The Children's Hour

Introduction

The Children's Hour, Lillian Hellman's first thriving drama, was an immediate sensation because it anxieties lesbianism, a subject that the American theater had before ignored. For Hellman, although, the proposed aim was the maliciousness of humanity in its hurry to judgment and its enthusiasm to accuse and ostracize those who are wrongfully accused.

 

Thesis Statement

The proposed aim of the play is the maliciousness of humanity in its hurry to judgment and its enthusiasm to accuse and ostracize those who are wrongfully accused.

 

The play: Analysis

Hellman discovered the article upon which she founded this play in a nineteenth 100 years lawless individual case explained in Bad Companions (1931), by William Roughead. In that article, two women who going a boarding school in Scotland were incorrectly suspect of lesbianism by a scholar in 1810(Moody 78-83). Though Hellman's source furthermore emphasizes the topic of lesbianism and the difficulties of characterising and commanding feminine sexuality, Hellman herself, in conversing about the play, tended to deemphasize the lesbian theme. She talked of it as a play about good and bad, about class power, and about scandal-mongering. The topic of scandal-mongering, or the “big lie,” came to appear more significant when the play was revived in New York in 1952, soon after Hellman's look before the House Un-American Activities Committee, where she denied to title contacts who might have been attached with supposed communist organizations. She organised, although, to bypass the destiny of her admirer, Dashiell Hammett, who was imprisoned in 1951 for contempt of Congress when he denied to give names(Reynolds 71-84).

To subsequent scholars, the play's sexy topics appear centered because the conclusion turns on an accusation of lesbianism. The power of this accusation counts upon quiet not only about lesbianism, but about feminine sexuality as a whole. No one in the play can state the phrase “lesbian,” (Wright 89-109) not only because New York playgoers were queasy about the subject in the 1930's but furthermore because to the individual characteristics the very concept is an unspeakable horror. When Joe inquiries Mary about her article, Amelia is most shocked at the outlook that he will make Mary title what she assertions to have seen. All the individual characteristics accept as factual lesbianism to be so defiling and corrupting that the very ascribe verifies guilt and, that if the juvenile young women discover of it, they themselves are liable to be infected(Carl 67-73). Even Joe's love for Karen will not avert his supposing her. Once Mary has suspect the educators of lesbianism, a specter looms behind the action. This specter may be appreciated in part as the presumed volatility of feminine sexuality, an volatility that needs the most rigid communal control.

In this school for adolescent young women, sexuality is not voiced of. The young women understand that they should persuade their curiousness about sex by mystery and forbidden means. Mary is the most complicated in the assembly because she has really completed the Gautier innovative, and even she understands so little about sex ...