now reading biographies and nonfiction books about random historical subsects I really have no reason to know anything about. I think this love of history stems from the odd comfort to be derived from the fact that nothing changes, not really. And while The Group is technically historical fiction in that it takes places in the 1930's, it could essentially be about a group of girls graduating from Vassar today except their squalid flats would be in Astoria and not the West Village (ohhh to live in a time when living in downtown manhattan was the utmost of frugality). I don't know that I necessarily liked all of these girls but I certainly recognized them. The girl married to the abusive theater artist who she supported financially while he hurled insults to her face and cheated behind her back. The girl who loses her virginity to the man who tells her from the start he doesn't want a relationship and still, she finds herself sobbing for him while trying on a wedding dress for a wedding to somebody else. The gung ho working girl who is told by her first boss that this really isn't the right field for her. Yeah...I think we're all pretty well acquanted with these ladies. Maybe this is a time where the inevitability of history's repeating itself isn't such a comfort.