![]() ![]() ![]() “To hear her talk on the subject of her lifelong mission was an honor, like touching the mantle of a prophet.”īut in practice, the doctor’s visit is just as awkward and embarrassing as Dottie’s “defloration.” Dottie struggles to insert the contraceptive. ![]() Dottie feels she is in the presence of a hero of female sexuality. So Dottie boldly goes to a woman doctor, one of the early campaigners for birth control. “No man of honor,” he explains, “would expect a girl to put up the doctor’s fee, plus the price of the pessary and the jelly and the douche bag, unless he planned to sleep with her long enough for her to recover her investment.” Here’s another question of manners: does this mean he wants to see her again? Dottie’s friend Kay’s husband Harald confirms that the request indicates commitment. Then, just as she’s leaving, Dick tells her she should get fitted for a diaphragm. How does one undress, what to say over breakfast, what is the polite way to have an orgasm? ![]() She has spent the night trying to work out the etiquette of sex. Dottie has just lost her virginity to Dick, a drunken artist she does not love, and who does not love her. The best-known section of Mary McCarthy’s 1963 novel “The Group” involves a young woman from a good family and a contraceptive device. ![]()
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