The major issue in Superior Women, Alice Adams's fourth novel and first best-seller, is how American women who came of age in the 1940s negotiated their limited opportunities and possibilities to carve a place for themselves in the decades to follow. We first meet Megan Greene in California, an emblem of freedom in 1942 from the traditional constraints of class, family, history, and codes of proper behavior. When the scene soon shifts east to Radcliffe College, class privilege and inscrutable rules of decorum are strictly applied by Lavinia, the snobbish Southern beauty who dominates the small circle of Megan, Cathy, Peg, and Janet.

The novel traces the lives of these women from 1942 through the early 1980s, documenting the social constraints and changes they experience. These women negotiate their college years filled with groping, insensitive men, toxically catty girlfriends, and their own inner turmoil. After graduation Megan and...